Books in 2014 - Part 1

Gazettabyte is asking various industry figures to recommend key books they have read this year.

Joe Berthold, vice president, network architecture at Ciena

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I really enjoyed The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable when I read it several years ago, so when I learned about Antifragile from a friend during a chat at an NSF workshop at the end of 2013 I decided to read it. He warned me that it was tough going at times. I enjoyed it so much I decided to reread The Black Swan and then also read Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets which I had not read. Then I went back and read Antifragile again. Yes, it was tough going at times, but I found it very worthwhile book to read and ponder.

Antifragile and Taleb’s other books are relevant to life in general, but have a special relevance to the broad networking and information technology industries as they undergo sweeping change.

Revolutionary change creates great risks and great opportunities, and plenty of disorder. We all have to be aware of what Taleb calls the 'Turkey problem'. The turkey enjoys his life, convinced that the farmer who feeds him every day will do so forever. Then early in November he looses his head, and becomes the guest of honour at a Thanksgiving Dinner.

To avoid the fate of the turkey we have to avoid the misconception that we are in total control of the future, and that the narrative of the future we have created in our minds is pretty certain. Recognising the uncertainty the future holds, both in actions of customers and competitors, and avoiding paths that have limited upside potential and large downside impacts is, I believe, one of his main insights.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

I read this book a couple of years ago and was reminded of it again while binging on Taleb’s books, as he refers to Kahneman’s research many times. You can see a recording of them both during an interview about Antifragile at the New York Public Library on YouTube (click here)

Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his research on how our brains work, and identified two systems in operation, the fast and slow systems. The fast system is intuitive and emotional, while the slow system is deliberate and logical. The fast system is easy, and the slow system is hard, so we often default to the fast and draw erroneous conclusions. It is a fascinating book, as it describes, in terms accessible to a layman, that we are all quite imperfect in our thinking. The real value of this book for our professional lives is he makes us aware of these systems so that we can try to avoid mental glitches that can get us into trouble.

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

This is a very interesting explanation of the workings of the capital markets that is worth reading from that perspective, but anecdotes at the beginning and end were particularly interesting  because the subject matter was optical communications. At the beginning Michael describes the construction of a new fibre optic cable from Carteret NJ, primary data center of the NASDAQ, to Chicago. The cable, built by Spread Networks, aimed to shave a few milliseconds off the latency between the two markets in order for computer-driven traders to profit from price differences. Extreme care was taken to make the path as straight as possible, and they did shave a few milliseconds off the transit time delivered by current commercial cables.

Fast-forward through all the good stuff in the book about high frequency trading to the end. The last description is of a visit back to the vicinity of the Spread Networks cable route, and a climb up a hill to the base of a microwave tower. Others had the bright idea of using a vastly inferior technology, in this case microwave transmission, to create communications links for the same purpose between the two markets. Microwave transmission is much inferior to optical fiber in channel speed and total link capacity. But since light in glass travels about 1/3 slower than microwaves do in free space, the microwave system delivered much lower latency. It turned out the capacity of the microwave system was adequate for many purposes.

Again, the message to us in technology is not to be complacent, and not to dismiss technologies we deem to be inferior based on our current presumptions and biases. Stay vigilant and open to new ideas!

Peter Jarich, vice president for the consumer and infrastructure services, Current Analysis

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

I wish I could say I had to think about this, but I just don’t read many books. It’s always a new year’s resolution but rarely fulfilled.

But, here's one recommendation published in 1997. I decided to get deeper into the story of Lewis and Clark after a presentation that used their story as an introduction to changes taking place in the higher education system. I realised that the theme of exploring uncharted territories applied to much of what we’re going through in telecom right now, particularly with topics like 5G and SDN/NFV.  In each case, you need the right combination of vision and execution to pull off a success. You saw that same dynamic embodied in Lewis and Clark.

I’d like to say there’s a way to link Ayn Rand’s 1937 novella Anthem to telecom, but I can’t. In reality, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it.

Brandon Collings, CTO for communications and commercial optical products at JDSU

As a father of younger children, I find I read a lot of children’s books.  Quite a quantity and variety come through our hands and the good ones are always considerably more enjoyable for parent and kid. Assuming that many of the readers of this review are in a similar life situation (rather than they are kindergarten-reading level), here are some favourites of my family.

• The Ugly Pumpkin, by Dave Horowitz: A charming story about self-discovery and fitting in

• Room on the Broom, by Julia Donaldson: The cadence, rhythm and rhyme make this story possibly more fun to read than to listen to. This book has it all: adventure, witches, dragons, magic, animals, good, evil, and even a broom with first-class seats.

• ish by Peter Reynolds: A cute story about viewing the one’s self and the world through one’s own eyes rather than through others.

Eric Hall, vice resident of business development at Aurrion

It was tough to find time in 2014 for reading outside of work, but one memorable book was The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity by Pedro Ferreira, a professor of Astrophysics at Oxford who traced the thinking on Einstein’s theory for several decades. The scientific narrative, in itself, provided a fascinating review of the physics, covering early theories to more complex modern views of Black Holes and featuring cameos by notable names like Steven Hawking.

Perhaps the more interesting takeaway, however, was the very circuitous route that the evolution followed. I think it is very easy to forget that scientific progress doesn’t follow a linear path driven exclusively by the 'correct solution' but is often more driven by the personalities involved. As a result, what might eventually become the more generally-accepted solution can be derailed and held up for years by the nay-saying of single strong voices (such as Einstein himself).

Such inefficiency is maybe more obvious in the product marketplace but also translates to the marketplace of ideas.

For Part 2, click here