The six drivers of the future according to Al Gore are:

1. Earth Inc. – a deeply interconnected global economy that operates as a fully integrated entity. Robosourcing and technology-induced job losses.

2. The Global Mind: the increase in interconnected world that produces “intelligent beings” that surpass our intelligence. Our brain capacity got extended by the Internet that benefit the democracy movement worldwide. Pitfalls of the internet including education, security, privacy, and frauds.

3. Power in the Balance:shift of economic and political power from the east to the west and to the large corporations. In the west, he warned about the power of the corporations and their lobbyists.

4. Outgrowth: unsustainable growth of human population and resource consumption. Growth of mega cities from the exponential growth of population means more hunger and obesity, mass marketing, waste and pollution and longevity, which contributes to the growing pains that include migration, refugees, endangered ground water, top soil, and over exploitation of ocean.

5. The reinvention of the Life and Death: breakthroughs in materials science and biological and medical advances may redefine how we evolve. He argued against patenting of genes, human cloning, antibiotics usage in farm animals. And he touched on the upcoming technological singularity, creation of new body parts, fertility, lifespans or “healthspans”, GMO and etc.

6. The Edge: our new relationship between human civilization and the Earth’s ecological systems – the environments. As expected, Al Gore goes through lots of details on global warming, CO2, methane gas under the icecaps, and it’s depressing, coral reefs for fish habits are dying. He goes into the politics of global warming which is very insightful. He warned about the danger of fracking. He advocates cap and trade.

Key points:
1. Love the mindmap in the beginning of each chapter.
2. Lots of history if you enjoy it. In a way, he’s extrapolating the future from the past/history.
3. Depressing state but hopeful.
4. China’s determination to become the superpower in application of genetic and life science analysis.
5. Call to the US to lead the world.

Overall, it’s a pretty good state of the world now and his projection of the future may well be true.

I listened to the audiobook in some random order for some reasons. This is the first time that happened. Don’t know why. In any case, I was confused by the sequence of event in this memoir. I had to go back to the hardcopy and reread the book.

This book is all about Jeff Bezos and the rise of his grand Everything Store, Amazon. You get to know a little of the history of Amazon and a little of this man Jeff Bezos, his working styles and visions for the company.

What gets me is that he was already pretty well off as an investment banker in a “quants” shop and he decided to quit it and start this company from scratch after catching the Internet fever. Very gutsy!

Something about Jeff Bezos
1. Jeff’s being passionate being customer-centric is admirable. However, convincing the investors to stay with him while he scaled the company up does take some persuasion and good sale job.

2. He flexed his muscle with strong tactics in driving his competitors into being bought at a bargain price when it most counts.

3. His biological father lost touch with him since young age and wasn’t reconnected until after he became famous. He had the same laugh as his father.

4. He burned out many of his early executives because of his hard driving management style and possibly the lack of stock appreciation in those days due to the dot com bust.

Interesting company cultures:
1. Being “cheap” and thrifty sets the tone of the company like Walmart.
2. Reading prose/write-up instead of listening to PowerPoint presentation in a meeting.

3. The interaction with eBay (trying to buy eBay) and Walmart (sold to Walmart) were possibilities that never yield fruits.

4. The Amabot replaced the editorial staff. Why do you need the editorial staff when you have all the customers do the work for you.

In handling the “narrative fallacy,” I believe the author did a pretty good job in presenting the material in the most objective way. The book is worth the read if you want to know what it takes to start a company and make it to a behemoth while facing continuous criticism from the Wall Street about profitability.
I got to know Jeff Bezos, this amazing person.

A fairly good read over all.