"Peter Cochrane is one of our most far-sighted visionaries, and brings brilliant clarity and focus to our understanding of ourselves and our technologies, and of how profoundly each is transforming the other." -Douglas Adams, Author, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy In Uncommon Sense, Peter Cochrane's follow up to the radical 108 Tips for Time Traveller, Peter explains how very simple analysis allows the prediction of such debacles as the 3G auction and the subsequent collapse of an industry, whilst simple-minded thinking is dangerous in the context of a world that is predominantly chaotic and out of control. People balked when Peter suggested a wholesale move to eWorking, the rise of email and text messaging, and the dotcom regime mirroring the boom and bust cycle of the industrial revolution. His predictions of the use and growth of mobile devices and communication, or use of chip implants for humans to replace ID cards, passports, and medical records, or iris scanners and fingerprint readers - were all seen as unlikely. Today they are a reality. How then will the world react to his predictions as set out in Uncommon Sense of a networked world of distributed ignorance and sharing overcoming an old world of concentrated skill and control? To everything becoming 'Napsterised' in every dimension, where storage and processing power cost nothing, and become connected without the help of the old network companies? A world where individuals create their own networks, where laws of copyright and resale, and old business models have to be changed as giant industries are dragged kicking and screaming out of the 19th Century and into the 21st? Peter Cochrane poses and answers questions, suggests solutions, and raises red flags on issues that need to be addressed. Tables, diagrams, pictures and illustrations generously support all of the text, with the most difficult aspects illustrated by simulations and other material on a CD and links to a web site with an ongoing expansion of the themes addressed.

Table of Contents:
Standby xi Where Did This Book Come From? xv Byte 00 – Boot Up 1 Byte 01 – Education That Doesn’t Fit 8 Byte 02 – Conference Turnaround 13 Byte 03 – Salesmanship 17 Byte 04 – The Coming Oil Crisis 22 Byte 05 – Summits, Models and Machines 26 Byte 06 – Counter-Intuitive Networks 30 Byte 07 – Linear and Non-Linear 35 Byte 08 – Exponential Growth – So Misunderstood 40 Byte 09 – Don’t Make Life Harder Than It Already Is 48 Byte 10 – The 3G Chasm – Deeper Than We Thought 53 Byte 11 – Science and Belief 58 Byte 12 – Cochrane’s Law of Secretaries 63 Byte 13 – Control Freaks – Scales of Grey 67 Byte 14 – Butterfl yWings.com 72 Byte 15 – Short-Term Economics 78 Byte 16 – No Market Savvy 82 Byte 17 – How Was Christmas Online For You? 85 Byte 18 – Wrong Shopping Protocol 90 Byte 19 – Chips in Everything – Including Me 95 Byte 20 – The Cyborgs Are Here 99 Byte 21 – Web Realities 103 Byte 22 – Another Management Goof! 107 Byte 23 – Porno or No Porno? 111 Byte 24 – Uncontrollable Bits 115 Byte 25 – Who Goes There? 119 Byte 26 – Wireless Everything 123 Byte 27 – Communications Compromised 127 Byte 28 – Insecure Thinking 132 Byte 29 – Wear, Where, Were-ables 137 Byte 30 – How Many Mobile Phones Do You Need? 141 Byte 31 – The Right Technology For The Right Job 145 Byte 32 – Network Power 149 Byte 33 – DIY Networking 154 Byte 34 – Stupid Entertainment 159 Byte 35 – Net Police 164 Byte 36 – Who’d Be a Copyright Lawyer? 168 Byte 37 – Software Licensing – Time To Get Angry 172 Byte 38 – Technology Fatigue 176 Byte 39 – Circuit or Packet – Clean or Dirty? 180 Byte 40 – It’s Our Brains That Lack Bandwidth 184 Byte 41 – Save Everything – But Don’t Be Tidy 189 Byte 42 – The Blue Sack 193 Byte 43 – Being a Squirrel 197 Byte 44 – Reliability and Downtime 203 Byte 45 – Screen Tests 208 Byte 46 – G-Force 212 Byte 47 – Naturism in Engineering 216 Byte 48 – An Invisible Revolution 222 Byte 49 – The Lull Before – Smarter Machines? 227 Byte 50 – Sleep? 231 Index 235