Cristiano on Tech/Life

After finishing The Long Tail a few weeks ago I started on Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner. I must say that audio-books are starting to grow on me. It’s like having a 20 hour podcast with a more structured content. I had gotten the book for Christmas so I switched between audio and the book once in a while, but the audio really helped me speed things up.

The book was an interesting read but less of an inspiration than The Long Tail. As the author of Freakonomics said: this book is strangely without a strong theme. Freakonomics is about why people are often fully unable to understand how real life phenomena work, confusing cause and effect, and clinching to conventional wisdoms. The book highlighted some things I already knew: real life correlations are often far more complex than they seem and people are very bad at understanding them.

I finished the book with a bit of mixed feelings, as there was no real inspiration to take from it, no better understanding of the world, but more of a better understanding of peoples lack of understanding of the world. Up next is “Fooled by Randomness” by N.N.Taleb.

Yes, the time is near! A Geek Dinner is at hand.

I have been trying to get one going for a few weeks now, after Ian pushed me to try it and take some weight of his shoulders. With the help of Ian and Glyn we managed to get Prof. Richard Clayton from the University of Cambridge to talk about:

“Evil ways to make money on the Internet”

I am still trying to confirm the availability of the venue but somehow there is never anyone present to confirm the reservation for me. For now thoug, put the date (February 7th) in your favorite calendar application. The Geek Dinner will probably start at 7pm and go on until we get kicked out. Food is £5 as usual and make sure to either let me know you are coming here in the comments, or on the upcoming page.