Customer Reviews

Sustainable Development Possible with Creative System Engineering

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Flipping through this book you can tell that the author is passionate about the topic and trying to make a difference, which of course is admirable, but the book itself comes across as a rambling series of opinions with no references to the academic literature. The author advocates for more emphasis on science, but doesn't himself follow the standard scientific procedures of putting your work into the context of existing work on the topic, citing claims, and presenting information in an impartial way. The author also extensively quotes his own posts on internet message boards. All in all, there are many much better resources on systems thinking and sustainability. The author's ideas might be good, but the unprofessional format ruined any chance he had at being taken seriously.

In my opinion the author's work could not be more timely. I would say that engineers and non-engineers alike would be well served to read the book. It is a short read and yet extremely rich in depth and scope. I will attempt to present what I believe to be a few of the key concepts:

We need more leadership and less management to successfully address future challenges; research is paramount to the success of our future endeavors; sustainable solutions draw on 5,000 plus years of civilization--not just the latest trends or technologies; a cohesive systems approach methodology will be required to provide lasting, sustainable results into and beyond the next century; libraries and the premises upon which they were founded are increasingly threatened as "for-profit" organizations continue to corner and capitalize on information that was once free to the people; if well-meaning individuals work together, without hidden agendas, the results can be astounding when conditions are right--"magical" if you will; systems engineering is an open, honest approach to problem solving adopted in the past by great minds, such as Benjamin Franklin as an example offered by the author, but increasingly threatened by the myopic, self-serving interests of the top-down approaches adopted in many of today's organizations.

This is a brief review--not a comprehensive summary. I mentioned here, what I believe to be, only some of the essentials presented in the book. If you like to think about the "bigger challenges" facing us today and tomorrow, this is probably a book for you. I found the thesis highly credible and deserving of attention.

There are many books that talk about decision making but this one lays out an approach that not only has a successful track record but has roots going back to Benjamin Franklin. This technique, formal tradeoff analysis of alternatives, is simple and elegant based on what some may call common sense yet we forget it solved many of our past problems and can be used to solve our new problems. This book introduces the reader to tradeoffs, architectures, modeling, requirements, and then moves into the difficulties of actually accomplishing these tasks in the new dysfunctional organizational settings of today. This book may share library shelf space with Freakonomics, Blink, How We Decide, etc but this book offers a clear and doable proposal and plan for what to do immediately to help us get going with all that needs to be done. A great book!

Wow what an incredible book. I could not put it down. It is thought provoking and broad in its scope. Everywhere the reader is challenged with a new idea. All the pieces eventually somehow come together to form a beautiful picture. The book eloquently makes the point that we can not solely rely on the random movement of the markets or privatized government to solve our problems. It offers a proposal for moving forward and provides ingredients for executing the proposal. After reading the book it's obvious that we have had a few decades of lost opportunities. Adding the paper at the end is a nice historical perspective. On the down side the thesis was restated in the book twice. I guess I understand the authors' perspective. It definitely makes the point of what we should do. This is a 5 star book and our policy makers should take a look at this work and consider its proposal for dealing with our energy crisis, global warming, and creating a sustainable world.