Customer Reviews

Tips for Time Travelers

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I made the mistake of buying this book after reading the cover blurb, and found it dull, except for a few interesting concepts- but too few to make it worthwhile. It is one of the few books in my collection which I am thinking of flogging.

It's hard to disagree with the likes of Nicholas Negroponte, Douglas Adams and Bran Ferren when they rave about Peter Cochrane's book, but what they can't say is what a great book it is for the regular guy on the street. Cochrane writes in such an easy style, his book is more like a conversation with a person you'd sit next to on an airplane, or one of the other dads at daycare picking up their kids -- and he makes the future of technology seem real and lets you see how it will actually change your life. It's a great book and I really like the very short chapters. Does he actually have a camera in his glass-walled office called "Little Brother" so his team can watch what their boss is up to? Does he actually carry only digital pictures of his family on his laptop -- no paper-printed pix in his wallet? Does he really have as much trouble upgrading his software as the rest of us? Read the book to find out.

Cochrane fills this (very poorly edited) collection with mostly dull predictions. He does pose a few interesting thinking questions. He hits upon a few undeveloped billion-dollar ideas, and those are the reason to read this book.

Don't read Tips for Time Travelers expecting techno****, predictions on the demise of Microsoft or complicated scenarios on the application of advanced technology - it's far more fun than that.

Here are short stories that should strike fear into the heart of technophobes, technocrats and bureaucrats in equal measure - if they have the imagination to understand them.

Cochrane is refreshingly concerned with the human scale of technology and its potential to deliver freedom from mundane, repetitive tasks and create new types of relationships with work, with leisure and with each other. His message seems to be that we can't live without technology because that is "tough life", but its going to fade into the background and make us far more accountable for our ideas.

My personal favourite - his comparison on the value of the Ten Commandments at 135 words and the EEC documentation on pricing and defining cabbages at nearly 7000 words - says it all really!

If you want to take an active part in the future, read about how it could be here and then make-up your own version.

The book is layed out in seperate monolgues so its easy to pick when I was caught with 5 minutes free. It looks at modern day life, technology and society asking those obvious questions about it all. Well worth a read.

A series of short rants for people with short attention spans, in a Wired like hyperbole and full of the short of boasting done by
dotcom weenies before 1998, this book is not recommended.

Not even at a "newer, lower price"

I liked the "Cut to the chase" nature of his writing - engineer speak par excellance. Although sometimes a little rambling, there were more than enough jewels in every topic to make this a must read for anyone considering our current metamorphosis as an e culture. Not just for the technocrats either. Enjoy!

I loved "Tips For Time Travelers" because it makes perfect sense. Cochrane is pragmatic. Although he sees what we all see, he sees more and is compelled to do something about it. He has unquestionably proved that a desire to do more, to create, to make something better and the willingness to act on the desires can pay off.

His vision for the future is based on the logical and practical adoption of technology. The fact that this will mean chips in our head and fiber in our veins, is a good thing. Our body is only a shell and we have been enhancing it externally since the beginning of time. Technology will make it feasable to go under the skin.

As Emerson said "All things being taken, it is not instruction but provocation that I would rather take from anothers soul" and Cochrane manages to be both provocative and practical as he leads us into the future.

peter's book inspired me immensely

108 bits (no chapter is more than a couple of pages) of smart, quirky commentary on the e-world we live in. From practical observations (3the software industry1s race to build the world1s heaviest airplane is causing overall performance to get worse...2} to the philosophical (3soon we will have more things communicating than people...2), with a lot of interesting speculation about the future: 3At some point...it is almost certain that technology will enable us to store human minds in silicon form.2 A lively mind at work here, in highly readable form. An informative and thought-provoking book, not just for the wired.