Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Authors Schmidt and Cohen have outstanding backgrounds that would help produce an very insightful and detailed book. Instead, we get non-stop pros and cons, and not even very insightful ones. It's basically a summary of lots of bits and pieces that most readers are probably already familiar with - eg. background information about Moore's Law, the rising number of people using the Internet and mobile phones, and how photonics is doubling the data coming out of fiber-optic cables every nine months, but no insight as to when Cox Communications (my local source of Internet frustration) and others will replace cable Internet with fiber-optics. Continuing, we get one small example of some third-world residents are using cell-phones to improve profits (fishermen in the Congo), a quick reference to Xbox 360 capabilities, extremely superficial comments about the future of robots, Khan Academy, and 3D-printers, but nothing about the revolutionary potential for MOOCs in our colleges and universities, or the obvious limitations of 3D-printers (materials used, size, speed). Then there's babbling about improved physician-patient feedback for the health care sector - a tiring topic because that's the least of the problems in American health care. The #1 problem in American health care is extremely high costs caused by lack of government regulation, thereby allowing providers to take advantage of the extremely inelastic demand for health care and bleed patients and payers to the point where we spend far more than every other nation - 18% of GDP, vs. 8% for Taiwan and Japan, 4% for Singapore. Citizen participation in government is another topic they excite over - except Gavin Newsom already beat that topic to death while also ignoring the obvious data showing people just aren't interested in doing so. Facebooking with friends is much more fun. (We can't even get half the population to take a few minutes and vote using painless absentee ballots.) Then there's an allusion to new technology bringing more jobs - except it hasn't to date, compared to the jobs lost to new technology. (The authors should have read Martin Ford's 'The Lights in the Tunnel,' written four years ago.) Then there's their seeing terrorists as becoming 'far more vulnerable than they are today.' Seems I just read something about the Boston Marathon terrorists using the Internet to become sold on jihad, and to learn how to make their bombs (they were caught primarily because of a local department store security camera); bin Laden learned years ago to cast off his satellite phone. Meanwhile, governments have learned to respond to Arab Spring-like groups by infiltrating groups and monitoring sites and Twitter feeds. Finally, Schmidt pontificates and pumps his chest over China - seeing its imminent collapse thanks to an aroused public using the Internet and cell phones. Get in line Mr. Schmidt - you're about #101,000 to make that call, and it hasn't happened yet. Bottom-Line: Schmidt and Cohen did themselves and the public no good with this book.