Innovation Reading Circle
> Innovation Agenda
> Overview
The Innovation Reading Circle aims to help develop theory around innovation through rich, high-level and well-informed public discussion around key and related texts and discourses... [Read on in Objectives]
> Event
08: Societal decline
> Titles
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Jared Diamond (Penguin [UK], 2006)
Jared Diamond is in his third career in environmental history, as Professor of Geography and of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA. He is also author of The Third Chimpanzee and Why is Sex Fun?, and the study of global human history Guns, Germs and Steel. [Read on on the Penguin Books site and profile on Wikipedia.]
The significance of this title is around the questions: Do societies have a tendency towards self-inflicted decline? Where might modern capitalist societies stand in relation to this process? And does innovation tend to create more problems than it solves?
The book can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk or from Penguin Books.
Related titles
The J Curve: A New Way to Understand why Nations Rise and Fall Ian Bremmer (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
> Took place
September 10, 2007
> At
Clarke Mulder Purdie, Enterprise House, 1-2 Hatfields, London SE1 9PG
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Synopses and reflections on the titles can be found on the 08: Societal decline topic in the discussion section of the Innovation Reading Circle group on Facebook. Meta-review to be published shortly.
> Notices
We are grateful to Clarke Mulder Purdie for hosting this event. Chris Clarke writes: “Clarke Mulder Purdie is a corporate communications, B2B and reputation management consultancy that develops and delivers creative, high-impact media relations and thought leadership programmes for start-up companies to blue-chip brands. Fulfilling the potential of great ideas is what makes us different. Being well connected to the issues facing our clients allows us to develop communications strategies that deliver excellent results. We work with organisations across a range of sectors such as technology and telecoms, construction and built environment, transport and the public sector.”
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Points for discussion
Some of the questions that we plan to discuss include:
- Why have environmental issues and perspectives come to the fore in the last 20 years?
- What factors determine quality of life?
- Are resources essentially finite?
- What can legitimately be learned from comparisons with historic societies?
- To what extent does technological development create (or store up) more problems than it solves?
- How significant are the challenges of reconciling individual and short term thinking with large scale and long term challenges?
Background reading, listening and viewing
The Ends of the World as We Know Them Jared Diamond, New York Times, January 1, 2005 [unpaid sub may be required]
Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? Jared Diamond, Edge, 28 April 2003 [and further reading on Edge]
Are we doomed? Oliver Broudy, Salon, 08/01/2005 [link may be temporarily broken]
PBS site for ‘Guns Germs, & Steel’ documentary series
Selected publications on UCLA Department of Geography page
Other shared bookmarks for Innovation Reading Circle 08 may be added.
Reviews
Summary by Stewart Brand, The Long View (publication of The Long Now Foundation), July 18th, 2005
Cutting down the last tree Oliver Morton, Prospect, February 2005, Issue 107 [paid sub required]
Review in Commentary magazine by Kevin Shapiro, April 2005 [subscription required]
Doom, tragedy and darkness Alex Larman and Sarah Hughes, Observer Books, January 29, 2006
What Environmentalism Overlooks Partha Dasgupta, London Review of Books, 19 May 2005
Falling down Rob Lyons, spiked-science, 27 January 2005
World's ends Times Literary Supplement, 13 May 2005 [paid sub required]
Interviews
Interview on Penguin Books site [undated]
Interviewed on NPR (US) on the publication of Guns, Germs and Steel [audio]
Interview by Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report (humorous), Comedy Central [video]
Easter Island, C'est Moi Terrence McNally, AlterNet, July 11, 2005
See interviews listed on Diamond’s Wikipedia profile
If you have queries about the event please email Nico Macdonald