With an analysis of lawsuit settlement against Google Books Project as the backdrop, this author, an obvious authority on the subject, describessd the battle between ePublishing and print Publishing and predicts that both can happily co-exist, but cautions how projects like Google Books can become monopolistic, destructive to knowledge-sharing, greatly impacting user privacy, making public and university libraries exorbitantly expensive to fund/maintain/keep up to date and so forth. A very good read.
Much of this book may have been condensed into a short 3-page paper and the readers given back their valuable time. The books agenda is to deconstruct the pursuit of human happiness and what makes one happy.
While the author maintains a rational and scientific tone throughout, none of the said scientific methods are explained satisfactorily or convincingly. Random polling of a population of subjects multiple times a day, with questions relating to happiness, while laudable, hardly seems the basis of forming a thesis and recipe for as fundamental a subject as human happiness is. With only haphazardly explained descriptions of 'methods', the author quickly forms his thesis that in order to be happy, one must carefully take on increasingly challenging goals, moving up an ever-ascending ladder of skill levels, obtaining clear feedback along the way, and enhancing ones attention levels and focus on the task, away from one's self. This in a nut-shell is what the book is about. Hardly anything new. What he has done is
- condensed (from eastern thought, that are essentially much broader and more comprehensive frameworks around attaining happiness, reducing suffering and 'proper' living)
- relabeled (his condensed gist, into what is calls 'Flow' in this book)
-retrofitted (this reduced concept of Flow into a variety of activities that appeal a western lifestyle, jettisoning the said comprehensive frameworks that have existed for thousands of years in Zen, Buddhist, Yoga, Bhagwad show more Gita)
Is the book helpful? Sure. Is it worth devoting 250 some pages? No. The author on many occasions appears to boil the ocean and seems to want to solve the world's problems with his 'Flow' approach, one that is hardly new or adds new insights, and one that certainly may not fit as well across cultures or socio-economic backgrounds. To the work's credit, when seen as an interpretation of ancient wisdom, the book is a helpful one. It does successfully introduce the audience to the gist of eastern thought. Just think many chapters seemed to endlessly ramble around the same basic ideas over and over. May help readers to also try reading Patanjali's Yoga Sutras to complement this book, compare and draw your own conclusions. show less
While the author maintains a rational and scientific tone throughout, none of the said scientific methods are explained satisfactorily or convincingly. Random polling of a population of subjects multiple times a day, with questions relating to happiness, while laudable, hardly seems the basis of forming a thesis and recipe for as fundamental a subject as human happiness is. With only haphazardly explained descriptions of 'methods', the author quickly forms his thesis that in order to be happy, one must carefully take on increasingly challenging goals, moving up an ever-ascending ladder of skill levels, obtaining clear feedback along the way, and enhancing ones attention levels and focus on the task, away from one's self. This in a nut-shell is what the book is about. Hardly anything new. What he has done is
- condensed (from eastern thought, that are essentially much broader and more comprehensive frameworks around attaining happiness, reducing suffering and 'proper' living)
- relabeled (his condensed gist, into what is calls 'Flow' in this book)
-retrofitted (this reduced concept of Flow into a variety of activities that appeal a western lifestyle, jettisoning the said comprehensive frameworks that have existed for thousands of years in Zen, Buddhist, Yoga, Bhagwad show more Gita)
Is the book helpful? Sure. Is it worth devoting 250 some pages? No. The author on many occasions appears to boil the ocean and seems to want to solve the world's problems with his 'Flow' approach, one that is hardly new or adds new insights, and one that certainly may not fit as well across cultures or socio-economic backgrounds. To the work's credit, when seen as an interpretation of ancient wisdom, the book is a helpful one. It does successfully introduce the audience to the gist of eastern thought. Just think many chapters seemed to endlessly ramble around the same basic ideas over and over. May help readers to also try reading Patanjali's Yoga Sutras to complement this book, compare and draw your own conclusions. show less