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Summary: It provides insights and inspiration!!!!!
Review: Well, it's pretty good
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Summary: valuable insights
Review: Here are some excerpts of a review I wrote based on aprepublication copy. Varian and Shapiro (henceforth VS) argue that economics is applicable to the Information Age, even though information has characteristics that differ from those of ordinary goods. As they put it, "Even though technology advances breathlessly, the economic principles we rely on are durable. The examples may change, but the ideas will not go out of date." (preface, p. viii) "markets for information will not, and cannot, look like textbook-perfect competitive markets..." (p. 22-23) In other words, the asylum of economic analysis is still sturdy, even though it may resemble the movie "King of Hearts," in which the inmates are in charge. In this case, the inmates are phenomena that formerly were regarded as theoretical curiosities: zero marginal cost, significant complementarity, etc. Mass-market business books instead tend to focus on providing affirmation, not information. ("You can be great, too! Here is the recipe for success!"). Many authors use jargon and metaphors to try to make their ideas sound more radical and important than they really are. VS offer neither chicken soup nor cyberbabble. They provide business executives with advice that is unconventional from a traditional vantage point and yet is well-grounded in economic reasoning. As someone who finds pure intellectual curiosity sufficient motivation to read about this subject, I found "Information Rules" to be very worthwhile. The book is rich with substance, which can be conveyed only superficially in a brief review. It gave me fresh insights that helped to clarify my thinking.
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Summary: Information Rules: The Blueprint of the Internet Economy
Review: Information Rules is Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian's blueprint for success and survival in today's highly dynamic and competitive Internet economy. They posit that while technology changes, the laws of economics do not. To support such a claim, they walk us through the effects that the stable principles of economics have had on many of the technological breakthroughs of the past century (automobile, telephone, VCRs, CDs, the Web, etc.). They stress that much can be learned from success stories as well as failures from the past. The first few chapters discuss targeting, versioning, price differentiation, etc. The middle chapters focus on lock-in and how to recognize and manage it. The later chapters are dedicated to standards and the standardization process including all the legalities involved. While book is very business oriented and targeting to players in the information economy, it also speaks to a larger audience in no nonsense terms. This point is illustrated with the fact that Shapiro and Varian discuss lock-in from both an information producer and consumer perspective. The real world examples and case studies, which range from the government's antitrust case against Microsoft to Microsoft and Netscape's browser battle to digital phones, Iomega's Zip drives and PDAs, serve to disambiguate and complement the theoretic commentary. Thus, instead of merely discussing the dry laws of economics, they complement such theories with sound and practical historical examples. In addition, supply and demand style graphs, tables, highlighted annotations, and end-of-chapter lesson summary lists, do an excellent job of stressing important concepts. This is not one of those block digram business books! Being a computer science student studying recommender systems and personalization, Shapiro and Varian were able to maintain my attention by presenting a coherent survey of the landscape of new and innovative technology as well as their issues, controversies, and evolving standards. Thus, the most striking contribution this book made to me was an introduction to important economic principals via examples that were close to home. I learned about product and price differentiation, lock-in, positive and negative feedback and network externalities as well as what each mean to the information world. The book is a quick and enjoyable read. Shapiro and Varian's recommendations are grounded in history and each of their track records in this field speaks for itself. Currently they are both tenured professors at UC Berkeley. By the end of the book, their message is clear. They painted and instilled a picture in my mind of what technical, governmental, and economic issues players in the information economy must face. [...]Enjoy!
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Summary: Need a Table of Contents?
Review: This is an excellent book, but the Table of Contents is lousy. For those of us who live and breath this stuff and use the book as a reference, you can print out a detailed Table of Contents at their website.
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