The 500 Year Delta : What Happens After What Comes Next
Author: Jim Taylor, Watts Wacker
List Price: $14.00
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ISBN: 0887309119
Publisher: HarperBusiness (01 July, 1998)
Sales Rank: 23,825
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Q: "What's wackier than Taylor-made? A: "Not much!"
Making sense of our world, never an easy or a completed task (our pretensions regarding the latter notwithstanding!), just got substantially easier with the appearance of The 500 Year Delta. The book works on several levels, not the least of which is its utility as a survival guide to the new ways and definitions of work and relationships which await us as our separate rivers dump us into the roiling, clear-as-mud, yet nutriemt-rich waters of that Delta.
The authors' uncommon sense (e.g., that corporations will have embassies, not governmets; that governments' chief values will be to effect transfer payments and provide entertainment, etc.) hit at the very foundations of our value systems. They are, nonetheless, cogently and coherently conceived and presented. Accepting their theses will lead the reader along seemingly tortuous paths, and will require several iterations of what the literary critics used to term the "willing suspension of disbelief." Those suspensions will be frequent, and some will be of serious length. Particularly challenging will be the authors' insistence that the utility of reason has played itself out, and their consigning of hierarchies to the dustbin of history. A must read for those of us in government service (an emerging oxymoron?), but not recommended for those therein in management positions!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Interesting and insightful but overly wordy
In short the book could have been about 60% shorter. At times the hypothesis drawn are illuminating but very often the authors are spending entirely too much time to support their insights. My feeling is that anyone reading a book such as this doesn't necessarily need a whole lot of convincing as long as there is some sound rationale and telling examples to support the theories. Having just completed the book I would recommend that anyone interested in picking up the book just look at the last 15 pages to get a sense of the nature of the book where the authors make predictions regarding the next 500 months and the next 500 years.
There are however some very keen insights on the power and use of technology (connectivity), tribalism, the role of corporations and government, business and social constructs, the importance of constant education, the nature of chaos, the power of the consumer... and almost all of this is addressed from primarily a marketing perspective.
There was very little that was written that I disagreed with but I feel like the same thing could have been said in many fewer words.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Baloney
The only thing I can say after reading this book is--baloney! I've never read a more useless business book such as this. I have no doubt that the author has never worked a day in his life. Get a job! Get a life! Similar Products
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