{On April 5, 2013, we will celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the First Friday Book Synopsis, and begin our 16th year. During March, I will post a blog post per day remembering key insights from some of the books I have presented over the 15 years of the First Friday Book Synopsis. We have met every first Friday of every month since April, 1998 (except for a couple of weather –related cancellations). These posts will focus only on books I have presented. My colleague, Karl Krayer, also presented his synopses of business books at each of these gatherings. I am going in chronological order, from April, 1998, forward. The fastest way to check on these posts will be at Randy’s blog entries — though there will be some additional blog posts interspersed among these 30.}
Post #5 of 30
——————–
Synopsis presented January, 2000
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton, 1999).
“For all I knew, Jim Clark would be remembered chiefly as the guy who created Netscape and triggered the internet boom, which in turn triggered one of the most astonishing grabfests in the history of capitalism….he came from nothing, grew up poor, dropped out of high school, and made himself three or four billion dollars.”
These are almost the first words in Michael Lewis’ The New New Thing. I have since read, and presented, other books by Michael Lewis: The Big Short, Boomerang. Mr. Lewis is a terrific storyteller – maybe the best storyteller I have ever read.
(Although, as I think back through my favorite nonfiction writers, they all have that ability: David Halberstam, Malcolm Gladwell, newcomer Charles Duhigg. It is in the stories that the truths and transferable principles come to life).
In the preface to this book, Michael Lewis wrote:
“In the second part of the 1990s Silicon Valley had the same center-of-the-universe feel to it that Wall Street had in the mid-1980s. There was a reason for this: it was the source of a great deal of change.”
The title became part of the vocabulary of the era – “the new new thing.’’ And “the new new thing” is still going on, being watched for, and happening, almost daily.
But in 1999, when this book came out, my dial up speed was still pretty slow, and I suspect I was using Netscape as my browser. (Netscape is now in the dustbin of history, though Jim Clark still has his billions). And I’m not sure that any of us could have believed what tools would come through this new new thing called the internet.
For example, as I have reported in earlier posts, I lost my notes from this book long ago (my failure). The excerpts quoted above are excerpts I found through the “first pages” on Amazon, and even more from the “sample pages” on my Kindle app on my iPad. In 1999, I assume no first pages were available on-line (if so, I had not yet learned to access them), and the Kindle itself made its debut in 2007.
Here’s some more from the preface (I’ve added emphasis a time or two):
A certain type of person who has recently made it big in Silicon Valley could have made it big at no other time in history. He made it big because he was suited to this particular historical moment. He was built to work on the frontier of economic life when the frontier was once again up for grabs. He was designed for rapid social and technological change. He was the starter of new things.
… There’s no good word for what he does.
The new new thing is a notion that is poised to be taken seriously in the marketplace. It’s the idea that is a tiny push away from general acceptance and, when it gets that push, will change the world.The searcher for the new new thing conforms to no well-established idea of what people should do for a living. He gropes.
He needs to keep on groping.
I knew I was trying to describe a process.
So far, in these remembrances of these books, I have avoided writing this. I’m about to write it. Here it is:
Read this book.
This book, like no other, will give you an “emotional experience history” of the wonder of Silicon Valley that changed every thing about the way we work, and interact, and think…
I’m glad I have read all of the books I have read over the last 15 years. (ok – all but one. No, I won’t tell you which one). But this one sort of settled down into me in a way that I had almost forgotten. The new new thing is what I look for in my reading, and what I watch for almost daily. Michael Lewis taught me the power of that “new new thing” idea.
Here is what I remember about this book. It is a compelling telling of a big story with big, full details (that’s how Michael Lewis writes), and it taught me that whatever else is true, this is especially true: we now live in a time, unlike other times in human history, when there will always be a new new thing arriving, suddenly, unexpectedly, ready to disrupt the world — including our world, including my world — again.
First Friday Book Synopsis 