Are We There Yet?

The Road Ahead by Bill Gates (Viking 1995. 276 pgs. )

I know; I'm not supposed to beat up a book until I'm done reading it.

But who cares. It took me ten years to finally get around to reading this book, so I'd better get started reviewing it or who knows how long this will take.

A friend of mine said Gates completely missed the role of the internet. After listening to about a quarter of the book, I do sense that he seems to envision products that will appeal to some surreal customer of a utopian playland. This consumer will wake up each morning and ask "Where do I want to go today?" I wonder, however, if anyone besides Gates himself actually ever asks this question.

Nevertheless, Gates is not a bad storyteller, and he makes some keen observations about his success in the software industry. Gates predicts that the internet will be but a forerunner for the "information highway." This "highway" which he describes seems to be more like an advanced, on-demand television service than anything else. He predicts that "the highway" will evolve from the internet about ten years from the time he is writing (1995).

So was Gates just undergoing premature hyperventilation over TiVo?

Survival of the Cheesiest

Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, M.D. (Putnam, 1998/2002. $19.95, 94 pgs.)

THERE IS ALWAYS a reason for a best-selling book being a best-selling book. Dr. Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese is no exception. His book gets on the mat with a topic that a wide audience can relate to: change, and how to deal with it.

Change, Dr. Johnson intimates through a fable, is inevitable. Our favorite feeding grounds can become barren. It is then time to move on to better pasture. This is a message that many of the baby boomer generation - now on the verge of retirement - will find especially close to home.

Of course, Gen-X and Gen-Y have seen some degree of change in their lifetime. Yet it is the baby boomer generation that has experienced change most dramatically. Gone is the work-in-same-company-until-you-retire paradigm. Gone is the time in which one can support a family with a blue collar job without a college degree. Many boomers are now finding the advent of the internet, the outsourcing of jobs overseas, and new, increasingly-complex societal problems to be painfully intrusive on the mental-framework which they inherited from the 1950's and 60's, when optimism ran wild with the rapid advances of medicine, scientific achievement, and space exploration; much of which optimism, especially that of overcoming death and aging, has proved to be thus far unfounded.

Dr. Johnson's thesis is that the baby-boomer generation must adapt if it is survive (and prosper, for that matter). They must be willing to leave there comfort zones, and explore new horizons.

This is good advice, of course. But Dr. Johnson takes it a bit too far. Not only should one consider learning new skills, but perhaps one should consider forsaking one's spouse for another. At this point Dr. Johnson is injecting not an innovation booster, but a mutation which will lead to costly and painful consequences.

His work will encourage the reader to face change with a smile, which of course is commendable. Yet Johnson misses a crucial point: we should remain firm on principles, regardless of circumstances. The wars and tragedies of the past century have confirmed the need in our world for care and respect for our fellow man. Within the realm of principle we can help secure a better tommorow, regardless of external changes. Without principle, however, man will devolve into a most fearsome, cheese-eating monster.

A New Way of Looking at Rainbows...

Our Covenant God, by Kay Arthur (WaterBrook Press, 1999, $19.95)

For anyone unfamiliar with the nature and importance of covenants in the Scriptures, this is a great place to start. In this highly-readable book, Kay Arthur explores what the covenants of the Bible mean to the New Testament (i.e. New Covenant) believers.

Some may think that covenantology is the same as covenant theology - not so. Covenant is a highly personal and relevant topic for our day. Issues such the meaning of marriage, divine grace and retribution, and the permanence of salvation are difficult - if not impossible - to understand without a knowledge of covenant. In fact, the reader could almost wish that a little more in-depth exploration of the meaning and implications of covenant was contained in this book. Nevertheless, this book serves as an enjoyable introduction to the topic.

Think you know it all? Think again.

Knowing God, by J. I. Packer (InterVarsity Press, 1973, $16.00)

J.I. Packer has talent for conveying complicated truths using stellar imagery. Getting to know God, he explains, is an experiential thing - "knowing vs. knowing about," as he puts it.

I found his commentary on the meaning of wisdom to be especially relevant. Some of us, he explains, think of wisdom as if it were some kind of comprehensive understanding of how the world works, just like someone could understand how the York railway system works
if they crack into the central switchbox. Solomon shatters this reasoning in the book of Ecclesiastes:

"Apparently the young man [the reader of Ecclesiastes] (like many since) was inclined to equate wisdom with wide knowledge and to suppose that one gains wisdom simply by assiduous book work ([Ecc.] 12:12). Clearly he took it for granted that wisdom, when he gained it, would tell him the reasons for God's various doings in the ordinary course of providence. What the preacher wants to show him is that the real basis of wisdom is a frank acknowledgement that this world's course is enigmatic..., that much of what happens is quite inexplicable to us, and that most occurrences “under the sun" bear no outward sign of a rational, moral God ordering them at all.... It is this pessimistic conclusion, says the preacher, that optimistic expectations of finding the divine purpose of everything will ultimately lead you (1:17-18)...."

This is the same conclusion to which modern science is finally coming: there is no crystal ball in nature. We can predict, but the farther out in time our predictions are, the more prone they are to error.

A scientist named Lorenz realized this fact. After creating a computer generated model of the earthly weather system, he found that very minute changes can, in the long term, produce incredibly large consequences. This phenomena is known as "the butterfly effect," after an old folk poem which declares that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can cause a horrific storm on the other side (See Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick).

We can't understand everything, yet Packer points out that this is no reason to despair. In answering the question of what wisdom is, he points to the preacher's admonition to "Fear God and keep his commandments.... Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do (9:10), and enjoy your work as you do it.... Leave to God its issues; let him measure its ultimate worth; your part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at your command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before you. This is the way of wisdom."

Packer's book is packed with insight. Granted, he does seem to waste some ink on a questionable attack on Christian symbolism and art. Nevertheless, the soul of the book is a refreshing drink for our age of many running to and fro with knowledge ever increasing.