Book Description
In tennis, the return of a serve is successful only through anticipatory mechanisms on the part of the defensive player. When playing the stock market, anticipation of supply and demand, price variations, and other factors is crucial, the very driving engine of most exchanges. Anticipation: it occurs in all spheres of life. Not least of all is the realm of creativity, the fields of art and design. (Buckminster Fuller even taught a class in anticipatory design in 1956 at MIT.) As you might have expected, this volume casts light on design problems relating to anticipatory processes. Essay by Mihai Nadin.~Foreword by Lofti A. Zadeh. Hardcover, 8.25 x 11.75 in./128 pgs / 30 color 30 BW0 duotone 0 DVD~ Item D20086 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Makes me think about my planning process.
The idea of carefully looking at anticipation makes me think about my planning processes for developing products.I am amazed at what basic things we overlook.

Ideas, images, thinking
When a book makes you to think about what you do without thinking it is a great book. Images are powerful...I was able to understand difficult concepts. The design is one of the best I ever saw. Great artist...And the text is clear. I was lucky, 3 languages availableIt helps someone who is not an English speaking person...

Intrigued and convinced
As a scientist, I am intrigued by Nadin's precise and convincing arguments in favor of "anticipation" as a characteristic of living being. Each idea is carefully phrased. Solid scientific foundation along with extraordinary images make this a book to be read and discussed for a long time. This is also a book that my friends will enjoy receiving. ... Read more

Book Description
The spectacular but unsettling reality of faster cycles ofchange, breakdown of traditional values and institutions, and manyother symptoms of technological innovation-what makes these necessaryis the subject of this thought-provoking book. All the good intentionsof educators, scholars, politicians, and policymakers will fail if theydo not recognize why literacy as a dominant framework of human activityis no longer adequate. The current dynamics of human activity iswithout precedent. It is not the result of technology, but of deeperforces of change. The answer to the failure of many seemingly eternalinstitutions-government, family, education-is not improvement in thetraditional sense, but a fundamentally new perspective. The digitalparadigm underlying the new civilization provides a basis for thisperspective. But it will be misapplied unless understood within thebroader framework of the driving forces behind human activity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

prophetic book
if you want to read a book that will continue to interest readers even after our infantile infatuation with the digital will give way to serious contributions then this is the BOOK. You read it here first. I wish someone will teach a class based on it. I would take it.

To understand our times
The digital age is very complex. We use machines of all kind and we see how science changes our lives. Everything happens so fast. It is exciting and scary. What we do not know is why all this is taking place. And here comes this book, a heavy volume, totally dedicated to suggesting the reasons for the change we are experiencing. This author is familiar with technology as he is familiar with the many fields analyzed in the book. I am not surprized that Umberto Eco is enthusiastic about this book. At first I read it on the Internet but after that I decided that I have to have this book.

The book is an epitome of thought.
The angle at which it sheds light on the current landscape of immediacy creates a rainbow of hope from the mists of the newly engulfing watershed of human solvency.

One of those few books that will change your mind.
A book that really thinks through a broad range of topics - more enlightening and much deeperthan any current books on business, technology, or education, not to mention mind, brain, movies, and food. ... Read more

Book Description
Creating Effective Advertising is a guide to using semiotics, the science of signs, to create visual advertising. It teaches effective visual communication with the persons to whom an ad is targeted. You will learn how to use signs to evoke emotion, positive response, and desire in creating the visual components of advertising. ... Read more

Book Description
Are Jews different? Why have they so influenced civilization, and why is their presence so strongly felt as we begin the twenty-first century? Why, as Mark Twain asks, have Jews had an impact on the world so out of proportion to their numbers? Seeking answers to these controversial questions, over a six-year period Mihai and Elvira Nadin distributed questionnaires, initiated telephone and Internet contacts, and otherwise interviewed thousands of Jews worldwidefrom Hollywood to Istanbul, from Bremen to Lusakaand asked quite pointedly, Does being Jewish make a difference in your life? Their respondentsdistinguished writers, scientists, artists, and politicians as well as average hard-working Jewssome old, some young; some highly observant, some completely unaffiliatedprovided answers that are variously eloquent, inspiring, poignant, and provocative: Actor Edward Asner: If we cease to function as an outsider, as a prodder, as a reminder to the world that we can be and are different, I wonder how long we can survive.  South African parliamentarian Helen Suzman:Many of the values to which I have always adhered could be closely correlated with the Jewish ethos.These values include consistency, principles, rule of law, and simple justice.  Television journalist Mike Wallace: Being Jewishfor meis a matter of some pride, for I believe Im an inheritor of a remarkable ethnic gene pool.  U. S. senator from Connecticut Joseph I. Lieberman: God gave us a purpose and a destinyto do justice and to protect, indeed to perfect, the human community  Concentration camp survivor Helen Luksenberg:We, the Jewish people, are dedicated to the well-being of anyone who is oppressed. . . . A Jew does not live only for himself.

In Jewish: Does It Make a Difference? the Nadins present over two hundred incisive responses to the vital question posed in the title of this work. These statements of belief will inspire you to ask questions about yourself that you never asked before. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An interesting document
One of the surprises of this book is that the authors had to work so hard to compile it. Most of the people they asked the questions about their Jewish identity to , did not respond. So I suppose that the ones who did are more connected to their Jewish identity. I say suppose because there are quite a few strange answers given here. Variety is wonderful in one way but this book does not give a sense very strongly of a unified Jewish people. It seems to me however that answers which are simply private and talk about what the person's Jewishness can do for them miss the whole point. The real question I believe is how the person's Jewishness relates to their service of God, the Jewish people and mankind as a whole .

Tormenting Identity Questions In A Pride-Generating Book
This book is a document, a multi-sided document. It is a testimonial book. It is a reflection-triggering book. It is a tormenting book, for at least some readers, because the authors have asked tormenting questions. Theidentity questions are bound to torment, and in this case they justifiablyand constructively do so. I was disturbed by some of the answers. It isalso a pride-generating book that will make many feel better for what theyare.

I liked the structure of the book, which in itself is a message. Theintroduction gives a sense of how difficult it was for the authors to dothis book, despite appearances--and made me curious for more details. Theopenness that guided the authors' stand in publishing diametrically opposedresponses to the same basic questions gives the authors great credit. Itwill also be "responsible" for many discussions which will"pillpul" over such starkly opposed views.

Surely, this is infact what the authors aimed at: to trigger more discussion, more thinking,about a simple, yet hard, question: "Who am I?" ... Read more

Book Description
At the pinnacle of his career, George Dimitrov, who long ago escaped to the USA, abruptly quits his well-endowed position in computer science at a research university. Neither he nor Anita, his American-born wife, can understand why quitting academia would set off a chain of events culminating in the lawsuit brought by the University against its former star professor. His intention to rediscover the fullness of life beyond the computer monitor triggers an intransigence he never expected in the free country that became his own. University administrators, acting like abandoned lovers, block his every step; politicians use his statements to fit the agenda of the day; the media concoct whatever story will sell. All this leads George to wonder what difference there is between the political complicity expected from him under the dictatorship he fled and the complicity in mediocrity now expected from him: "Our terms, or no terms at all!"The intergenerational conflict in George's family painfully parallels his attempt to escape the pressure to compromise. Each of his three teenage children is trying to become their own person. The loud voices of frustrated adolescents, experimenting in drugs and sexual promiscuity, reverberate in the deceptive atmosphere of cut-throat academics.As pressure builds, George tries a final shot in the dark: the promise of peace or successful escape lies in the drugs he finds in his daughter's room. But in the final analysis, he cannot give up—he will not take the EXIT. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Exit is a return to reality
Dreamers get easily hurt. When they wake up from their dreams they turn rather cynical. George is a dreamer who wants to understand. Many of us would like to understand computers, inept politicians, why our children hate their parents, how come the richest country in the world has so many desperate poor people. Reading this novel I felt that the author is asking the same questions. This makes the reading rewarding. The publisher deserves credit for giving us a book to enjoy and to reflect after reading it.

Enter EXIT
EXIT is a book every one should "enter." It is more than a story of a scholar and researcher's daring and dangerous escape from a communist country to find haven in America. It is a story of a free-thinking individual who is not blind to injustice in no matter what type of society. It is a story of a father struggling to keep his family together, to guide his teen-age children, to maintain his integrity while carrying on significant research at a major university. (The shenanigans of academia described would be comical if they were not true-to life.)It is a story of a loving wife who stands by and supports her husband in times of uncertainty, trials and tribulations.It is a story of courage and conviction, of acceptance and rejection, of success and failure, of love and sorrow.It is a story whose underlying statement reminds us of the importance of love, risk, family, belief, commitment and honesty.It is a story of a contemporary "man for all seasons."

Offspring, drugs, sex, Nobel prize...How human are you?
A novel that hurts if you care for how painful growing up can be. A novel that makes us aware of what it means to start life again. After reading this novel (which I discovered by accident), I read some of the author's scientific work. This is a writer whose time is yet to come. I will guard my copies of his books as I guard my few valuables (some are first edition books!). I don't know if this novel is biographical, but I know that Nadin probes many of our prejudices. A computer scientist who is challenging his colleagues is something we are not used to. This makes the main character so much more interesting. Great reading, makes you think. ... Read more