Some reading suggestions for Mark Zuckerberg and other moguls
In the past, Zuckerberg used this forum to announce a goal of learning Mandarin, and having accountability seemed to help — he debuted the (shaky but comprehensible) results in October in Beijing, stunning a group of Chinese students by hosting a 30-minute Q&A in their language.
[...] Zuckerberg’s 2015 goal seems to demand some public response as well.
Among book fans, there were quite a few snarky reactions to Zuckerberg’s post, which said in part: Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today.
Perhaps he needs to look up the definition of the word “patronizing” as well, but still — this is good news.
Reading needs as many popular champions as it can find in this depressingly illiterate country, where nearly 1 in 4 American adults admits to not reading a single book per year.
The publishing industry, which was always run more like a roulette game than a viable business, has been on the ropes from actual market forces.
No offense to Naím, who just wants to earn another round of lucrative speaking engagements and ensure his spot at the Davos conference, but this is exactly the sort of futurist claptrap that powerful moguls like Zuckerberg need to avoid if they want to make products that speak to the rest of us, toiling down here in the salt mines where the hierarchies of power haven’t shifted at all.
“In literary fiction, the incompleteness of the characters turns your mind to trying to understand the minds of others,” said psychologist David Comer Kidd, co-author of an exhaustive study on this subject in Science in 2013.
[...] I’d love to see a number of other local moguls join Zuckerberg’s book club, just so that we can offer them reading suggestions.