Rezensionen und Kommentare

Dave Eggers dystopia walks the line between already-implemented and should-be-possible doings of a company resembling the likes of Facebook, Google & Amazon. He tells the story of Mae, who newly joins the tech company and works herself more towards the inner workings of the company. Compared to a dystopian classic like 1984, her progression is mostly foreseeable and her conflicts along the way pass by mostly unchallenged. Eggers misses the chance for challenging the technological progression in a much more unsettling way. While being a nice read, his novel is a rather unsubstantial contribution to the debate of the underlying topic.

I read it as a short & light intro to learning more about cognitive biases Its quickly consumable thanks to its format: Each of the 52 chapters introduce a cognitive bias in 2-3 pages, each containing a memorable definition and many examples. Don't expect deep insights, just actionable & easy to consume advise on how to work around some of our flaws in thinking.

Dobelli, a businessman with an MBA from St. Gallen, annoyingly manages to put his social context into every example he gives. Consequently, there isn't a single chapter without an examples either taken from stock trading or presenting women stereotypically.