I gained access to this book free, via the sponsor of our non-profit's first year of operations, or I would not have bought it. It must certainly be in the library of any university or college with ambitions to educate those who will lead the next wave moving us toward Web 3.0 and Web 4.0. It is however reasonably priced and I recommend it for both library acquisition and deep reader purchase.

The publisher has been responsible about posting useful information (see inside the book, the second active link below the cover on this page) so I urge anyone asking that this work be acquired, at this price, print and attach the table of contents to their requisition.

The book is very well-organized with ample white space and excellent illustrative graphics and figures. I particularly liked the positioning of the references at the end of each chapter rather than grouped at the end.

The other books being read by our senior "working" technologist include:
A New Ecology Perspective by Sven Jergensen et al (Elsevier, not on Amazon that I can find)
Information Visualization: Beyond the Horizon
Handbook of Data Visualization (Springer Handbooks of Computational Statistics) (Springer Handbooks of Computational Statistics)

Most of what we are reading these days are research reports that are outrageously priced and really should be affordable books and also free online, but most authors are too willing to give away their intellectual property for a pittance at tis time. Personally, I am betting on humans linked with low cost information sharing and group sense-making tools, and I am NOT holding my breath for automated fusion, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or machine sense-making.


See the image I have loaded under book cover for a sense of the nuances Earth Intelligence Network is exploring.