25. The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR - Ries, Al & Laura Ries. A fascinating book. I think the most impressive idea is that of the "implied opposite" and the harm it can wrought. Public Relations, if embraced as the preferred means of successfully launching a brand and setting a positive perspective in the consumer's mind, will eventually head the same way as advertising. That said, I endorse the idea that advertising tends to entertain rather than to sell the product to the viewer. On the other hand, name recognition can be achieved through tactical advertising (which then achieves the same end as publicity). Now, if the idea of PR is talk value and publicity, some advertisements achieve that end for some types of products and services; therefore, I believe that the end goal is to attain an acceptable level of PR whether publicity induced or advertising induced. Again, I'll say that it is a problem to assume that people absorb what the media spews wholesale. I think the media, much like advertising, are undergoing a publicity crisis. In which case PR (given its dependence on the media) has to become creative to overcome the double-edge crises: advertising has no credibility, and neither does the media, publicity's mainstay, at least among the demographic with an increasingly large proportion of disposable income.

26. The Survival Game [How Game Theory Explains the Biology of Cooperation and Competition] - Barash, David P. There is strikingly little in this book about survival or cooperation, much less the explanation of the biology of either. However, the treatment accorded competition is ample, and suits any introduction to evolutionary stability of game theoretic strategies. If one has never taken any game theory classes, this reads as an appropriate introduction. However, for someone with prior experience with the field, I was disappointed with most of the book, in fact, all of it except for "Thoughts from the Underground." I suspect I was expecting analyses focusing more on biology and surviving, knowing already, as it were, that game theory both explains competition as well as encourages cooperation in the extreme cases of strategy. The book's saving grace is the treatment given to my newfound hero, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

27. Neuromancer - William Gibson. Written in 1983, and me reading it in 2004, I'll have to say that the man's imagination is pretty close to today's reality in some aspects. There are, of course, similarities to The Matrix series, and Star Wars. Either way, Neuromancer is a decent book, although I am repulsed somewhat with the endorsement of drug use/pill popping. Given when the fictional tale was written, 20 years later it reads as though it just came out. Amazing.
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