The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

By: Joshua Cooper Ramo  

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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

Today the very ideas that made America great imperil its future. Our plans go awry and policies fail. History's grandest war against terrorism creates more terrorists. Global capitalism, intended to improve lives, increases the gap between rich and poor. Decisions made to stem a financial crisis guarantee its worsening. Environmental strategies to protect species lead to their extinction.

The traditional physics of power has been replaced by something radically different. In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo puts forth a revelatory new model for understanding our dangerously unpredictable world. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, immunology, and the science of networks, he describes a new landscape of inherent unpredictability--and remarkable, wonderful possibility.

Read an Interview with Joshua Ramo Cooper, Author of The Age of the Unthinkable

It's an age in which constant surprise--for good or for ill--has become a fact of life and in which our old ideas about how to make the world safer and more stable are actually making it more dangerous and unstable.

It was clear to me that the models we were using to think about the world were wrong--often dangerously so. And I saw that many people who wanted to disrupt the systems we rely on--people as different as terrorists and hedge fund managers--had the upper hand when it came to understanding the nature of our age. I wanted to write a book that would help other people understand what was happening so we could manage what promises to be a very unstable period.

These spots are all over the globe. But if I had to name a few of particular relevance I would list them as:

Gaza and Lebanon. Hamas and Hizb'allah not only resist Israeli attack but seem to get stronger and much shrewder the harder they are attacked.

Wall Street, USA. Complex financial products designed to manage risk in fact accelerate the spread of unimagined danger through the financial system.

Kyoto, Japan. A radical inventor named Shigeru Miyamoto remade the global video game business overnight by mixing up two things--video games and accelerometer chips from car airbags--into a new revolutionary game system called the Wii.

South Africa. The most expensive medical campaign ever to stop the spread of TB instead has led to the creation of a new, even more deadly super bug.

Russia. The end of the USSR and great economic booms didn't produce a US and democracy friendly system, as we hoped, but rather has led to an increasingly belligerent nation.

The point is that whenever you think the world is stable, it's not. Even the smallest perturbations--home mortgage collapses or computer viruses--can cause tremendous dislocations. The pile in Bak's experiment is always growing in complexity and changing. So the lesson for us is that there are no simple policies or easy solutions; the problems we face rarely end, they just change shape. So we need a revolution in our way of thinking and in the institutions we use to manage the world if we are going to keep up with such a dynamic system.

Sure they can. Google and the US government get along fine (more or less). What matters is that we all do three things: first we have to live lives that are very resilient, which means taking care of our selves, our savings, our family and our education so we can adjust to a rapidly changing world. Second, we all have to participate in a caring economy, devoting some of our life to helping others instead of relying on the government to help others for us. And finally we have to be innovative in how we live and think. We have to try to think of new ways to make a difference in the world as individuals, to help prepare our children to manage and control their own lives instead of relying on big corporations or the government to do so.

I think that basically what we are living in is a very disruptive moment. And this involves both disruption for bad ends (think 9/11) and for good (think of bio-engineering disease cures.) I'm optimistic because I basically believe more people want to disrupt for good than for bad. The challenge for us is simply to empower as many people to create, and to live as full lives as we can.

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Customer Review: 1 out of 5
Rambling nonsense - If you want to read about Hezbollah terrorists , an amateur analysis on the history of art, and various other hateful or meaningless drivel, read this book.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Change Is Not a Choice - Joshua Cooper Ramo has written the manual for harnessing the infectious energy of change to make sense of our unprecedented and unpredictable times. Whether we like it or not, we are suddenly discovering that change is not a choice - it has unavoidably become become the very center of our lives. Ramo's main argument is that we now find ourselves at the dawn of a new revolutionary era of surprise and innovation where we must all learn to act like revolutionaries or risk becoming victims of misjudgments from old ways of seeing and thinking. Leaders who continue to employ out-of-date models better suited for a world now several centuries behind us are ill-prepared for the challenges presented by rapid and surprising change. That's because, in a fast-changing world, what matters most is "often hidden in corners where the usual 'experts' in their professions don't - or can't - easily look."

In the old more predictable mechanistic world, experts applying their linear thinking could provide answers that worked. In more stable times, we could rely on heroes and stars to lead the way. Today is different. A key reality of this new revolutionary era is that its complex emergent problems are beyond the comprehension of any one person. Ramo makes the point that when society's fundamental problems evolve from being linear to nonlinear, the questions change. And when you ask different questions, you get different answers. That's why rapid and surprising change originating from a dorm room at Stanford can remake the business landscape.

Revolutions always produce winners and losers. The losers will be those who can't adapt because they remain trapped in old structures. The winners will be those who embrace new technologies that can accomplish what was previously unthinkable. If you are a leader who wants to be among the winners, this book shows you how to manage differently to thrive in the Age of the Unthinkable.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Warning: This book will make you think - I'm sitting in a bar and one of the four TVs on the wall in front of me is showing the Glen Beck program. There's no sound, but enough character generation for me to discern the topic of the show is three books, "The Survivors Club; The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life" by Ben Sherwood, "America's Prophet; Moses and the American Story" by Bruce Feiler, and this book. Beck is claiming that many are referring to these tomes as a trilogy. After reading all three, I fail to make the connection, but I suppose a trilogy could even be comprised of "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," and "Peyton Place." Although I enjoyed all three books discussed by Beck and the authors, "The Age of the Unthinkable" is by far my favorite of the trio. Possibly because it's basic premise is one I strongly believe: the world is too complex and out of control to be managed. Author Ramo graphically describes the situation we now face through his "sandpile" theory, which is profound in its simplicity. He presents the history that got us to this point and then offers hope for the future. Ramo goes beyond presenting the pessimistic philosophy of the current state of unpredictability and presents several compelling thoughts about how we can gain control again through unconventional thinking and fresh ideas. He offers a blueprint for the future. My wish is that the world leaders and those who wish to lead take this book to heart. But, the book is not only for leaders. It also gives individuals tasks they can perform to bring about an order to the New World. From Donkey Kong, to Budweiser, to breaking the Internet, this book is rich in thought provoking concepts and fascinating sidebars to history that brought us to this point. Not only is this book entertaining, it's important for us to understand its concepts to secure a possible future for the world around us.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Order Out of Chaos? - POWERFUL. Not a fast fiction novel. Well researched and written. (See Bio and Index at the end of the book.) Found myself rereading sentences and paragraphs to get a glimmer of the significance of what I just read. I'll read the book again and possibly again.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Rich exploration of the current world situation - Ramo brings a wealth of experiences to his analysis of our psychological mindset. I hope the current administration reads this book!

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