Book Review: The Innovators

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the first book by Walter Isaacson that I am reading. I did not read Isaacson's more famous biography of Steve Jobs because I am not really a fan of Steve Jobs. I won't invest my time to read book length biographies of arrogant bullies, no matter how brilliant they may be.

The book title is a bit misleading. Innovation can come from many fields of expertise. For example, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable type in printing is an innovation. Henry Ford's idea of the assembly line is an innovation on how to produce things. The invention of the sea container for transporting goods is an innovation in the area of logistics. But this book isn't about these innovators from all fields of industry. Instead, it is laser focused on only innovators in the digital computing industry.

Despite my gripe with the title, this book is still an excellent history book on important personalities in the field of computing. In fact, it is the only book that I have read that fleshes out the story of Ada Lovelace in great detail. I would highly recommend this book on just the story of Ada Lovelace alone.

Also, this is the first book that I have read that describes and emphasize about the significant contributions and importance of women in the field of software programming. Many other history books cover the history of computing machines like ENIAC or Turing's ENGIMA. Also, these other books emphasized on the hardware creators, which tends to be guys. But the machines need to be programmed, and the creators of the programming languages were usually given short shrift. Isaacson's book fills the narrative gap created by these male-bias omissions, and showed how critical women were to the development of software.

Isaacson's book also covers controversial areas such as the stories of people who lost in the courts of law. History is filled with such examples, such as Thomas Edison being credited as the guy who gave the world electricity, when more credit should have been given to Nikola Tesla. There were many people who independently came up with ideas for making the computer or the integrated circuit, but history will always assign credit to a sole person. Isaacson's book also tells the stories of the other inventors who helped contribute to the field, but are forgotten today as they are not credited at all in the current history books.

A big problem with a history book about computing is that new things are happening every day in the world of Information Technology. Thanks to the rapid pace of innovation in IT, we are living and breathing history, and new advances cannot be covered adequately in books such as this one. Every day, new products that were practically the stuff of science fiction years ago are now becoming reality. Cashless payments, driverless vehicles, personal robots with powerful artificial intelligence; these will likely transform human society in years to come. And then, this book will need to be updated to include the pioneers of these nascent technologies today that may become commonplace products in the next few years.


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Book Review: The Atheist Muslim

The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason by Ali A. Rizvi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is always interesting to read the narratives of ex-Muslims because of the dangers they put themselves in by openly declaring their leaving Islam. In a religion where the punishment for apostasy is death, people who no longer believe must remain silent to stay alive.

Ali Rizvi book shares the light that despite the danger, enlightenment philosophy is also pervasive in Islamic countries. As in "Christian" countries where the number of non-believers are growing, the same too is happening in Islamic ones.

The extremely violent and barbaric practices of ISIS and al-Qaeda should have turn the stomach of good moral people everywhere. However, Islamic apologists and masters of sophistry have somehow made moderate Muslims accept the "less" extreme forms of Islamic beliefs, which includes:

- women are inferior to men
- non-heterosexuals are inferior to heterosexuals
- non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims
- all other religions are inferior to Islam

Unfortunately, when these "less" extreme ideas are bought in by the moderates, it takes only a tiny push for these moderates to take one more step to extremism, which basically is:

- Islam require "true" Muslims to enforce their beliefs on everyone else for the sake of Islam

Atheism books written by ex-Muslims can better counter the pro-Islam arguments offered by the imams, the clerics, and the apologists. When Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens writes about Islam, the clerics can often use the excuse that outsiders do not understand Islam and are in no position to debate them. The clerics cannot offer the same flimsy excuse when debating ex-Muslims. Ali Rizvi's book provides the critical counter-points from one who is well versed with the core texts of the Islamic tradition.

It is very important that more moderate Muslims be encouraged to "tame" the bigotry and violent teachings of Islam. In Western societies, governments no longer follow the extreme teachings of the Old Testament, thanks to the Age of Enlightenment. Islam sorely needs a similar awakening in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, Ali Rizvi's book can probably be only published and sold in non-Islamic societies. His book will probably be banned in Muslim countries, and can only be distributed clandestinely.

Recently, even the governments of moderate countries like Malaysia and Indonesia appear to be swaying dangerously towards Islamic extremism. Because the Muslim voters are taught to believe in the superiority of Islam over everything, politicians need to bolster their Islamic credentials to win the Muslim voter ("whoever is more Islamic is the superior person"). This is very bad state of affairs because many Islamic practices are more harsh, more brutal, and more barbaric, and cannot be in any sense superior to non-Islamic practices. However, without the appropriate counter points, many of these moderate Muslims are not learning to be more critical of the dubious arguments offered by the clerics. Hopefully, more alternative voices will come out and make a stand, and slow and halt the perpetuation of bad ideas under the name of Islam.


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Book Review: The Fairchild Singapore Plant

The Fairchild Singapore Plant by Liu Fook Thim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very well written narrative of the Fairchild Singapore story. It is a unique Singaporean book, as there are almost zero books published in Singapore that goes into such amazing detail about the company's history, the factory, the products, and the people of this multinational corporation in the electronics industry.

The original raison d'etre for the book was to compile a collection of stories and anecdotes told to Liu by past Fairchild Singapore employees. However, over the 4 years that the book has been in gestation, Liu shaped and sharpened the text of the book to evolve it into an engrossing work that covers overlapping categories such as a history book, a management book, a coming-of-age biography, and most importantly, a Singapore book. In this last category, there is absolutely no other Singapore book like Liu's work at the moment.

Liu's writing style is extremely readable, and he has structured the book in a very elegant way to allow him to ingeniously weave the employee's stories into the various chapters of the book. One criticism I would levy is that the book lacks a timeline chart that puts all the key historical events in an easy to read visual. Although Liu is an engineer by training, the presentation in this book is very text based, and lacks almost any tables or charts that are practically the metier of engineering writing. But despite their absence (or perhaps because of their absence), this book makes for a very engaging read.

At first, I thought that the book would only be of interest to ex-Fairchild Singapore employees. However, after completing it, I can state emphatically that this is absolutely not so. The story that is told will be intriguing to anyone who is interested about the electronics industry, or working in a large corporation, or human stories about Singaporeans, or Singapore-history buffs. Ex-Fairchild employees will obviously get more of a bump, seeing that it is their story that is being told. But if you are a reader who falls into any of the 4 categories I mentioned, you will not be disappointed by this book. It is interesting, informational, and surprisingly, touching.

(Disclaimer: I am an ex-Fairchild Singapore employee).


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Pretty Island - A Singapore song by Mary Tan

While reminiscing about my old primary school song (see previous post), I suddenly thought about another song from my childhood that seems to have been lost in the internet age.

For this year's special SG50 National Day celebrations, a slew of previous NDP songs were played. A compendium of these "Singapore" songs can be found in this Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Singaporean_patriotic_songs

However, missing from this list is a song called "Pretty Island" by a Mary Tan. Back in the 1970s, there was a time when RTS (Radio Television Singapore) played the music video of this song (which was also sung by its composer) so frequently on TV that the song was burnt into my brain cells. But that is okay because I really like this song. It is short. It is sweet.  It is simple to sing-along. It is in every way the quintessential "Singapore" song.

But yet, this old music video cannot be found on Youtube. Doing a Google search for the music video or its lyrics returns nothing, although Google led to me to some interesting old newspaper articles from the National Library archives which mention that Mary Tan won
the first prize of $2000 back in 1975 for "Pretty Island" in a national song writing competition).

Is there a reason why a beautiful song like "Pretty Island" did not make it to the nostalgic list of Singapore songs by the NDP organisers? Was there a copyright issue? Or has the song been deemed too cheesy or outdated and has thus lost favour with the "powers that be"?

Hopefully, some one will put up the old "Pretty Island" music video on the internet in future. That would be a truly nostalgic treat. In the meantime, I have jot down from memory what I think are the lyrics of this beautiful song so that it can be indexed by Google in case some one else wants to search for them too:


Pretty Island (composed by Mary Tan)

I know of a pretty island named Singapore

I know of the people who live on her shore
They work together with unity
They live together in harmony
To bring progress and prosperity here

I love this pretty island called Singapore
I'm one of the people who live on her shore
We work together with unity
We live together in harmony
To bring progress and prosperity here

I love my pretty island called Singapore
I'm one of the people who live on her shore
As we live side by side
Each other help and guide
And with renewed confidence
We love you moreWe can each other depend upon.


The words above are probably wrong. Please feedback if you know where the correct lyrics can be found. 

Balestier Hill West Primary School - School Song

On Thursday evening (Hari Raya Haji), I suddenly developed a nostalgic itch to find the lyrics of the school song of my primary school - Balestier Hill West Primary School - which I attended from 1970 to 1975. Like many other old Singapore primary schools, Balestier Hill West Primary no longer exists. Over the past 20 to 30 years, many of these schools have been closed or merged with/into others because of the lack of students (due to Singapore's declining population / birth rate). Unfortunately, my Google searches were in vain. I simply could not find any internet article or post containing the lyrics of the school song. In fact, searches for general articles about Balestier Hill West Primary were just as fruitless, although there is this very nice photo from the National Archives of Singapore:

http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/photographs/record-details/29f1f046-1162-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad


I have decided to jot down what I think were the lyrics of my old school song so that it can be indexed by Google. In case any alumni of Balestier Hill West Primary were to suddenly develop the same itch to find the lyrics of the old school song in future, they can use this post as a start:

Come, let us let's all gather here today,
Ready to study, work and play,
Faithful, true, giving of our best
To Balestier Hill School West.


Our school so dear,
Ever faithful loyal to you , I'll we'll remain.
Our alma mater Her motto we'll revere,
To persevere and progress,
We'll try, try, again.


Unfortunately, as all these words were drawn from my memory, I cannot attest to the correctness of the lyrics. Please correct me if you spot any mistakes.