Welcome to Cambridge! – The MPhil in Technology Policy

Welcome to Cambridge! It may well be autumn, but a good place to start the first blog post is with the summer reading list. Every year we have an excellent discussion when students first arrive in Cambridge, but I have always thought it a bit of a shame that we don’t do more with the insights that students will have gained from the readings. The reading list, though updated on an annual basis, has not truly been a living document that incorporates the feedback from students past and present and so this is one small effort to use our blog to correct that and improve the way we engage and develop our course materials.

As a goal for your first week in Cambridge, please try to grab a few moment to add your own comments or to review at least a book or two that you found especially useful, challenging, and/or insightful (or maybe you have found some dull, frustrating or even wrong!). I have tried not to influence your views in the first place, but must admit that some of the readings are not always there because I agree with every word on every page or even with the thesis being put forward, but because they challenge the reader and offer an opportunity to reflect, revisit or change views on a new or old subject. Many of you will have come across readings that you feel particularly relevant or that should have been on the list. If so, please feel free to add some details at the end.

Summer reading list 2013 for the MPhil in Technology Policy

The list is intended to be somewhat intimidating. One of the main goals of this year is to learn to process a huge of information quickly. There is no priority offered and books are simply listed alphabetical by title. We hope that at least two or three of these books might attract your interest and that you will be able to read them before coming to Cambridge. If you can read more, so much the better. Several of the books listed are third party recommendations, for which we are most grateful. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, they are meant to offer a taster of some of the issues that we will discuss over the course of the next year and reflect the diversity of the challenging topics that you will confront over the year. We do not endorse every book but feel that even where we disagree, the arguments are important and worthy of consideration. Some are classics and others more recent offerings that address the latest technologies and controversies. The list includes some books that are science for policy or policy for science, others that are industrial policy or management of technology and still others take an even broader sweep through history and politics drawing on disciplines from psychology to economics. The authors include economists (e.g., Hirschman and Baumol), lawyers (Sunstein and Posner), historians (Darwin and Landes), journalists (Goldacre and Marsh), Cambridge colleagues (Taylor and Coates) and even a few scientists and engineers (Dawkins and Rees) as well as some modern and ancient classics (Kuhn, Snow, Sun Tzu). As a rule they are well written (not necessarily the norm for technology policy and management books) and a few even provide some useful guidance on how to write (which will come in handy, since by the time you graduate you will submit coursework or reports totalling some 50,000 words by the count of one alum!). We shall discuss the summer readings during one of our first meetings together in early October.

Title	Author (s)	Publisher	Edition	ISB No.	DMR Comments/Intro
Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Truth and Horror of Science	Richard Holmes	HarperPress	2008	978-0-0071-4952-0	Written for a generalist audience, a wonderfully crafted study of the advent of science during the Enlightenment by examining the stories of prominent individuals
After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire	John Darwin	Penguin	2008	978-0-1410-1022-9	Rich, entertaining and deeply illuminating review of the broad sweep of empire since Tamerlane in 1400. A truly global (i.e., non-Eurocentric) approach to world history.
Bad Science	Ben Goldacre	Harper Perennial	2009	978-0-0072-8487-0	An entertaining and sometimes damning review of current trends and fads in science and pseudo-science, especially how they are reported in the media
Beyond Spinoff	J Alic, L Branscomb, H Brooks, A Carter, and G Epstein	Harvard Business School Press	1992	0-87584-318-2	Dating from the end of the cold war this book discusses thinking around dual use technologies and the inter-relationship of defence procurement and civil innovation.
Blink	Malcolm Gladwell	Little, Brown	2005	0-31617-232-4	By the author of Tipping Point looks into the role of rapid cognition or intuition when faced with complicated problems
Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience	Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld	Basic Books	2013	978-0465018772	A welcome challenge to the newfound infatuation with neuroscience. The problem, as they see it, is not the science but dubious applications.
Catastrophe: Risk And Response	Richard Posner	Oxford University Press	2004	0-1951-7813-0	A remarkable and entertaining tour of a challenging issue written by the prolific judge and law professor.
Clocks and Culture	Carlo M Cipolla	W W Norton	1978	0-393-00866-5	A fascinating little book examining historically one particular technological innovation the clock. The inter-relationship of technology and culture is interesting and historically important
Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom	Rebecca MacKinnon	Basic Books	2012	978-0465024421	Before the latest wave of controversies, MacKinnon tackles questions of what rights we have in public and private spheres and how they are infringed. She is particularly good on China, offers a refreshingly global take on these issues.
Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy: Markets, Speculation and the State	Wlliam H Janeway	Cambridge University Press	2012	978-1107031258	In spite or perhaps because Janeway is one of the leaders of the field of venture capital (longtime Warburg Pincus) this work extends far beyond VC and is a thoughtful historically and economically-rich account by one of our own
Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century	G. Pascal Zachary	MIT Press	1999	0-262-74022-2	Compelling biography on the most important figure in post-WWII American science policy
Exit, Voice and Loyalty	Albert O. Hirschman	Harvard University Press	1970	0-674-27660-4	A classic on ethics issues at work with wide application. Reading anything by Albert Hirschman is time well spent.
Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work	Dennis Meredith	OUP USA	2010	0-199-73205-1	How to convey complicated ideas, data and technologies. Aimed at working scientists, Meredith offers a wide range of avenues by which science and technology can be explained to the public and how to do so well.
The Free-Market Innovation Machine: Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism	William J. Baumol	Princeton University Press	2003	978-0-6910-9615-5	Unlike many other economists, Baumol, one of the leading economists of our time, places innovation at the core of understanding the success of markets and the drivers of growth.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything	Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner	Penguin Books	2006	0-141-01901-8	Best seller that applies statistical methods and economic reasoning to non-traditional policy problems. See also: www.freakonomics.com
Geek Manifesto	Mark Henderson	Bantam Books	2012	978-0593068236	A call for more evidence-based policy making, more science in policy and taking the knowledge economy seriously by the former Science Editor of The Times
Global Crises, Global Solutions	Bjorn Lomborg	Cambridge University Press	2004	0-52-160614-4	Outcome of 2004 Copenhagen Consensus. Eight economists ranked proposals for spending $50 billion to address ten global problems
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages	Alex Wright	Joseph Henry Press	2008	0-30-910238-3	Examines how humans have collected, organised and shared information long before the advent of modern communications.
Guns, Germs and Steel	Jared Diamond	Vintage	1997	0-09-930278-0	Technology and its role in dividing mankind
How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing	Paul J. Silvia	American Psychological Association	2007	1-59-1477-433	Although the author is an academic psychologist and I do not think that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to writing, there are some valuable suggestions on time management and overcoming potential blocks.
Inside the Black Box	Nathan Rosenberg	Cambridge University Press	1995	0-521-27367-6	A serious and influential examination of the multi-faceted relationship between science, technology and economic growth.
How to be a Minister	Gerald Kaufman	Faber and Faber	1997	0-571-19080-4	This used to be almost a textbook for incoming British government ministers. Many interesting insights into the British public policy system. Now dated but still recommended. Usually available second hand from Amazon.co.uk. It is also a print on demand title from Langton Green Books.
Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge	Cass Sunstein	Oxford University Press	2006	0-195-18928-0	To quote Lawrence Lessig “This extraordinary work synthesizes the latest in how we know map[s] more compellingly than any other book the promise and risk of the information society.
Knowledge & Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery	David Warsh	W.W. Norton	2008	0-393-32988-7	An enjoyable history of economic thought from Adam Smith to Paul Romer.
Laws of Fear : Beyond the Precautionary Principle (The Seeley Lectures)	Cass Sunstein	Cambridge University Press	2005	0-52-161-512-7	A sceptical view of the precautionary principle by a leading US thinker on law and regulation who is now a key figure in the Obama Administration.
No Logo	Naomi Klein	Flamingo	2001	0-00-653040-0	Naomi Kleins polemic against the modern world of corporate marketing
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness	Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein	Penguin	2009	0-1410-4001-7	The concept of nudge became so fashionable so quickly in 2010 (notably in Whitehall and with the new Coalition government) that the backlash has already begun. Still, Nudge offers some important insights into influencing decision-making, particularly as government powers are increasingly circumscribed in many countries
Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing	Richard Dawkins	Oxford University Press	2009	0-1992-1681-9	A wonderful compendium of science writing, from J.B.S Haldane and C.P. Snow to Martin Rees and Steven Pinker. Edited by our most famous atheist and a leading scientist. Pay as much to the elegance of the prose as to the content.
Pasteurs Quadrant	Donald E Stokes	Brookings Institution Press	1997	0-8157-8177-6	A book built around a single interesting idea. How can national laboratories do fundamental science and yet best serve the national interest?
Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates	Ross Guberman	OUP USA	2011	0-1953-9487-9	A useful set of tips on how to improve your writing. Written for lawyers, but offers many useful trips on how to write clearly, succinctly and effectively. In spite of the fact that the examples are all American and legal, it is offers some excellent lessons.
Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, Revised Edition	Deborah Stone	W W Norton	2002	0-393-97625-4	A key text for TP1. Political decision making presents generalisable considerations, although it is undeniably an American perspective.
Privatization and financial collapse in the nuclear industry – the origins and causes of the British Energy crisis of 2002.	Simon Taylor	Routledge	2007	978-0415431750	Few academics or analysts would be better placed than Simon to examine how government decisions, corporate strategy and finance collided and led to the collapse of British Energy.
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves	Matt Ridley	Harper	2011	978-0007267125	Matt Ridley (Viscount Ridley) is nothing if not controversial. His views are less unusual in America (including both his libertarianism and his climate scepticism) but his belief in both technical and human progress is worth thought.
Rescuing Prometheus	Thomas P Hughes	Vintage Books	1998	0-679-73938-6	A real world insight into engineering systems four massive projects that changed the world.
Our Final Century	Martin Rees	Heinemann	2003	0-434-00809-5	The Astronomer Royals pessimistic but thought provoking futurology.
Science and Innovation: Rethinking the Rationales for Funding and Governance.	Aldo Geuna, Ammon Salter, W. Edward Steinmueller	Edward Elgar	2003	1-84-376850-X	Edited volume looking at alternative rationales for publicly funded research
Science and Technology Advice for Congress	M Granger Morgan and JM Peha (eds)	RFF Press	2003	1-891853-74-0	A useful set of insights for TP1 that begins with the repercussions of abolishing the OTA in 1995.
Science And Technology Policy in United States: Open Systems in Action	Sylvia Kraemer	Rutgers University Press	2006	0-813538-27-0	A rare textbook on S&T policy in the US, which MIT use as a core text for their TPP intro class
Scientific Century: Securing our Future Prosperity	Royal Society	Royal Society	2010	Available at: http://royalsociety.org/The-scientific-century/	A stellar advisory board chaired by Sir Martin Taylor takes a hard look at the state of British science and engineering and the needs for the coming decades
Something New Under the Sun	Helen Gavaghan	Copernicus	1997	0-387-94914-3	The history of telecommunications satellites as strongly recommended by the Science Director of the European Space Agency
Technologies of Freedom	Ithiel de Sola Pool	Harvard University Press	1983	0-674-87233-9	Remarkable given it was written in the early 1980s, Pool describes the freedom issues of various media. It posits the need for a type of communications the internet later made possible.
The Art of War for Managers	Sun Tzu & Gerald A Michaelson	Adams Media Corporation	2001	1-58062-459-6	Modern perspectives on Sun Tzus classic military insights
The Audit of War	Correlli Barnett	Pan	1996	0-330-34790-X	A most enjoyable technological history of 20th Century Britain. A bit of a polemic, but the thesis is compelling that UK WWII propaganda became UK history after victory, and that Britain was never a 20th Century engineering powerhouse.
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google	Nicholas Carr	W.W. Norton & Co	2008	0-393-33394-9	A provocative and thoughtful book by the author of Does IT Matter? Here, Carr links the history of electrification to the growth of the internet
The Challenger Launch Decision	Diane Vaughan	Chicago University Press	1997	978-0226851761	A thorough overview of an important case study in Technology and Policy.
The Economic Laws of Scientific Research	Terence Kealey	Macmillan Press	1996	0-333-65755-1	A controversial and oft-derided book that purports to explain that if pure science were worth doing private industry would pay for it and that there is little or no role for public money in scientific research.
The Emergence of Entrepreneurship Policy	D M Hart (Ed.)	CUP	2003	0-521-82677-2	A review of national policies for economic growth from our new external examiner
The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It	Jonathan Zittrain	Yale University Press	2008	0-300-12487-2	An instant classic. As Hal Abelson of MIT argues in American Scientist: This book is a must-read for any student of technology and policy
The Great Stagnation; How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better	Tyler Cowen	Dutton (ebook)	2011	978-1-101-50225-9	An American economist who argues that we are not innovative as we think we are. A controversial hypothesis, not always supported by the data, but a good challenge to a view of innovation as an inevitable source of progress
The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics	Roger Pielke Jr	CUP	2007	0-521-69481-7	A critical analysis of the interactions between science, scientists and policy that is useful for TP1 and beyond
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk-taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust	John Coates	Fourth Estate	2012	978-0007413515	JBS finance lecturer and former Wall Street trader provides insights into how human biology is linked to bubbles and crashes. Traders are risk-prone and testosterone-driven (literally, not figuratively!) during a bull market and risk-averse in a bear market.
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses	Eric Ries	Viking	2011	978-0670921607	Ries confronts why so many startups fail and argues that the business model inherently needs to be different. He posits the need to think big, but start small. And then scale fast.
The Machine that changed the world *	James Wormack, Daniel T Jones, & Daniel Roos	Harper Perennial	1991	0-06-097417-6	A readable and entertaining examination of Toyotas revolutionary introduction of lean production.
The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalization and the End of Mass Production	Peter Marsh	Yale University Press	2012	978-0300117776	A lovely book by an FT journalist that takes a dive into the history of manufacturing and uses some illuminating technology-rich cases.
The Second Century	Matthias Holweg and F K Pil	MIT Press	2004	0-262-08332-9	The second century of the car. This book extends the research underpinning Machine That Changed the World
The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction	Nate Silver	Allen Lane/	2012	978-1846147524	The analytical hero of the 2012 US election offers a wider view of the role of experts and applied statistics.
The Social Amplification of Risk	Nick Pidgeon, Roger E. Kasperson, and Paul Slovic, eds.	CUP	2003	0-521-52044-4	Builds on the classic 1988 study by Kasperson and offers a wide range of essays on risks and public perceptions
The Social Conquest of Earth	Edward O. Wilson	W.W. Norton	2012	978-0871404138	E.O. Wilson, author of The Ants, Sociobiology, Consilience, Biophilia and Naturalist, a Pulitzer prize winner and eminent biologist tackles little things like philosophy, religion and history and how all stems from biology.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions	Thomas Kuhn	University of Chicago Press	1996	0-22-645808-3	A classic that posits science as being determined by social construction of facts using concepts such as normal science and paradigm shifts
The Two Cultures	C P Snow	Cambridge University Press	1996	0-521-45730-0	The title has almost become a cliché in modern science policy. Although inaccurate, even when written, the central theme is still sufficiently resonant to be cited today.
The Unbound Prometheus: Technical Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to Present	David S. Landes	Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition	2003	0-521-53402-X	Newer edition of a forty-year-old classic. Richly detailed study of the reverberations created by the Industrial Revolution with a particular focus on Europe.
Thinking, Fast and Slow	Daniel Kahneman	Farrar, Straus & Giroux	2011	978-1846140556	A master work summarising the many ways in which human biases and heuristics do not coincide with standard economic thinking, by the Nobel laureate and father of behavioural economics
Ubiquity	Mark Buchanan	Phoenix	2000	0-75381-297-5	Why the natural world is not as complicated as it may appear with insights into critical states and knife-edge instabilities.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation	Steven Johnson	Allen Lane	2010	978-1846140518	From across a wide range of disciplines and sectors, Johnson tries to identify some principles that underpin the generation of great ideas
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty	Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson	Profile Books	2012	978-1846684296	Although there are many books along these lines, this is one of the best recent books that brings together economics and politics and in particular focuses on the role of institutions rather than climate, geography or culture.
Yes! 50 Secrets From the Science of Persuasion	N Goldstein, S Martin and R Cialdini	Profile Books	2007	978-1846680168	A highly readable set of stories and anecdotes illustrating the power of psychology. Many of the examples relate to technology-based business.

Download the Summer 2013 reading list in Excel format (right-click and save-as) [25KB]