"This is a very important book for this particular time."
Benjamin C. Bradlee, Former Editor, The Washington Post
"If the Information Age ever had a wakeup call it is this. Deadly Decisions does for information what An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change, what Silent Spring did for the environment. It points out the perils as well as the promise of betting our lives on information, at a time when we have no other choice. Brilliant, terrifying, true."
Leland Schwartz, Editor and Publisher, States News Service
"Christopher Burns has searched through the details of a dozen disasters in recent years to find an alarming and consistent pattern of false knowledge and failed decisions, explaining in the process how many of these are the natural result of the brain’s biology, individual behavior, and group decision-making. Deadly Decisions is a horrifying tale of error, delusion, and deceit. Catastrophes that were 'no one’s fault' turn out to have been everyone’s fault. But then he shows how we can overcome this danger through critical thinking, information literacy, and a greater commitment to the truth. If your company’s success, your security, or your life are riding on someone else’s information skills, urge them to read this book."
Paul Zurkowski, Founder and Former President of the Information Industry Association
A month before its catastrophic failure, Wall Street analysts rated Enron a “buy.” In 2001, at the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense, a squabbling bureaucracy buried warnings of a looming terrorist attack. And Congress and the country were talked into war against a collapsing dictatorship on the basis of detailed and compelling intelligence, which turned out to be false. How could all of the experts be so wrong?
In Deadly Decisions, Christopher Burns, one of the country’s leading experts on modern information management, searches the biology of the brain, the behavior of groups, and the structure of organizations for practical answers to the problem of “virtual truth”—elaborate constructs of internally consistent evidence and assumptions that purport to describe reality, but can often be dead wrong!
- How can we avoid wishful thinking, information overload, uncertainty absorption, and an unintentional twisting of the facts?
- Why are startup groups agile and innovative while large organizations lumber along, bogged down in false knowledge?
- How can societies rediscover the power of truthful communication?
Burns suggests that, as individuals, we must learn to be skeptical of our own sly and beguiling minds. As members of a group, we need to be more wary of the omissions, inventions, and distortions that come all too naturally to all of us. And as consumers of information we have to hold professionals, politicians, and the media more accountable.
As
Deadly Decisions makes clear, only through a deeper understanding of how individuals, groups, and society process information can we succeed in those extraordinary endeavors that are the promise of the Information Age.
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 360
ISBN: 978-1-59102-660-0
Shipping Weight: 1.343lbs
Author Bio:
Christopher Burns (Ipswich, MA) has been a news executive and an independent consultant to government and the private sector for thirty years, advising clients on emerging information management technologies and the evolution of the information economy. His previous positions include vice president of the Washington Post Company; senior vice president of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune; executive editor of UPI; and president of Christopher Burns, Inc.
