Drive: cringing at the altar of social media
Welcome to a new genre: the book that is embarrassed it’s a book. That hates the fact it’s made of dull, dowdy old print and paper and is full of stinky old writing, that wishes more than anything it was a sleek, sexy tumblr blog or Twitter stream.
Daniel Pink’s Drive is one of 2010’s most high-profile non-fiction books. It has a timely thesis: that people are primarily motivated to work hard and achieve great things not by money, but by their own passion for what they do. It’s a good point, worth making. But I found Drive infuriating. This had nothing to do with its argument, or with Pink’s writing, which is fluent and lucid. Actually, it’s Drive that has the problem with itself, not me.
The author takes 146 pages to make his case. The remaining 80 or so pages,
Alex G
An excellent piece, thank you.
I read a massive amount online – blogs, newspapers and magazines and other similar content. It’s free, varied and available simply by clicking on a hyperlink.
However, I’ve recently rediscovered the crucial importance of books. The discipline required and the benefits realised when reading a full book are quite different – as I imagine are the challenges and rewards of writing one.
New media are a fantastic complement but can not be considered a substitute.