Books the Readers Recommended
In mt previous post, The Reading List of Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, I asked for reader suggestions on new additions to the list and you responded both here and at Chicago Boyz. Here is what you offered up:
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Explaining Chaos
From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation
The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence (Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science)
Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization
Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web Application
The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Gödel, Escher, Bach. Ein Endloses Geflochtenes Band.
[ Halting State (Ace Science Fiction)
The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War
City Fights: Selected Histories of Urban Combat from World War II to Vietnam
Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work (Financial Times Prentice Hall Books.)
The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society
The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations
Order Out of Chaos
And here are mine:
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History Series)
UPDATE:
Blogfriend and cybersecurity expert Gunnar Peterson steps up with his own list.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
We need a better paperware/meatware interface that is way, way better than the Mk. 1 eyeball, our current, increasingly obsolescent technology.
This need is getting increasingly urgent. These book lists grow according to some kind of crazy, Moore’s Law-like exponential rate. Our capacity to "read" them is fixed by four billion years of evolutionary biology.
Is there any way we can have a jack installed in the back of our heads, and have these books digitized and downloaded more directly? William Gibson had something like that in one of his books.
As sentimental as I am about books as tangible objects, the tactility of the paper, the binding, the feel of them in the hand, even the smell of them — this is mere nostalgia and sensuality.
I need to get my grey data (several thousand books I already own or know I want to read) turned into white data (past my eyeballs, into my head) way faster than current means allow.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
"Is there any way we can have a jack installed in the back of our heads, and have these books digitized and downloaded more directly? "
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This sounds like a job for….Dan of tdaxp!!!!
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I recall reading speculations in this regard of "uploading" data through direct brain/computer interface but whether that would represent simple extension of memory capacity or true knowledge ( we read, we evaluate, orient and store something different than the text).
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My best efforts in grad school was speed reading at about 150 pages an hour for books in the reserve room right before class began. My recall suffered to about half of what it normally is but it sufficed for class discussion. Could not do that now ( hell, I couldn’t find two uninterrupted hours of quiet to even try to do it!)
August 8th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
[…] to me that he understands our politics, military, and social life I’ll just refer to the list Zen made. Each commentor putting forth what he feels is vital to getting a grasp on the world. Once […]
August 8th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
http://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-Culture-Anthropology-Disaster-American/dp/1930618158/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I27I7QQV13GCPI&colid=AYGK6TEY9H9L
This is the link for the other book I mentioned.
Thank you for compiling the recs into a post.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Zen: I’d have to add Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle (the book he wrote before Global Brain), and Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Zen:
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How do you ensure your paragraphs stay separated?
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I note those periods between paras you’re using nowadays. Is that how you do it?
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Experimenting here…
August 9th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Ah!
April 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Zen, have you ever experimented with whole brain mental photography for incredible reading speeds like 100,000 words per minute? Geoff.