Eva
Decent collection of essays covering different perspectives on the sublime in science and art. From historical overviews, to the ‘prettiness' of Hubble's images needed to grab the general public, to arguments why the notion of the sublime should be retired, to David Bohm's quantum romanticism, and parallels between the sublime and the uncanny in automatons. Not all of them are read-worthy, but some of them i might go back to in the future.
Dunne's dissertation, advocating industrial designers to not get lost in making products as user-friendly as possible, but to borrow from art and have objects be surreal, mysterious, un-obvious, confusing and controversial in their design and user-experience. To communicate critical messages, inspire and provoke further discourse on these objects that invade so much of our everyday life. Dunne's focus are electronic objects and his quest is to communicate their invisible reality, of being far-reaching overlapping electromagnetic-fields instead of just simple discrete matter. Great great book with tons of inspiration and ideas.
As quotes to Walden seem to pop up everywhere nowadays I thought it's time to see what Thoreau's naturalism and transcendentalism is all about. And the book didn't disappoint, especially while being on a solitude-embracing holiday on the Atlantic coast of Canada. Though, I'd definitely was more a fan of his empirical and beautiful descriptions of nature than his preaching on how to better all of society by following his ways. I enjoyed the lyrical playful stories of heroic ant battles and chatty squirrels living underneath his floorboards and loved his meticulous descriptions of his meticulous measurement-taking of the frozen-over Walden pond. The book makes you want to know the birds by their call, and the trees by their color.
Even though we are all composites of many personalities, studies say about a third (even 30-50%) of us are introverts. And this subgroup has continuously been losing their foothold in this (western) world that about 100 years ago started to move from a culture appreciating character to a culture appreciating personality. Cain's book chronicles this cultural change and its repercussions, dissects what defines introversion and extroversion (most important: introvert does not equal shy), presents us with introverts struggling and with introverts succeeding in this world favoring the loud, the chatty, the spontaneous.
The book is clearly written pro-introverts and therefore has a very soothing characters for those of us falling into this category. I would define it as a pop-science comfort read, trying to heal some wounds and telling you it's okay to be quiet and to not want to be the life of the party.
Hesse paints the picture of an utopian society in which an intellectual order has isolated themselves from regular life and dedicates themselves to a life of the mind. They are scholars and monks, they don't create, but research, retell and over-analyse subjects like math, music, philosophy. Their most precious tool is the glass bead game, the game the novel is titled after, yet whose rules are never truly explained. It is a game of association, of finding the similarities between different instances of beauty and order in life.
The first third of the book introduces you to its world and I truly got pulled in. The nature of the game is obviously quite fascinating (similar to all that can be read into games like chess and go). But then, the story slows down, and the protagonist's search for his true spirital and worldly destiny becomes overly preachy and parable-like. Like the scholars in the fictional Castalia that over-intellectualize - and probably spend their lives writing thousand-page reports transcribing other people's not-that-important conversations - the book becomes life-less and lengthy.
Parts of it also made me question Hesse stance on women. Era 1940ies. (Might just be a landmine I am not aware of). His book is practically devoid of women, in some way you could look at his utopian Castalia as an utopian brain-only androgynous society. But then he has one two women pop up in the end, very clearly representing love, lust, hate and war, and that theory doesn't sit well anymore...
Biographies of scientists with the right dose of scientific explanations - might just be my favorite sort of literature. Faraday and Maxwell are the giants, and both are highly likeable characters, and so inspiring with their never-ending energy and dedication to pursuing their quest of discovering and understanding electromagnetism.
Frenkel believes in the unawakened power of pure maths, being part of Penrose's triangle made up of the physical world, the mental world and the Platonic world of math. They are separate but intertwined, and while we appreciate the significance of the physical and mental world, we are still ignorant of the power of mathematics. He envisions that once we “awake to this hidden reality” our society will experience a shift on the order of the Industrial Revolution.
His book is his way of pulling us over onto his side, by telling his personal story (struggling Russia's discriminating education system) and by explaining his research area. While I had to give up on truly understanding the math sections about halfway into the book (Riemann surfaces, sheafs, Galois groups ..) following his life story was very engaging and it was interesting to learn about how collaborative and dependant the whole network of mathematicians actually is.
Passion is contagious, and I love reading about other people's passions, especially if in pursuit of science, in pursuit of truth. And math has a unifying power, it being the universal language, that never gets lost in translation.
Same as the abundance of fat and sugar in our food supply (while our bodies still are tuned to a scarcity of them) the internet has brought on an abundance of triggers, information, connectedness, opportunities. And while the new generation doesn't know what this has left behind, everyone born in the 70ies and 80ies seems now to be overcome with a nostalgia for what we have lost: the solitude, the downtime, the daydreaming, the moments we just experience and don't need to share, the absence. Harris reflects on these themes, and we follow along his quest to reclaim some of what we have lost. There's no solution in here, no 10-step program, besides reaching the understanding that we need to self-regulate, find our own balance.
Joins the ranks of many books lately that quote Thoreau.
Ah, the games we play! Carse presents his philosophy of looking at human behavior in the framework of finite and infinite games. He maps society onto this dichotomy and produces many smart quotes (he is quite good at the word-play): “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” - “Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.” - “To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.”
This produces a black & white perspective, which ultimately leaves a dark world, because besides a few stand-out examples (life, language, ..) all the games we play seem to be rather finite. This book - which sometimes reads like a sermon - is ultimately a call-out to be more open, more playful, more infinite in our approach to life, relationships, politics, work, education. Yet this paints an utopian picture, because more playful in his philosophy ultimately also means less serious, fewer consequences to actions.
The first chapters are the strongest, then his analogies become more convoluted, less elegant. So it could have profited from being even trimmer, but nonetheless, an interesting read.
A fantastic book chronicling the history of sonified electromagnetism in the arts (and sciences). Kahn coins the term “Aelectrosonics” - the sounds created by the natural electromagnetic activity on earth and in space. All because we included the earth and space in our communication circuits (earth as electrical ground, the atmosphere as transmission medium for radio). From accidental listening - hearing the Aurora Borealis or whistlers on the telegraph and telephone lines of the 19th century - to sonifying brainwaves (Alvin Lucier) - to earth hums and moon bounces, to Alexander Graham Bell's photophone and Robert Barry's energy art.
Sometimes Kahn's documentation might be too thoroughly (too many quotes of people categorizing weird noises) but this book is wonderful, full of inspiration and I'll definitely have to go over it again.
A multitude of articles - written by academics mostly centered around the industrial-design scene in the Netherlands - attempting definitions, describing challenges, opportunities and listing the tools, methodologies of the emerging field of Open Design. There is no consensus, especially in trying to define the field (what's included, what's not), and there is partially too much overlap in some of the articles (yes, the consumer turns into a pro-sumer, i get it now) but all in all the book, with its articles and additional short portraits, gives a great overview of the field (era 2011).
Joost Smiers thought experiment stood out to me, where he theorizes that a complete abolishment of copyright laws would lead to a negative-feedback controlled market that wouldn't allow any blockbusters, any bestsellers to emerge and therefore even out the market to a more localized, fair system that would feed all artists and designers equally.
One of the aspiring characteristics of Open Design - whether intentionally or not - is that it makes end-users (pro-sumers) assume more responsibility for their products/goods. And as we are facing scarcity of resources and nevertheless dispose of 50% of products within 3 months of buying (stats?), the books leaves one with the hope that the Open Design movement and all its cousins (Hacking, Recycling, Repairing, Sharing culture ..) might grip and help solve these problems.
A world with different “zones of thought”, where the local laws of physics influence the speed of computation. Where A.I.s that reach a technological singularity become “powers”. And we meet the medieval culture of the “Tines” who live as packs that form group minds. Exploring that concept - the advantages the disadvantages of groups minds - was especially fascinating. Around it all is a space opera. I could have done without the occasional action sequence, as they felt a bit B-movie like. But, all in all a fun read.
A beautiful little book. Alan Lightman is a scientist and writer, and his musings in this collection of essays - on the complicated or unanswered aspects of the nature of reality - are an easy, elegant and thought-provoking read. I will put this next to David Eagleman's ‘Sum' and start handing out both as presents, to spread a love of science. Because science books don't always have to be dusty and heavy.
Like Coders-at-Work this is a geek interviewing geeks, and you (mostly) don't get the shiny surface-of-things website-polished ‘about us', but the things you actually want to hear about: the mistakes, the funding problems, the trips to China, the persistent bugs, the first fun hacks, the growing-up stories. All the adventures along the way of hardware-hacking, electronic prototyping and production of objects (sifteo, Arduino, digispark, raspberry pi, makerbot, openROV..) or services (sparkfun, adafruit, OSHpark, Tindie ..). This generation is a bit younger than the Coders-at-Work guys, (and not only guys!) and its therefore easier to relate to (form my perspective).
In general they all seemed to have dads or brothers that were builders, tinkerers, wanna-be inventors. That's how they got infected. Building Tesla-coils or hacking the phone system in their teen years.
A unifying theme that goes throughout the interviews, is the opinion that Intellectual Property protection slows down innovation. As small companies they don't have the resources to patent their inventions. And knowing that China will come and clone their products anyway makes them improve their products at a much faster rate. Similarly the open-source spirit contributes to faster turnarounds as they have large communities collaborating on new solutions. And while this ‘maker' system is just happening in a niche right now, hopefully it might overrun the Apple's and Samsung's and their multi-billion dollars suits one day.
I think i was compelled to finish this so that i finally could give a non-4 or non-5 star review on Goodreads. This and the fact that its a light read made me power through this. It's a working mom's perspective on how to become happier, and there is nothing wrong with that, and a lot of the things she talks about are useful and thought-provoking in some way. But what really made me dislike it, is that I simply didn't like her, and she puts a lot of herself into it. Her love for scrap-booking, her constantly nagging at her husband, her dislike of shopping, her seemingly criticizing herself for characteristics that are not criticize-worthy or that she must be secretly proud of. But hey, one secret to happiness is to be less negative! ;)
About the nitty-gritty, the politics, the hierarchies, the glitches of the distributed system we call the internet. Who is really in control? Makes you realize that on the surface the internet seems to permanently change and redefine itself, but that its backbone - its protocols - are old and unchanging.
I usually don't read plays (neither go to the theater much) but this looked intriguing: A clever and funny play full of science, literature and romance, set in the early 19th century and sometime in the 1990ies. Thermodynamics, fractals (the Coverly set) and notes in the margins à la Fermat. The present tries to rediscover the past, but time doesn't follow Newton's laws.
Be more proactive, less reactive! Mashup of inspirational quotes and little essays on how to be more efficient, more creative, more productive. Directed at people in the creative industry.
I was more excited about the content during the first chapters, and then it seemed to get more mediocre. But nevertheless, i take away some good advice.
You don't get as many impressive cocktail-party stories as you would hope (“and that's why French-speakers ...!”). But Deutscher writes entertaining, and he is especially thorough. His task is to take the field of linguistic relativity - which has gotten itself into trouble by boasting with too big claims early on - and bring it back to a level of credibility. His careful study of the field's history, its early failures and its more recent small successes (word genders influencing associations, the russian blues, egocentric vs geographic coordinates) show in parallel the difficult history of devising empirical experiments dealing with the human mind that avoid any form of priming or vagueness.
A fun mix of essays covering topics and ideas circling the usually rather dry spot of philosophy of science. Sagan talks about the gaia theory, us and the microbes, life's purpose of reducing gradients, the kermitronic predicament, ecodelic trips, science vs science wars. His writing is incredibly entertaining, in parts very personal and always very smart. I feel like i missed out on many witty jokes by not being familiar with all the science, philosophy, literature and pop-culture references he makes, but i definitely enjoyed all the ones i got.
Kasparov's match with Deep Blue is heavily cited when it comes to texts dealing with technology and the future. What Clive Thompson added here are 2 follow-up events that i wasn't aware of (even though i adore chess) and that perfectly fit the theme of the book:
Advanced chess tournaments: instead of “Man versus Machine” this form of chess - introduced by Kasparov - shows Man and Machine collaborations. Chess players make use of what computers are good add - big data statistical analysis - and form decisions based on that outsourced technological help and their own more intuitive reasoning.
Kasparov versus the World: Here Kasparov plays against a 50.000 people strong public group, that with the help of technological tools collaborated online and discussed and voted on how to move against the chess pro.
Thompson highlights many success stories from the recent years, small and big, that demonstrate the positive side of the rise of technology. How memory outsourced to computers gives us more time/space to focus on more important things, how ambient awareness of your social circle's day-to-day details creates surprising opportunities, how sousveillance gives power to the masses and helps stage revolution and how using video games in class can transform the laziest students into information-seeking problem-solvers.
Powers writes a very smart story, full of neuroscience and computer science, but also poetic and touching. It's the story of the evolution of an artificial intelligence, that grows up by having an author - who lost the joy in writing - read the old masters to it. The conclusion might have been a too neatly wrapped up parable, but it makes a beautiful ending nevertheless.
And obviously - the author in the story being a version of Power himself - it makes you wonder which parts of the tale are autobiographical and which made-up. Also, what a clever way for an author to advertise his other books. Sneaky! (and i do want to read more now)
