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What Hacker News says
- Have you read Bruce Sterling's "Shaping Things" book that talks about this concept of a design within the object - so maybe that could be called a physical Quine? I like it!
- If you love this talk, you should read "Shaping Things" by Bruce Sterling. Non-affiliate link: http://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Things-Mediaworks-Pamphlets-St...
It talks about the history of objects, the future that Schell talks about, and then what's next after that... 'biots.'
- Anyone who's into this stuff should read "Shaping Things."
- If this idea about objects is interesting to you, check out Bruce Sterling's book "Shaping Things, " (non-affiliate link: http://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Things-Mediaworks-Pamphlets-St... )
He talks about how objects have changed and will change over time. Jesse is talking about "spimes" in this particular talk.
The step after this? "Biots."
- I read non-fiction related to business strategy, sociology, economics, and technology constantly. In fact I went down the the LA public library and picked up 10 stellar titles just this weekend, I highly recommend all of these:
- Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software [MIT] - Prisoner's Dilemma [William Poundstone] - Thinking Strategically [Nalebuff] - Co-opetition [Nalebuff] - Cluetrain Manifesto [Searls] - Open Sources 2.0 [O'Reilly] - Innovator's Dilemma [Christensen] - Net Worth [Hagel] - Democratizing Innovation [von Hippel] - Fooled by Randomness [Taleb]
Other books I always keep around are "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" (a history of DJ's and electronic music), The Singularity is Near, and some Calvin and Hobbes ;-)
All the reading is most definitely worth it, if you don't feel that way you're not reading the right stuff.
The best book I've ever read is probably Anna Karenina (Magarshack translation, not the Oprah version, which is ironically much drier). Other very influential books on me include The Wealth of Networks, Shaping Things, and Free Culture. In fact, all 3 of those were given to me at different times in my life by the smartest person I know (a family friend of my parents)
Maybe the key to the non-fiction reading is having an agenda. I always feel like I'm downloading knowledge that is going to help me make bank and/or help people so that keeps me riveted (beyond the intellectual stimulation, which I'm a total whore for, too ;-)
- Wise words of Bruce Sterling in "Shaping Things" (MIT Press):
"We need to understand technology with a depth of maturity that mankind has never shown before. We need to stop fussing over mere decade-long "Ages" and realize that there are only three basic kinds of "technology" truly worthy of civilized use. None one them are entirely possible yet.
1. The first kind, and likely the most sensible one, is technology that can eventually rot and go away all by itself. Its materials and processes are biodegradable, so it's an auto-recycling technology. The natural environment can do this kind of work for itself, while also producing complicated forests, grasslands and coral reefs, so, someday, an artificial environment ought to be able to biomimetically mimic that achievement. This doesn't mean merely using available "natural materials" that we repurpose from crops or wilderness. It means room-temperature industrial assembly without toxins. [...]
2. The second kind of technology is monumental. These are artifacts deliberately built to outlast the passage of time. This is very hard to do and much over-estimated. Many objects we consider timeless monuments, such as the Great Pyramid and the Roman Colosseum, are in fact ruins. They no longer serve their original purposes: a royal tomb and a giant urban playground, and they no longer look remotely like the did when their original builders finally dusted off their hands and demanded their pay. Bat at least these "monuments" don't crumble unpredictably, leach into the water table and emit carcinogens while they offgas. [...]
3. The last kind of decent technology is the kind I have tried to haltingly describe here. It's a fully documented, trackable, searchable technology. This whirring, ultra-buzzy technology can keep track of all its moving parts and, when its time inevitably comes, it would have the grace and power to turn itself in at the gates of the junkyard and suffer itself to be mindfully pulled apart. It's a toy box for inventive, meddlesome humankind that can put its own toys neatly and safely away. [...]"
Full quotation here: http://msutherl.net/txt/3kindsoftech.txt
