The art of looking sideways

What Hacker News says

1. marbanDec 2021
   A Mix:

   — Founders at Work, Jessica Livingston

   — Principles, Ray Dalio

   — Calling Bullsh*t (The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World), Carl Bergstrom

   — Masters of Doom, David Kushner

   — Anything you want, Derek Sivers

   — Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, Joseph Sugarman

   — Ogilvy on Advertising

   — The Art of looking sideways, Alan Fletcher

   — The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky

   — The Wart of Art, Steven Pressfield

   — The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, Mel Lindauer

   — The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

   — Ikigai, Francesc Miralles

   — The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman

   — Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

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2. kthejoker2Nov 2017
   Always go back to the classics

   * The Design of Everyday Things * Design for the Real World * A Pattern Language * Notes on the Synthesis of Form * Never Leave Well Enough Alone * Don't Make Me Think * How Things Don't Work * Usable Usability * The Visual Display of Quantitative Information * A Theory of Fun for Game Design

   Other left-field books I've found myself going back to for design inspiration more than I would've thought

   * The Death and Life of Great American Cities * The Philosophy of Andy Warhol * Influence by Robert Caldini * Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human * The Art of Looking Sideways * Cosmos * Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth * The Theory of Moral Sentiments

   And just specifically for computer UX, Smashing UX Design is a pretty good crash course.

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3. justinatorJun 2015
   Yes, there are a few.

   Days of War, Nights of Love [0] EXPECT RESISTANCE [1]

   Days of War, at least is almost a super zine compilation, with many points of view. The most interesting thing I got from it was that it gave you permission to take only the parts of an idea, argument, whatever that you liked, and leave the rest well alone, and form your own ideas. (The closest book to this would be The Art of Looking Sideways, by Alan Fletcher [2] which is as apolitical as you can make it, but is basically the guy's creative sketchbook distilled down. Pick what you like, and be inspired.)

   That sounds so simple and obvious, but there's many times when we fall into a herd mentality for various reasons, and those brilliant ideas get packaged with those not so good ideas. See, for example: any of the main monotheistic religions. Great! ideas in those, and some not so great ideas. One way to get around that is to have plural, indeed anonymous, authors.

   One problem with more contemporary "Steal This Book" lifestyles is that it is a community-driven ideal. You JOIN a community, and live a certain way within that community. You can't really live outside the margins. Sure, you can read, understand, and appreciate the ideas or point of views from a distance, but I guess the open-ended question is, when are you going to take the plunge? Sounds a bit fascist, but it's based on a system of acceptance and trust. Freaks are not turned away; their unique perspective and problem solving abilities are seen as an asset. For example: what IS it like to go through the world as a non-passing trans women? You gonna need some good friends.

   I've lost pretty much all ties to the anarcho-buddies I've had. I fear the squeeze from the recent housing bubble has made even their cheap lifestyle unbearably difficult financially to pull off. I like to think they're all living on farms, a little ways off in the plains.

   [0] http://crimethinc.com/books/days.html [1] http://crimethinc.com/books/er.html [2] http://www.phaidon.com/store/general-non-fiction/alan-fletch...

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4. rndmizeFeb 2013
   > Civilization has made us docile, but we’re still the same people underneath, and a change in circumstance could send us back into that primitive state. To quote The Art of Looking Sideways: “Civilization is chaos taking a rest.”

   I do grow tired of this idea of "primitive" people being a bunch of savages. One would think with the explosion of knowledge in anthropology we've acquired in the last century that the average person (and especially, the non-average person) would better understand just how wrong Hobbes was with his "nasty, brutish and short" comment.

   Civilization as we know it is an attempt to adapt humans to societies at scale, ie. beyond ~200 or so people - and so far, it has worked badly. We're heavily optimized for tribal societies, which isn't surprising given that we developed and improved them over tens of thousands of years, compared to a mere four thousand for civilization.

   Let me note that this isn't an indictment against civilization. As with any new thing (say, cars vs. horses, or guns vs. bows) the new development will initially be notably worse than the older one. Guns were around for hundreds of years before they replaced bows, and even then it took hundreds of years more before they made the leap to automatics that has made them so effective today.

   Civilization is little different - we've tried all sorts of things, some of which have worked in some ways, many of which have collapsed under their own weight of corruption, inequality or other problems. And things are getting better. But this idea that "non-civilized" people are chaotic or savages really needs to go.

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