The Glass Bead Game
From the Publisher: The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature. Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).
Stats for nerds
51recommend
137mentions
93people
2008–2026years
46% recommend45% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recommend "The Master of Go" by Kawabata, 1951. It's a beautiful story of the change of power at the apex of the Go ranking system. I read it the same year as I read "The Glass Bead Game" by Hesse published in 1943 and its hard not to believe a relationship but in truth I think they are completely independent stories of the same situational tension.
- Hesse’s books are phenomenal. Besides Siddartha, highly recommend reading A Glass Bead Game and also Steppenwolf.
- Every to often a project will come along which reminds me of the visions which Hermann Hesse's _The Glass Bead Game_ (originally published as _Magister Ludi_) inspired in me --- this looks to be the latest.
Looking forward to reading the paper and hope that it is widely read/discussed, and that it influences projects/developers such as: https://www.inkandswitch.com/
I'd dearly love to see a 3D CAD program which used this methodology.
- Interesting to see a new book on this, but disappointing that it seems to re-tread much of what was already known of the author --- maybe this is going to be a trend/standard for future writing about authors and their works for this window of time where folks still wrote letters? It is now possible to exhaustively analyze such correspondence far more easily than the laborious manual pouring over of photocopies and archives (for Mann, apparently, in addition to Yale, Baylor, Princeton, and the University of Bonn and the Library of Congress hold extensive collections).
Makes one wonder what will happen with recent and contemporary authors --- will their e-mail correspondence survive to be preserved? I know I've lost access to two major sets of my e-mails from previous employers and will lose access to the current one at my retirement (unless I go back as an annuitant? Copy the Outlook .pst archive?) --- at one point in time, Barry Hughart's (typewritten!) notes for his books were available on-line, but they have since vanished....
Interesting, and I'll have to add it to my to-be-read stack --- wondering if Hesse will get the same treatment (or already has and I missed it?) --- his _The Glass Bead Game_ was quite influential on me and probably is why I'm fascinated by software tools such as OpenSCAD Graph Editor.
- Remember that your perception of the past has been filtered by what survived Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) --- the problem is that this is now doubled with a layer of AI, so it's something like:
90% of everything is AI-generated, of the 10% which is left, 90% of it is crap, leaving just 1% of articulate, interesting, well-crafted content.
So, either work to create that 1% of interesting content, or filter/curate to find it.
I will note that there is a _lot_ of interesting old work which has dropped off the radar --- Hermann Hesse's _Magister Ludi_/_The Glass Bead Game_ was a book which greatly inspired me in my youth (arguably, it's why I use programming tools such as: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor ) --- read it?
- Agree this reminds me of the level my Herman Hesse “The Glass Bead Game”. Academics and researchers have a moral duty to give back to the larger society that enables their endeavors .
