Stats for nerds
3recommend
7mentions
5people
2012–2025years
71% recommend29% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If personas in this context resonate with you, I highly recommend - even if only remotely related - to read Rich Gold’s The Plenitude.
- You nailed all problems with design education in that comment.
Rich Gold’s fabulous book “Plenitude” comes to mind.
- My list:
- The Plenitude - Rich Gold
Not a computing book with code but it taught me a lot about what can be done with computers, and that they are marvelous machines.
- Architecture of Symbolic Computers - Kogge
An ode to what could have been if RISC and x86 hadn't steamrolled the landscape.
- Thinking Forth - Leo Brodie
Forth is wild, this book is wild, it's really a different world. After multiple attempts over 25 years, I'm giving it another go this year and this time it is actually clicking.
- Malicious Cryptography: Exposing Cryptovirology - Adam Young, Moti Yung
This is way out of my league in terms of cryptography, but this fascinated me early in my career, and led me to implement one or the other algorithm. Very prescient in many ways.
- Patterns of Software - Richard Gabriel
Not directly about computing, but I got a lot of deep insights from this book. It also brought me to the next book:
- Notes on the synthesis of form - Christopher Alexander
This is not a computing book per se, but it goes to the core of system architecture. Even in its original field, this book is kind of wild.
- All Mathematica Guidebooks - Michael Trott
Mathematica is wild, these books are wild, they are old but still oh so inspiring.
- Not entirely true.
It really doesn’t matter if whatever is created is better or just more of the same.
New things will require more things.
I highly recommend reading Rich Gold’s excellent book The Plenitude:
- A few highlights for me...
Abundance - Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler. Diamandis has an almost infectiously positive way of looking at the world. And a hope that's not just based on a philosophical belief but is backed up with hard data.
Distrust That Particular Flavor - William Gibson. I never got into Gibson as a fiction writer, but this collection of essays, articles and talks immediately made me appreciate him as an amazing thinker, observer, and truly brilliant writer. This book is worthwhile for the pieces on Japan alone, but every single piece is wonderful.
Finite and Infinite Games - James Carse. An old book but one I only just discovered. No book has every so subtly had an impact on my life every day. The finite vs. infinite way of looking at the world has changed the way I think and act completely on the inside, yet it's probably hardly noticable on the outside. An amazingly easy book to read, couldn't recommend it highly enough.
How Music Works - David Byrne A unique and refreshing take on creating music that can be applied to the creation of anything. Byrne leaves the mysterious & ethereal world of 'creativity' for dead, and looks at how he creates music, and how the industry works, in a grounded and logical way. A brilliant book for anyone who creates anything.
The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff - Rich Gold Another old(er) book, but one I can't believe I only just found. Rich Gold's outlook on how and why we make things should be required reading for anyone who plans on thrusting their big idea into the world.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain It's had a lot of press, but I'm going to recommend it anyway. HN undoubtedly has a higher than average number of introverts who truly operate in an extroverted world. This book was absolutely eye opening in how it deconstructs different situations and personalities in a useful and positive way. I wouldn't say it's 'changed my life', but it has made a few relationships with close friends and colleagues a lot better.
And a quick plug - for any avid Kindle readers out there, I've built a web app for viewing/sharing/organising Kindle highlights. If any HN'ers want early access sign up at http://kindred.it/ and I'll ping you a beta login.
- > You're dealing with principles of communism here.
I don't know, the reasoning seems simpler than any school of thought can offer. Humans are bound to 14-16 waking hours per day. A large portion of those hours are taken up by obligations like work or chores. That leaves a set amount of time to consume media created by other humans. Even if more free time could be had, there will always be a hard biological limit of about 14 waking hours to consume things.
But more and more humans are being born and learning the arts, so combined with instant global communication they will inevitably produce and distribute way more than can be crammed into those hours. Look at a random streamer's Let's Play history for an example. If they play a longer JRPG then they can leave a trail of many hours-long videos per week depending on how long their sessions last. Sometimes that's to the exclusion of every other game in existence. It's a bit sobering if you think about it.
I read a book called The Plenitude by Rich Gold who discusses some of these topics. He doesn't go as far to give a fully workable solution to the problem but one of his suggestions is to challenge creators to limit themselves to 5 "big creations" over their entire life, and focus on honing those creations to the greatest extent. It's an interesting book and I'd recommend it.
