Amazon link This book is an attempt by Dourish to develop underlying design principles for user interfaces that take into account the situated nature of interaction. I’ve been mentioning Dourish’s book recently (e.g. here, here, and here), because I really like a lot of the concepts that he mentions throughout his book. Dourish is explicitly […]
Category: books
Book mini-reviews
Archangel, by Sharon Shinn I saw this in the library and I had remembered that Beemer had once recommended it to me, so I picked it up. I liked it. Interesting world, and characters that I sympathized with. Not particularly deep, and not a book that I’m likely to rush out and buy for myself, […]
Plans and Situated Actions, by Lucy Suchman
Amazon link Subtitled “The problem of human-machine communication”, this book debunked the prevailing philosophy in artificial intelligence at the time it was written in 1987, which was the belief that people worked by making a plan, and then executing it. Suchman examines this seemingly common-sensical idea and pointed out several of the flawed assumptions associated […]
Built to Last, by James Collins and Jerry Porras
Amazon link This is the first book written by the Good to Great authors, so since I liked Good to Great, I figured I should pick this up from the library and read it as well. As in Good to Great, they found a group of example companies that they wanted to study. In this […]
Priceless, by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling
Amazon link Tstop recommended this to me in a comment on one of my posts. Here’s the summary: Using cost-benefit analysis is misleading because costs are easily quantifiable in terms of dollars, and benefits (in the case of human life, health, the environment or the future) are difficult, if not impossible, to put in those […]
Why Girls are Weird, by Pamela Ribon
Amazon link I stopped by the library yesterday to pick up some light reading to offset my Amazon nonfiction pile. While poking around, I saw this book, and the title amused me, as did the descriptions, so I borrowed it. Ribon is apparently an online diarist, who put together a fictionalized account of the process […]
Selling the Invisible, by Harry Beckwith
Amazon link As previously mentioned, I picked this up in Portland. It’s not a fabulous book or anything, but I like the viewpoint of the author. It’s set up in the form of 200-some vignettes about marketing services, which makes it a great book to read in short chunks. Reading it straight through would be […]
Freakonomics
Amazon link and Official book website I read this NYT magazine article about Steven Levitt a couple years ago and thought it was great. Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago who spends his time trying to think up interesting ways to sift data to answer hard questions: For instance: If drug dealers […]
Business books
[n.b. This post has absolutely nothing to do with yesterday’s post. Lots of interesting discussion happening out there, though – Mary Hodder was kind enough to clarify her intent with a comment on my post, and put up a post collecting other feedback on the subject] Today, we’re returning to an observation I made at […]
Writing in books
While I was up in Portland, we were looking at one of the papers on the fridge of the house that Jofish is renting. It was for a high school English class, where the students were supposed to read some Dickens novel, and then scribble in the novel to demonstrate their connection to the text. […]
