Amazon link A few weeks ago, somebody on Facebook linked to this great long interview with Brenda Laurel who is one of the original interaction designers, developing game designs based on user research. A representative quote from the interview, of her experience teaching game designers now: once [these game designers] talk to real people about […]
Category: books
The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer
Amazon link Given my last post was about charity, I thought it was appropriate to follow up with my long overdue review of Amanda Palmer’s book The Art of Asking. The book is an amplification of Palmer’s TED talk with the same title, discussing the connection between an artist and her fans. But it’s also […]
The Rise of Superman, by Steven Kotler
Amazon link Book website This book examines the extreme limits of human performance, delving into the world of action-adventure athletes who are redefining what is possible. It tells of big wave surfing, extreme free skiing, skateboarding, free solo rock climbing, base jumping, kayaking impossible rivers, etc. Kotler also examines the neuroscience behind the state of […]
Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Amazon link I finally read this book, which has been on the to-read list since it came out because of its discussion of cognitive biases. I hadn’t been in a particular hurry to read it, especially since I’d listened to Kahneman’s Long Now talk which covered the main themes of the book. But I finally […]
Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Amazon link Taleb is known for his book The Black Swan, which I own and have read but apparently never wrote a review for. While his writing style is a little annoying, the central concepts of nonlinearity and power-law distributions are worth remembering (described in a Long Now talk here if you want the short […]
The Idea Factory, by Jon Gertner
Amazon link In light of my last post on the Anthropology of Innovation, it was apropos that I was just finishing The Idea Factory, by Jon Gertner, a history of Bell Labs and its impact on 20th century innovation. I actually also saw Gertner at the Computer History Museum in March, but had to wait […]
Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi
Amazon link Matt Taibbi is angry. He is a Rolling Stone columnist who spent the last several years covering the financial crisis, and as an outside observer, is far more negative about the finance industry than anybody associated with it. Griftopia is a collection of columns and other research put together as a striking condemnation […]
The Master Switch, by Tim Wu
Amazon link Subtitled “The Rise and Fall of Information Empires”, Wu has no lack of ambition as he addresses how information and communication companies such as AT&T, Paramount Studios, NBC, and CBS have dominated our discourse over the past century. The title comes from a quote illustrating the perils of such domination: “At stake is […]
Fiction Roundup Sept. 2008 – April 2010
I started this blog to review books that I had read, but have been woefully delinquent in writing book reviews since August of 2008. But I have kept a draft post with the books I’ve read, so in the spirit of starting the blog back up (again), here’s the roundup. This post will be of […]
Trade-Off, by Kevin Maney
Amazon link Trade-Off is a book which explores a simple, but useful, way to frame the world. Kevin Maney plots products along two dimensions, fidelity and convenience, and then spends the rest of the book discussing how products end up in different places on that graph, from the “fidelity belly” to the “fidelity mirage” Fidelity […]
