Amazon link I never got around to reading Ayn Rand in college when everybody else did, but I was going away for a week on business, and wanted something long but compact to read, so I picked this up in paperback form at the used bookstore. Her basic thesis of Objectivism is that reason and […]
Aramis or the Love of Technology, by Bruno Latour
Amazon link I really liked Science in Action, another book by Latour, so when I saw this on a friend’s shelf, I borrowed it. Unfortunately, it took me several months to actually get through it; I started it over Christmas vacation, but I kept on getting distracted by other things, until I finally powered through […]
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents, by Ellen Ullman
Amazon link Saw this at the used bookstore, and it looked sufficiently interesting that I picked it up. Ullman worked as an independent computer programmer contractor throughout the dot-com years, and this book is a sort of memoir of her dedication to the machine, sometimes at the cost of losing track of the people involved. […]
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, by Peter Schwartz
Amazon link I liked the talk by Peter Schwartz that I went to, so when I saw his most well-known book at the used book store for $3, I picked it up. A pretty quick read detailing the idea of scenario planning, a management strategy involving coming up with several detailed future possibilities for the […]
To the Nines: A Stephanie Plum Novel, by Janet Evanovich
Amazon link Another Stephanie Plum novel. It was at the library when I stopped by recently, and so I grabbed it and read it. Entertaining and frothy as always. A nice quick read.
Jaron Lanier
I’ve been a big fan of Jaron Lanier since I first heard him talk several years ago at Stanford. So when I read that he was going to be speaking at the Bay Area Future Salon, I made sure to be there. Really interesting stuff. I’ll try to preserve the flavor of the talk by […]
Howard and Arianna
So, after yesterday’s post which talked separately about Arianna Huffington and Howard Stern, I was amused to hear Arianna as a guest on Howard’s show this morning. Politics really really makes the strangest bedfellows. They commiserated about the idiocy of Bush especially after the robotic press conference last night, before Stern got distracted by inquiring […]
More thoughts from Alternet
First of all, George Lakoff’s ideas are exemplified once again by this Arianna Huffington column, where she is talking to the 11-year-old son of a friend of hers: “Arianna,” he said with the enchanting optimism of a Greek-American boy, “I’m going to convince you that you should support Bush in November. Here are two questions […]
Big versus small companies
Just a quick observation – something I said at work today and thought was interesting. I was commenting how some people use process as a way of covering themselves in case things don’t go well (a reflection of my earlier sentiment). I understand how process can be used to answer questions of importance if it […]
Shirky on software development
I’m a big fan of Clay Shirky’s writings, and am subscribed to his mailing list. His most recent post discussed situated software, and I wanted to discuss it some more. So I am. Shirky teaches classes on social software at NYU, and observed an interesting pattern in the software that his students were submitting for […]
