Great Books for Geek Wannabes
by Amy Hodler on December 16, 2011
It’s that time of year. We’re busy finishing up all those loose ends that were to be done “before the end of the year” as well as juggling family and holiday plans. Despite the usual frenetic start, I really enjoy this time of year because once we slow down just a bit, most people are in the mood for thoughtful conversations about what we want out of the next 12 months.
For me, those conversations usually include discussing and recommending favorite books as a way to share what’s been useful for us. Since recommendations from people with similar interests are usually more helpful, below are my book recommendations from 2011—not all are new–for those that want to be a geek but really aren’t. (You know who you are…or you know who those people in your life are. We might love the idea of fractals and quantum mechanics…but we can’t do math in our heads.)
Title: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Author: James Gleick (@JamesGleick)
About: A historical perspective of information.
Why read it?
It’s a beautifully written study of information as its own historical topic, which I haven’t seen anyone else do.
Gleick does a wonderful job explaining some very difficult concepts and I love the history of great discoveries, Even more impressive are the implications when his historical evaluation is taken in its entirety. I believe it reveals future trends that will impact how we relate to information in the near and long term. Although I found the first few chapters to be a little slow, I’ve actually read it twice and may read it a third time…it’s that good.
Title: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
About: How the unpredictable is really unpredictable and how to deal with that.
Why read it?
We should all be skeptical of models and people that “predict” what will happen, but we also need to plan for success and different possibilities. Taleb does a great job of explaining why the improbable usually has a lot more impact on our lives and businesses than what we planned for, and gives some advice on how to deal with that. (Also, the summary of fractals and self-similar replication at the end was really helpful for this geek wannabe.)
Title: World 3.0
Author: Pankaj Ghemawat (@PankajGhemawat)
About: How distances and borders still heavily influence our lives, businesses and economics in general.
Why read it?
This should have been called “the world is NOT flat” as it’s really a counterpoint to the book The World is Flat and for that reason alone I think it’s a must read. So many people either blindly favor both globalization and deregulation—or oppose both of them. Ghemawat offers what I think is a more balanced option where these are not linked, binary choices. It’s worth picking this up just to understand an alternative way of looking at globalization.
Title: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Author: Tim Wu (@Superwuster)
About: Ebb and flow of decentralization and monolithic centralization of power in the information industry.
Why read it?
It’s a fascinating and entertaining review of the rise (and stumbling and rising) of major 20th century information powerhouses from the telegraph and telephone to Apple and the Internet. Regardless of whether you agree with Wu’s recommendations at the end, it’s worthwhile for those of us in IT to understand this history and evaluate how the cycle of decentralization and centralization might apply to our industry.
Title: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Author: Ray Kurzweil (@raykurzweil2035)
About: Enhanced human cognition and existence taken to a logical extreme.
Why read it?
Hmm. I almost didn’t include this one because Kurzweil gets pretty far out there on his ideas. However, it’s extremely interesting to consider technology as another phase in evolution and it might be valuable to ponder what that implies. I recommend it for those particularly interested in sci-fi and anyone that wants to get out of the box of their own thinking. This book was published around 2005, so you’ll notice some predictions that haven’t come true yet but if you can get past that it’s quite thought provoking.
So these are a few of my favorite reads that I managed to squeeze into 2011. What are your book recommendations?
Comments (3 )
Sara Gardner on 16 Dec 2011 at 6:01 pm
Great holiday reading list Amy! Another good one is Michio Kaku’s “Physics of the future”. It’s a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. Lots of cool predictions for the future of medicine, energy production, artificial intelligence and how day to day life could be both enriched and turned on it’s head by technology.
I for one couldn’t put this puppy down!
http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Future-Science-Shape-Destiny/dp/0385530803
Amy Hodler on 20 Dec 2011 at 9:22 am
Thanks Sara. I’ve just downloaded that from by Audible account and will be listening to it as I get ready for the holidays.
Go Girl Geeks!
Techno Musings >> Blog Archive >> Geek Out With These Books on 28 Dec 2011 at 9:58 am
[...] Hodler’s post last week on the Cloud Blog inspired me to share some of my own geek related book buys from 2011. They are as follows (in my [...]
