Reading

This got stuck in my draft queue but I have no idea what to meaningfully add to this absurd amount of highlights. The Unwinding by George Packer is a massive and amazing work with turns of phrase worth remembering on every page. It also shows very precisely how amazingly fucked up the USA is right about now. Here is the book cut up through my lens, but I would highly encourage you to read the whole thing (I tore through it in a couple of days).

This book by Alain de Botton started out slowly for me because I am already quite familiar with the global logistical infrastructure and the various ways our food is made (thanks to the Keuringsdienst van Waarde). In the second half though with its focus on the moral and spiritual aspects did it pick up and became a very worthwhile read.

Not hugely satisfying but still a nice read. Supposedly the first book in this series is better.

This pamphlet by Adam Greenfield, the first of more is a concise and enjoyable distillation of his politics when it concerns the smart city and also features a number of similarly inclined thinkers:

This was a tremendously enjoyable read. I wonder why my English teacher never pointed us in this literary direction for things to read.

Funny to come across three pieces today wherein a bunch of fashionable faux-intellectuals are taken apart.

Reading this book took me quite some time since it arrived in my mailbox some four years ago. I only picked it up after acquiring an epub version of it that I could read in Readmill wherever I happened to find myself (so also really after Readmill launched their iPhone app). It takes some getting into but this book is hugely rewarding and a pleasure.

Another long overdue post with notes from the biography of Colonel John Boyd. This is partially so long overdue because extracting quotes from Readmill is somewhat annoying and the excellent API integration Box of Quotes no longer works 1.

I finished Aramis (PDF) a couple of weeks ago and this is absolutely essential reading for anybody involved with technology in a wider sense than just technology. It is also quite funny. I look forward to reading more by Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence is high on my list 1 and I’ve registered to join his MOOC on the Scientific Humanities.

Odd that I hadn’t gotten around to blogging these notes from Dan Hill’s brilliant book, but here they are then finally:

I’ve been on something of an applied philosophy 1 binge recently and after almost finishing “Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War” 2 I am now starting to read Aramis which Latour opens with:

The Quantum Thief was a very stimulating read. Make no mistake. However far off the events in this book may seem, Rajaniemi manages to evoke concepts and create language for issues that we are already dealing with.

This was an interesting read and only strengthens my resolve to read most of the things Houellebecq has written.

All of the books I read are to be found on Goodreads but here is my year’s overview because it is customary to do these things. I count 23 which is not too shabby but should be improved upon (always).

German friends some things need to be written but don’t take them personally. If anything, as I write below, this presents a very large opportunity for who will take it.

I read Consider the Lobster as a bit of a reprieve from the book guilt Infinite Jest still casts over my night stand and as a long overdue requiem to the literary colossus DFW is. Here’s the stuff I found noteworthy:

I recently discovered the fan fiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by the esteemed Eliezer Yudkowsky (I used to read his friendly AI stuff back in the day) and having never read any Harry Potter 1 I still immensely enjoyed this.

I read this pamphlet (at Gutenberg) by Thomas Paine a while back on a mountain. However short it may be it packs a massive punch and is brimful with powerful rhetoric. It also contains a rather definitive argument against monarchy. Highly recommended.

Last weekend I finished the Prince of Networks (which is in fact available for free online and I recommend you read it, though Alien Phenomenology may be a more concise and lighter introduction into speculative realism) by Graham Harman.

This interview with Graham Harman is filled with valuable tidbits, some of which I wanted to collect and share for your reading pleasure as much as mine:

I dived into my log to make the yearly tally of what I did and saw. All in all 2011 has proven to be a good year.

Another week and another change at the office. One thing that does define the Open Coop is that everything is in a constant state of flux adding jitter so none of us remain stuck in a local optimum. The global optimum we are shooting for in and around our location in North is rather ridiculous but best not shared in public.

Ian Bogost, videogame-filosoof, publiceerde een tijdje geleden een kritiek op de geesteswetenschappen (http://bogost.com — “Beyond the Elbow-patched Playground”) die moeite hebben uit te leggen waar ze voor dienen (deel 1) en niet weten wat ze met het internet aan moeten (deel 2). Bogost rekent af met academici die zich afzonderen in de ondoordringbare vestingen van hun vakgebied en te weinig relevant zijn voor mensen daarbuiten. Bas Heijnes recent verschenen essay ‘Echt zien’ past eenzelfde redenering toe op de ‘zieke’ roman. Het is nuttig om deze twee redeneringen tegen de kunst- en cultuursector aan te houden. Na de debatten heeft die zich teruggetrokken maar —het lijkt— geen echte lessen getrokken.

I thought this piece: “Amazon and the reintermediation of the spectacle” my Michael Smethurst was well worth reading. Here are some choice excerpts, but these are mainly for me. You should read the entire thing.

Ik probeer mijn literaire vrienden aan het verstand te brengen dat door de technologisering van de samenleving science-fiction een niet meer te negeren onderdeel van de cultuur aan het worden is.

We read Thoughts on Interaction Design 2nd edition as the fifth book for the UX Book Club Amsterdam and reviewed it yesterday. Here are my noteworthy passages from the book, which is not without its issues, but it does give a credible philosophical foundation for our practice.

Een rare lijst via Kottke, maar er staan wel wat goede boeken op (dat kan ook niet anders als je 1001 boeken op een lijst zet). Ik kom op 33.

There’s a bunch being said about Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows”. Most notably a lot of print media jumping onto the the Ever-Betters bandwagon. Obviously Carr stating that reading long form print is being drowned out by the internet is right up the alley of the old media in their death throes.

Some Bigend-centric excerpts from Zero History:

Naar aanleiding van dit lijstje van meneer Webb. Ik heb elf boeken uitgelezen in 2010. Schandelijk schamel aantal, ver van de 1 boek per week waar ik naar streef (maar ik heb wél 73 films gezien).

I wanted to read Zero History and found out I hadn’t read Spook Country yet, so I did. Unfortunately Stanza does not allow a batch export of annotations, but fortunately I did not make that many.

De laatste dagen staan een beetje in het teken van gelekte e-mailtjes van, naar en door invloedrijke mensen in Nederland. Een van de recentere is die van de nieuwe hoofdredacteur van het NRC, Peter Vandermeersch, naar zijn redactie, hieronder (via):

Here the first of my English translations of the design principles outlined in the Dutch book by Rathenau about the digitalization of society and its implications.

Niet zoveel aan te merken op dit hoofdstuk. Ook niet heel erg mijn interessegebied.

What Ben Hammersley uses (besides the travel drug):

Ik ben het boek “Check in / Check out” van het Rathenau Instituut aan het lezen.

Lees het gedicht van Nasr (نصر) op het Manifest van Terschelling en onderteken.

I don’t think I disagree with anything Craig Mod writes.

Ben Hammersley poses the question which has been on my mind for a while (tweet) now after seeing the various concept demoes of rich magazines on high resolution tablets.

Leuk om een link en een commentaar naar mijn ‘anatomie van het nieuws’ stukje te krijgen van Olaf Koens op het Vlaamse weblog Werktitel over journalistieke vernieuwing.

Never enough time for reading, but thanks to Instapaper got around to reading some stuff that was due coincidentally both of these are from Salon:

Shirky schreef pas zijn anatomie van het nieuws in: “Rescuing the Reporters” waarin hij een krant ontleed in nieuws en restmateriaal en dan ook nog dat nieuws splitst in zelf-gemaakt en uit andere bronnen afkomstig.

I recently reread part I of Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton for UX Book Club Zuid-Holland and made notes during the proces. ‘Sketching’ is one of my favorite UX books and well worth a reread which I found reveals different layers and gets you to reflect differently with the experience you have accumulated since the last time I read it.

Van het weekend gebeurden er weer een paar dingen die me met de neus op de feiten drukten hoe kapot 1 het concept ‘papieren krant’ wel niet is. Ik zeg het al een tijdje en heb opgeschreven waarom ik principieel tegen de papieren krant ben (alle argumenten), maar dit was wel saillant.

I called with the taxman yesterday to clarify some stuff. I had surmised that profesionally relevant books could be deducted as expenses. Now it seems there is a very fine distinction.

In the only month where I somewhat approach Matt Webb’s amount of reading, he just goes and ups his count to nearly double mine.

Deze baan als culturele attaché in dienst van Brian Grazer lijkt mij ideaal. In ieder geval totdat ik zelf in de positie ben om zo iemand in te huren voor mezelf.

Een Sherlock Holmes-pastiche voor de donkere zondagavond 1 geschreven door Neil Gaiman en voorgelezen door hemzelf zoals alleen hij dat kan (via BoingBoing).

Van de week bij de IKEA een klein kastje gekocht om mijn boeken dichter bij de hand te hebben.