What I'm Reading

Why the future doesn't need us

Why the future doesn't need us, by Bill Joy

posted by quebeck @ 2:19 AM 0 comments

The Mystery Method - The Venusian Arts Handbook

The Mystery Method - The Venusian Arts Handbook, by Mystery aka Erik von Markovik

posted by quebeck @ 2:17 AM 0 comments

Future Shock

C. P. Snow: "Remarkable ... No one ought to have the nerve to pontificate on our present worries without reading it."

R. Buckminster Fuller: "Cogent ... brilliant ... I hope vast numbers will read Toffler's book."

Betty Friedan: "Brilliant and true ... Should be read by anyone with the responsibility of leading or participating in movements for change in America today."

Marshall McLuhan: "FUTURE SHOCK ... is 'where it's at.'"

Robert Rimmer, author of The Harrad Experiment: "A magnificent job ... Must reading."

John Diebold: "For those who want to understand the social and psychological implications of the technological revolution, this is an incomparable book."

WALL STREET JOURNAL: "Explosive ... Brilliantly formulated."

LONDON DAILY EXPRESS: "Alvin Toffler has sent something of a shock-wave through Western society."

LE FIGARO: "The best study of our times that I know ... Of all the books that I have read in the last 20 years, it is by far the one that has taught me the most."

THE TIMES OF INDIA: "To the elite ... who often get committed to age-old institutions or material goals alone, let Toffler's FUTURE SHOCK be a lesson and a warning."

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: "An American book that will ... reshape our thinking even more radically than Galbraith's did in the 1950s ... The book is more than a book, and it will do more than send reviewers raving ... It is a spectacular outcrop of a formidable, organized intellectual effort ... For the first time in history scientists are marrying the insights of artists, poets, dramatists, and novelists to statistical analysis and operational research. The two cultures have met and are being merged. Alvin Toffler is one of the first exhilarating, liberating results."

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: "Packed with ideas, explanations, constructive suggestions ... Revealing, exciting, encouraging, brilliant."

NEWSWEEK: "In the risky business of social and cultural criticism, there appears an occasional book that manages—through some happy combination of accident and insight—to shape our perceptions of its times. One thinks of America in the 1950s, for example, largely in terms of David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, while Michael Harrington's The Other America helped focus the concerns of the early 1960s. And now Alvin Toffler's immensely readable yet disquieting study may serve the same purpose for our own increasingly volatile world: even before reading the book, one is ready to acknowledge the point of the title—that we suffer from 'future shock.'"

http://quebeck.dyndns.org/temp/Alvin%20Toffler%20-%20Future%20Shock.pdf

Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler

posted by quebeck @ 4:08 PM 0 comments

Sustainability, Energy Independence and Agricultural Policy

"One of the biggest threats the USA faces today is a serious shortage of energy. Vulnerabilities in our system have been made glaringly obvious several times; since the 1970's the USA has had social and economic upheaval due to the actions of foreign oil producers, and two hurricanes in 2005 showed just how fragile our remaining domestic supplies of oil and natural gas are. The fact that the nation has a Strategic Petroleum Reserve shows that this is a matter of national security."

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/27/0432/3533

Sustainability, Energy Independence and Agricultural Policy, by 'Engineer Poet'

posted by quebeck @ 10:06 PM 0 comments

Animal Farm

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011.txt

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

posted by quebeck @ 11:40 PM 0 comments

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man

"By Nature created, created with very keen tastes, with very strong passions; placed on this earth for the sole purpose of yielding to them and satisfying them, and these effects of my creation being naught but necessities directly relating to Nature’s fundamental designs"

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man, by Marquis de Sade

posted by quebeck @ 1:11 AM 0 comments

Dirac's Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy

http://www.intalek.com/Index/Projects/Research/HotsonPart1.pdf

http://www.intalek.com/Index/Projects/Research/HotsonPart2.pdf

Dirac's Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy, by D.L. Hotson

posted by quebeck @ 5:43 PM 0 comments

Flatland - A romance of many dimensions

http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/

Flatland - A romance of many dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbott, a Square

posted by quebeck @ 5:39 PM 0 comments

Why the future doesn't need us

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html

"Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species."

Why the future doesn't need us, by Bill Joy

posted by quebeck @ 5:37 PM 0 comments

Origins of Language

http://web.archive.org/web/20040224103224/http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling001/origins.html

Origins of Language

posted by quebeck @ 5:33 PM 0 comments

Matrioshka Brains

http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/MatrioshkaBrainsPaper.html

"Predictable improvements in lithographic methods foretell continued increases in computer processing power. Economic growth and engineering evolution continue to increase the size of objects which can be manufactured and power that can be controlled by humans. Neuroscience is gradually dissecting the components and functions of the structures in the brain. Advances in computer science and programming methodologies are increasingly able to emulate aspects of human intelligence. Continued progress in these areas leads to a convergence which results in megascale superintelligent thought machines. These machines, referred to as Matrioshka Brains¹, consume the entire power output of stars (~10²⁶ W), consume all of the useful construction material of a solar system (~10²⁶ kg), have thought capacities limited by the physics of the universe and are essentially immortal."

Matrioshka Brains, by Robert J. Bradbury

posted by quebeck @ 5:29 PM 0 comments

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

http://www.cbe.wwu.edu/dunn/rprnts.omelas.pdf 

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, by Ursula Le Guin

posted by quebeck @ 8:26 PM 0 comments