Interconnected

I’ve been at a retreat the last few days, 20 of us at a gorgeous hotel in Norway nattering about artificial intelligence. Here’s a photo of how insanely beautiful Norway is. And here’s a list of who was there, plus some more background on the retreat from the organisers.

I collected book recommendations as I’ve done regularly at conferences. The question I ask is always the same: What 3 books should I read this year? I don’t want to hear your best-ever books, nor the books that will make everyone believe you’re a super-genius, just… if we were speaking face to face, knowing what you know about me, what are the 3 books you would recommend for me right now? Here’s a pic of how the question is posed. Putting it that way gets some cracking suggestions.

Anyway, I’ve ended up with 40 recommendations from a dozen-plus folks. So here they are. All links go to a physical edition at Amazon UK.

Book recommendations

Adrian Zumbrunnen, @azumbrunnen_:

• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman
• Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception, Claudia Hammond

Amber Case, @caseorganic:

• Calm Technology: Designing for Billions of Devices and the Internet of Things… by Amber Case. (There’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t recommend your own book!)
• Avogadro Corp (“Book One of the Singularity Series”), William Hertling. Fiction
• Take Too Little Time for Yourself. Available independently. Poetry

Ben Sauer, @bensauer:

• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters, Richard Rumelt
• Flood!, Eric Drooker. Graphic novel
• Sex Criminals (volume 1), Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. Graphic novel
• Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives, David Eagleman. Fiction

Bill Thompson, @billt:

• Fen, Daisy Johnson. Fiction
• M Train, Patty Smith. Fiction
• The Lure of Greatness: England’s Brexit and America’s Trump, Anthony Barnett

Cennydd, @cennydd:

• Killing and Dying, Adrian Tomine. Graphic novel
• The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism, David Golumbia

Chris Noessel, @chrisnoessel:

• Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom

Dan Harvey, @dancharvey:

• Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett. Fiction
• The Vision (volume 1), Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta. Comics collection
• Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure, Ingrid Burrington

Dan Hon, @hondanhon:

• The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, Sean Carroll
• Lexicon, Max Barry. Fiction
• Troika, collected in Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds. Fiction

Ishan, @poietic:

• Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns, Nora Bateson
• Hyperion Cantos (series), Dan Simmons. Book 1: Hyperion. Fiction
• The Nexus Triology (series), Ramez Naam. Book 1: Nexus. Fiction

(I’m tempted to say that recommending a whole series is cheating…)

Josh Clark, @bigmediumjosh:

• New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson. Fiction
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O’Neil

Karen Kaushanskyn, @kjkausha:

• Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Iron Carmon and Shana Knizhnik. (Karen says to get the physical edition because the design of the annotations requires it, and they add a lot.)
• Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, John Markoff
• The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach. Fiction

Kate Devlin, @drkatedevlin:

• House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski. Fiction
• Not Fade Away, Jim Dodge. Fiction
• The Holy Machine, Chris Beckett. Fiction

Me, Matt, a.k.a @genmon:

• Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, Peter Frase
• Radical Technologies, Adam Greenfield
• The Red Men, Matthew de Abaitua. Fiction

Warren Ellis, @warrenellis:

• The Baroque Cycle (series), Neal Stephenson. Book 1: Quicksilver. Fiction
• Gnomon, Nick Harkaway. Fiction (will be released November 2017)
• At The Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, Sarah Bakewell

Recommendation made with no name attached:

• Feed, M. T. Anderson Fiction

Thanks all! Transcription corrections welcome.