* Steven Levy – Crypto
* Stephen King – 11/22/63
* Michael R Underwood – Geekomancy series
11/22/63 in particular is hard to put down, King doesn't need the supernatural to create a thrilling story.
Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
161–170 of 224 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Much like in Brave New World, we have soma-like drugs, distractions and trivialities occupying people while they accept the world as it is and even shy away from wanting to change things. Now hold on. There are millions of people in the streets demonstrating on a regular basis these days. How many have to be trying to change things before we stop labeling them all distracted, sleeping, over-amused sheeple?
"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous…
I first learned about Neil Postman in the last year from Alan Kay's reading list. I've found myself wishing he were still alive to champion his ideas today - they seem just as relevant in the era of Facebook as they did in the era of television.
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#163Daemon - AI, AR (or MR), 3D printing, crowdsourcing, this book brings them and more together in a facinating manner. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon and the second in the series http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8488830-freedom
Ah, the stupidity of publishers! The paperback version is cheaper than the Kindle version, ensuring that I won't buy either. :(
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#164Ready Player One.
Though the recent second time was as an audio book on a long car trip.
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Much like in Brave New World, we have soma-like drugs, distractions and trivialities occupying people while they accept the world as it is and even shy away from wanting to change things. Now hold on. There are millions of people in the streets demonstrating on a regular basis these days. How many have to be trying to change things before we stop labeling them all distracted, sleeping, over-amused sheeple?
>>How many have to be trying to change things before we stop labeling them all distracted, sleeping, over-amused sheeple? 3.5 percent, according to research. https://rationalinsurgent.com/2013/11/04/my-talk-at-tedxboul...
Well, that's roughly how much of the population you need to mount an ultimately successful revolutionary movement. And we're 1/3 of the way there already.
Also, if I had to venture a guess for why things have been improving, it's that modern economies rely on very fine, highly-skilled divisions of labor. If you're a marketing manager, you probably don't really understand how software goes together. This makes it very difficult to point a gun at a programmer and force them to work.
This means that in order to climb the ladder of value-added production, you need to keep your social organization nonviolent, and possibly even increasingly peaceful. You need everyone to cooperate, and when they cease to do so, even nonviolently, you start losing all that value you can't extract at gunpoint.
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#166Wage Labour and Capital by Marx.
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#167"Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire" (1992) https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp... http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive Mostly re-read the parts of the book that talk about the 80s (the creation of the PC, DOS, Windows, the PC clones, Microsoft and Intel outsmarting IBM, Microsoft bullying the rest of the industry, etc.).
I've not read 'Hard Drive', but I've re-read 'Gates' by Manes and Andrews, and can recommend it.
Well, ditto. I can recommend 'Hard Drive' just by its sheer writing/research quality. Apparently the book came out of a series of articles in "The Seattle Times", back when newspapers employed quality writers/researchers.
It gave me
a) a whole new understanding of the computer hardware/ecosystem I grew up with
b) a re-newed insight into why Gates was a horrible, horrible monopolist who held back software development for the world quite a bit. My best guess is by about 5 years. (And that estimate is actually quite generous towards Mr. Gates.)
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#168Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#169The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett I understood a lot more of the jokes this time through, I think I was in Elementary school the last time I read it :)
Took me two reads to realize that the magical word people didn't understand, described as "reflected sound of underground spirits", was economics. That moment of realization; d'oh!
Hah, yea, same here. He almost explains it in the book, but not quite.
Re: Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both you and pdog have made interesting observations, I suppose, but as I said, neither book described our reality accurately. Our reality is far more complicated. As you point out, millions have protested, but tens of millions haven’t. As pdog remarked, the world in 1984 might be described as a totalitarian hellscape, in part, but parts of our world can also be described as such; pdog needs to look outside his local…
>As you point out, millions have protested, but tens of millions haven’t. On both an absolute and per-capita level, those millions are actually record highs. These are historically large demonstrations. I'd have to check where I read this, but IIRC about 3% of a country's total population is typically the amount you need demonstrating in order to overthrow a government. We're possibly looking at a revolution in progr…
I think it's important to note that the majority of these protests are happening in large urban cities on the coasts that overwhelming did not vote for Trump. There are no large protests in the Middle of the country.
I'd also like to see the source for he 3% number that leads to overthrow.