141–149 of 149 posts
I really like the way he limits his list to 4 books. Most other thought leaders/influencers/CEOs do lists of 10, 20 "hot topic" books that you know they probably haven't read. I find the volume also diminishes the individual importance of each book on the list. I'll have to pick up String Theory (I love that Bill Gates reads DFW) and The Grid per his recommendations.
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The very next sentence was: > I find this topic fascinating is because my first job, in high school, was writing software for the entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest I wonder if somewhere in bowels of a northwest utility company there is a machine silently chugging away, running code written by a teenage Bill Gates, helping deliver electricity to the masses.
This surprised me. Microsoft was started in the mid-70s. I'm in my early 30s and wasn't aware software was getting used in business much until the late 70s/early 80s. I guess there were mainframes and not minicomputers? Still, surprising a high school kid would get a coding job in the early 70s.
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In Paul Allen's (auto?)biography he mentions that it was a group of mothers from the school that paid for the computer (or maybe the teletype terminal). I might be getting details mixed up, it's been a while since I've read his book.
This explanation is also given in Outliers by Malcom Gladwell.
A humorous observation: Ever look at an HTML page created by Microsoft Word? Quite a bit of code goes into what should have been a simple HTML document. Now try viewing source of Mr. Gates' web page here: 6873 lines, the HTML content starts at 5816 and goes for 9 lines to describe the 4 books plus the bonus, for a whopping total of 9 lines of content, 6864 lines of behavior and presentation... Wow.
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I think the word "mundane" is out of place. Whoever isn't fascinated by the modern power grid is slightly dead inside. The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, garbage disposal and recycling, and so on. I think a better term would be "rarely noticed".
> The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, One of my still-on-the-shelf projects is to photograph, geo-locate and categorize all the manholes from my city that have been installed prior to WW2 in order to document how the city evolved over time (surprisingly enough my city still has manholes from the early 1900s), because a city with no working sewage system ca…
I thought Shoe Dog was a great book, although my favorite book of the year was a Gates Notes recommendation for summer reading-- The Vital Question, by Nick Lane. If you're interested in biology and the origins of life, it makes some provocative claims, and backs them up. If this doesn't change how you think about life on earth (and elsewhere), I don't know what will... https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Sum…
I will put The Vital Question on my "to read" list. On a similar topic, I've just picked up Sapiens, which was also on Gates' 2016 Summer reading list. A few people in my circles had been talking about it so I decided to pick it up, before even noticing Gates had recommended it.
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I am interested in everything - even 19th century Slovakian art movements. I love talking to people who are interested in anything other than themselves - it really doesn't matter what as long as they are interested in something enough to have learnt and thought about the topic in some depth. The real shame is so few people are interested in anything at all.
Honestly, that's an awesome attitude to have, as people nowadays have a much shorter attention span (myself included!). And yes, I agree: it's getting harder and harder to hold a deep conversation with someone on a technical topic, even in a professional setting. Or perhaps I'm just not looking correctly?
Just watch out for the bores that will just parrot whatever they heard on FOX/CNN last night.
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I am interested in everything - even 19th century Slovakian art movements. I love talking to people who are interested in anything other than themselves - it really doesn't matter what as long as they are interested in something enough to have learnt and thought about the topic in some depth. The real shame is so few people are interested in anything at all.
The phase I like to remind myself is: "Be interested, not interesting." Obviously, trying promoting such an idea to a culture that worships the selfie is foolish at best.