51–60 of 176 posts
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Kay is a huge admirer of Socrates. When I interviewed Kay in 2012, he even managed to bring Socrates into the conversation and then discourse on his worthiness in the context of various religions[1]: "You can't go to heaven unless you're baptized. If anyone deserves to go to heaven, it's Socrates, so this is a huge problem." While the link below goes to the page mentioning Socrates, I highly recommend the entire inte…
Dante has a solution for this: There is a place in the upper section of hell with no punishment or torment, reserved for "just heathens" like Socrates. So technically he did not go to heaven since he is denied the closeness to God, but arguably this is an even nicer afterlife, since he can continue thinking and questioning things together with other great minds.
This could do with a short summary of the book and why Alan Kay thought it was relevant, for each, on-page, before the link to Amazon.
I'm surprised there is nothing by Montessori. Seems a natural given the works by Piaget and Vygotsky. The Absorbant Mind would be an obvious pick.
Yes, the first two or three books by Montessori would be on this list if I'd been comprehensive enough. I don't remember whether I listed Suzuki's "Nurtured By Love" book: another classic for those trying to think about learning, children, art, culture, environment, etc.
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[nevermind, I misread]
As other users have pointed out, that was the fault of a usability problem at our end. It was hard to tell that a comment was replying to a flagged comment. Sorry for the confusion! This has been on our list to fix since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917057 so I went ahead and fixed it (or tried to). Now, in addition to "[flagged]", "[dead]", or "[deleted]", you'll see the usual item line with at least a tim…
This wasn't actually for my students, and dates back to the early 90s. A number of people at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) asked for my "top ten" books. This is not possible for anyone who reads extensively, so I came out with that list as a bare start. I should mention that reading lots of "poor books" is also part of literacy: they help the understanding and appreciation of "good books" considerably.
I hope it goes without saying: thank you very much for your contribution to the world, generally.
This wasn't actually for my students, and dates back to the early 90s. A number of people at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) asked for my "top ten" books. This is not possible for anyone who reads extensively, so I came out with that list as a bare start. I should mention that reading lots of "poor books" is also part of literacy: they help the understanding and appreciation of "good books" considerably.
I always wanted to ask you this: what's your opinion on Gregory Bateson's work on the intersection of anthropology, psychiatry, cybernetics and communication in general? Since this discussion is focusing on books, have you read "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"? I hope it goes without saying: thank you very much for your contribution to the world, generally.
One way to think about this in the larger sense is that "an interesting person is one who is interesting whether you agree with them or not". This also goes for books. (This is the "it's about perspectives, not about relevance" point of view.)
It's worth it to try to understand what "interesting people" have thought -- it provides context for one's own thinking.
I love Kay and you should absolutely read any of his recommendations or at least examine them with earnest. That said, I struggle to remember anything he's created or written that's moved the needle (my needle). I'm honestly not hating and I have way too much respect for him to say anything on this list is not worthwhile. But, in my experience, Kay has been one of those brilliant uncles who's (written) work never see…
His insights about this field and its potential, narrowed by his views that many of today's computer engineers have forgotten fundamental principles and practices of old, favoring instead popular trends of new, and that the Web was built by amateurs, I imagine, would yield a very interesting subset of ongoing work.
It's a good list, but might just be a bit too androcentric with only 5 women out of the ~90 persons listed, (including anthologies.) Counting: Hannah Arendt, Maria Montessori, Mary Midgley, Sylvia Scribner and Rebecca West.
I think I have the same ratio in my bookshelf. More interesting the subject is for me, less women. For example: I have ~50 computer science books and only one is written by a woman (Sonya E. Keene).