Books of 2020
Here’s a selection of recommended books that I read and finished in 2020 and that map to the topics covered in The Deployment Age.
Recommended books
The Old Way (re-read). Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
A Culture of Growth. Joel Mokyr
The Awakening: A History of the Western Mind AD 500 - AD 1700. Charles Freeman
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialisation. Vaclav Smil
The Sovereign Individual. James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg
Scalable Innovation. Shteyn and Shtein
Possible Minds. John Brockman
How to Speak Machine. John Maeda
Men, Machines and Modern Times. Elting E. Morison.
This Idea is Brilliant. John Brockman
Deep Learning. Goodfellow, Bengio & Courville.
The Beginning of Infinity (re-read). David Deutsch
The Evolution of Technology. George Basalla
How Innovation Works. Matt Ridley
The Old Way: A Story of the First People (re-read). Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
One of my favourite books. A rich ethnography of the Bushmen of the Kalahari and by extension hunter-gatherer societies of the past.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was nineteen when her father took his family to live among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. The book, written fifty years later, recounts her experiences with the Bushmen, one of the last hunter-gatherer societies on earth. This, more than any other book I’ve read, provides a rich link to the origins of human society.
A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. Joel Mokyr
A keystone text of Progress Studies. Mokyr explores the Enlightenment culture that sparked the Industrial Revolution. Why exactly did this movement lead to a wave of innovations in Europe that went on to trigger the Industrial Revolution and sustained spread of global economic progress.
The Awakening: A History of the Western Mind AD 500 - AD 1700. Charles Freeman
A thorough history of European thought, inquiry and discovery from the fall of Rome in the fifth century AD to the Scientific Revolution.
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialisation. Vaclav Smil
Heavy enough going, like most of Smil’s books. Here, he considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail.
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age. James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg
Surprisingly relevant in 2020. Written in the 90s, this long prediction paints a picture of the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. The transition, will be marked by increasingly liberated individuals and drastically altered patterns of power in government, finance and society.
Scalable Innovation. Shteyn and Shtein
A thorough, believable model for the innovation process. The book takes a Systems Thinking approach to problem discovery and evaluation.
Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI. John Brockman
Twenty-five essays on AI from the usual suspects at Edge.org. Constraining the topic to AI makes this perhaps the best of the Edge books. Plenty to ponder here.
How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us. John Maeda
A sharp, accessible musing on computation by designer and technologist, John Maeda. He offers a set of simple laws that govern computation today and how to think about its future.
Men, Machines and Modern Times. Elting E. Morison.
A series of historical accounts that demonstrate the nature of technological change and society's reaction to it. Begins with resistance to innovation in the U.S. Navy following an officer's discovery of a more accurate way to fire a gun at sea; continues with thoughts about bureaucracy, paperwork, and card files; touches on computers; tells the unexpected history of a new model steamship in the 1860s; and describes the development of the Bessemer steel process.
The lessons and relevance to the deployment of technology in the 2020s are surprisingly apt.
This Idea is Brilliant. John Brockman
Lost, overlooked, and under-appreciated scientific concepts from the minds at Edge.org. Most of the concepts were not new to me, but the accompanying essays and explanations were excellent. An idea generation goldmine.
Deep Learning. Goodfellow, Bengio & Courville
An excellent overview of Deep Learning from some of its key contributors. Simple accessible language. Surprisingly engaging coverage of linear algebra and probability.
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World. (Re-read) David Deutsch
Another of my favourite books. Deutsch offers an optimistic view on human knowledge and its importance in the grand scheme of things. An ode to explanations.
The Evolution of Technology. George Basalla
An evolutionary theory of technological change. An argument for gradual change and against the heroic individual.
How Innovation Works. Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley’s ode to innovation as the main event of the modern age. An argument for incremental, bottom-up innovation.
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