Category: Books/Reviews

Appropriate enough given that Fuller was doing hypertext before any of us had a term for it.

Synergetics Online.

One of my prized possessions is my copy of Synergetics by Buckminster Fuller. Well, I happened to browse to the Buckminster Fuller Institute which has a link to a an online version of the text of the book. It has the contents, the index, and is searchable! As a young man fascinated with Fuller’s work I checked this book out from the public library in Norton KS and just boggled at the amazing density of concepts on every single page. Now you too can do that from the comfort of your own home. Where else are you going to read about the cheese tetrahedron?

Comment on Synergetics Online [Evil Genius Chronicles]

• The Hypertext Declaration of Independence. [Privacy Digest]

The Chronoliths
Wilson, Robert Charles
I finished this quite a bit earlier in the year, but only now have had time to catch up and document the fact. A different take on the time travel theme. I didn’t find the main characters especially appealing, but I did stay with the story and did decide it was worth the effort.

The Zenith Angle
Sterling, Bruce
Sterling tries his hand at a bridge between techno-thriller and social satire. Sometimes it works really well, other times not. I certainly raced through it; so it succeeds on the techno-thriller aspect quite well. On the social satire/social commentary, I think the results are more mixed. Some of it is very funny, some of it is very provocative. Overall, this struck me as a moderately successful experiment. Certainly worth the time and effort. But a bit short of what it promised it might be.

The Curve of Binding Energy
McPhee, John A.
One of McPhee’s earlier books. I think I picked it up from a blog recommendation somewhere. While McPhee makes a good argument for why we should be worried about the risks of nuclear weapons made from stolen materials, the world has gone 30 years without that event occurring. It’s probably worth thinking about why that should be. No obvious answer occurs to me.

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity
Lessig, Lawrence
This got lots of coverage when it came out, including AKMA’s interesting efforts to create a distributed audiobook version of the text. I enjoy Lessig on many levels. One in particular is the chance to watch how he assembles an argument. The one particular takeaway from this book is that Lessig finally helped me understand why there is an important role for public policy (mainly by showing how badly it’s breaking down in the current instance).

The Sheep Look Up
Brunner, John
As a long-time fan of Brunner, I’m not quite sure how it is I had never read The Sheep Look Up until now. It’s a very dark and disturbing tale in the “if this goes on…” school of science fiction. Dave Pollard in his excellent weblog, How to Save the World, makes compelling and persuasive arguments for why each of us should strive to reduce his or her footprint on the planet. Brunner skips past the rational arguments and goes straight for the emotional hooks. What I found especially disturbing about The Sheep Look Up is how closely aligned it feels with today’s news and headlines. Written in the 1970s, some credit it with encouraging the more radical wing of the environmental movement. Reading it now, I wonder how much the inevitable may have only been postponed for a short while. Disturbing.

I’m back to spending a lot more time in the air recently, so this looks like a fun read. One of my personal favorite window seat experiences is when I come back to Chicago from the East Coast. On the right flight path, I can usually get a glimpse of my house and the boys’ schools as the flight crosses the western shore of Lake Michigan.

Window Seat. Gregory Dicum’s book “Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air” sounds like a brilliant idea:

“Broken down by region, this unusual guide features 70 aerial photographs; a fold-out map of North America showing major flight paths; profiles of each region covering its landforms, waterways, and cities; tips on spotting major sights, such as the Northern Lights, the Grand Canyon, and Disney World; tips on spotting not-so-major sights such as prisons, mines, and Interstates; and straightforward, friendly text on cloud shapes, weather patterns, the continent’s history, and more.”

Did you know that the patterns of the streets in subdivisions lets you know when they were built? Or that the round ponds all over Florida are sinkholes? With Window Seat at your side, you’ll learn these things. Keep it to yourself though–the person sitting next to you doesn’t want to hear it. Link (Thanks, Eric!)
[Boing Boing]

More in the lighter vein. I grew up with these images and I suspect they shaped my worldview more than I might suspect

Tales Of Future Past. Here’s an interesting review that covers tales of future past — a website dedicated to collecting images of distant worlds and futures, as predicted by old magazines and science fiction. And there’s also RetroFuture to help you remember flying cars and smell-o-vision. Ah, yes, remember when computers were predicted to beat us all at chess? Oh wait. [Techdirt]

Stephenson’s new novels are near the top of my read pile so this is for later reference.

Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver novel’s wiki. Reading Neal Stephenson’s novel Quicksilver and need some help in interpreting it or want to contribute your two cents to other readers’ understanding of his work? Try Neal’s Metaweb, a wiki for the novel. By David (mailto:10kyearblog@davidmattison.ca). [The Ten Thousand Year Blog (June 02003-)]