Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: What Are Your Favorite Technology Books and Novels?
It can be a nonfiction book, or a fictional narrative where technology plays a key role. I recently started to read 'The Rise of the Robots' by Martin Ford. It talks about how robots are threatening mass unemployment more than they ever did before. I also found Andrew Blum's 'Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet' quite insightful. I would like to read 'The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers'.
What are some of your favorite tech-centric books? And which book are you currently reading, or recently finished?
What are some of your favorite tech-centric books? And which book are you currently reading, or recently finished?
along with his follow-up Freedom.
Yep, that's what I said.
IMO modern sci-fi has been "dumbed" down to just action flicks. Originally, "classic" Sci-Fi dealt with the _social_ issues and problems that technology created. We got some amazing stories.
Everything by:
* Isaac Asimov -- especially Foundation series.
* Robert A. Heinlein
* Arthur C. Clarke
Is A+.
There are also plenty of Feynman videos on YouTube. Fascinating just to listen to him. He's the true skeptic -- an open mind and willing to _explore_ issues.
Buy why limit this to just novels though?? For modern decent sci-fi TV would include:
* Continuum
* Firefly
* Fringe
* Lost
* Star Trek: The Next Generation
* X-Files
Isn't that the whole point of good Sci-Fi -- to light our imagination with possibilities?
Not the "Time Travel' Deus Ex Machina so much modern sci-fi crap resorts to.
- Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff
With the introduction of things like "every student gets an ipad" and young people literally not even owning a laptop, I think Stephenson's In The Beginning was the Command Line is probably his most valuable work that becomes more precious every year.
If you're just looking for something to read that is technical, the folks at Palo Alto have put together a good list of books as "canon" for the security industry. Worth a look anyway.
https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/threat-research/cybercanon
-- Don't make me replace you with a small shell script.
Although his later works (such as Anathem) felt like they went off the edge of the world, Cryptonomicon combines a clever story, a prescient look at the emerging internet age, and some thoughtful nods to encryption schemes, all in a decent story. IMHO one of his best, and a good all-round sci-fi yarn...
Martian Chronicles are at the top of my list. Maybe not exactly realistic, but a great read.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
https://www.amazon.com/Way-Thi...
Originally published in 1988, it was one of the books that sparked my interest in engineering and science as a child. The illustrations were both fascinating and informative without being too technical, and at times funny.
Cliff Stoll's account of how he tracked the CCC hackers is a very good read.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Tracy Kidders book is most memorable.
Two of my favorite books that I've read this year were about Bell Labs (The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation) and the history of Intel (The Intel Trinity).
Stallman's Free Software, Free Society if you're too lazy to connect to gnu.org/philosophy. Say what you will, but rms is simply a legend and too important to overlook whether or not you agree or disagree with his views.
Chaos
One of the inspirations for me in pursuing education in Chaos Theory (and applications of course).
Its still Mythical after all these years and ten major releases of Microsoft Project.
http://www.localroger.com/prim... This is the best!
Basically daunted by the topic, but I read a lot of books. Started with classic SF such as Heinlein and Asimov, but trying to pick the best is an overwhelming challenge. I do see mention of those two above, but Iain M Banks seems to be missing. His Culture books are ultimately optimistic about the future in the same way that Star Trek is. Too well written to dismiss as space opera, though grandiose enough.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
By Douglas Hofstadter.
It's a unique work regarding tech because of its absence. The entire society could have incredible technology, but they choose not to. It's Amish, for lack of a better way of describing it. They know it exists, but they decided that they didn't want it. With only a few exceptions. Dibs and dabs of incredible tech such as interstellar travel and sheilding technology and poison snoopers, but for the most part they eschew the rest and try to develop people rather than machines. A totally unique approach to technology in the future. What if it gets bigger than we're comfortable with, and we simply decide to do away with it for our own good? I think Frank Herbert was the first person to really explore that question in depth.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Yet another vote for Gödel, Escher & Bach. I was blown away when I read it. It is now my favorite non-fiction book by far. I go back and re-read at least one chapter every year just for fun.
I really enjoyed Eric Drexler's seminal work, "Engines of Creation," even if he was off the mark about timelines and how nanotech would evolve. Philip Ball's "Designing the Molecular World" is enlightening too.
"It's a good computer... for I to BM on!" - apologies to Triumph, the insult comic dog
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, by Cory Doctorow. It has an interesting take on the chaos of something catastrophic happening, and the human condition. That's as far as I can go without spoilers...
Don't be fooled from the innocent aspect: as it has been pointed out by the first reviewer, this book gives through allegories a dramatized explaination of UNIX networking. Highly recommeded! This nice book has been reviewed here on Slashdot some time ago.
An entertaining book on Richard Feynman's pranks and interests.
Cory Doctorow is a nut who will never let the story get in the way of the political agenda he wants to spew. His trash is unreadable.
And I notice you need to post as AC to plug the loser.
All the IPv6 books from O'Reilly & Associates. Also, an old favorite of mine - Unix Haters' Handbook
And not literary sophistication, right?
If we're talking pure joy of tech, for me it has to be EE Doc Smith's SPACEHOUNDS OF THE IPC, originally published in Hugo Gernsback's AMAZING STORIES in 1931.
Now remember for readers in 1931 radio was high tech. Ever build a crystal radio set? Did you wonder what the point was? Well if you were a kid in the early 20s, with a wooden plank, a spool of wire, and a hunk of galena, you could build yourself the most advanced, high tech communication instrument on the planet. When the story was published in 1931, the hottest new tech was the vacuum tube radio. This took a few more premanunfactured parts -- the vacuum tubes obviousl, but still if you were ambitious and clever with your hands and could solder wires and cut and bend sheet metal, you still could build the most sophisticated communication receiver on the planet.
The story takes place in a high tech future that seems plausible for someone in '31. There is regular spaceliner service between Earth and Mars. Interesting side note -- these spaceliners operate by a kind of remotely broadcasted power, and use that to power their reactionless drives. If you were *very* sophisticated at the time, you would realize this avoids all the rocket equation related implausibilities of ships that have to carry the reaction mass to maintain constant acceleration. The ships are guided by beacon stations (radio of course!), but the station keepers have been getting sloppy, so the line sends their best computer (a *person* of course!) to pin their ears back.
The liner is attacked by an alien spaceship, cut apart, and towed in pieces to Jupiter.It is built in many small airtight compartments (like an OCEAN liner) so most of the people are still alive, including our hero who is stuck in small piece with a beautiful (yay) rich (double yay) girl. He manages to escape (I forget how), and they crash on Ganymede, which turns out to be just like Earth but with lower gravity.
Now here's the problem: the line is building a new supership; if they only knew everyone was being held at the moons of Jupiter they could rescue them. But as far as they know the liner just disappeared.
So what our hero and is lovely, plucky helpmate must do is something familiar to every red-blooded Depression era nerd: BUILD A RADIO SET! Only they've got nothing; they've got to work their way up from paleolithic tech all the way up to (their) present, figuring out how to smelt metal, blow glass, generate electricity, and reverse engineer the very latest high tech vacuum tube.
This kind of story represents a way of imagining the future of tech that we we never be able to believe in again; one in which a single heroically brilliant nerd can really master everything from banging the rocks together all the way up to the very cutting edge. You can imagine the hero of this book figuring out how to melt silica and blow glass, but you couldn't imagine him improvising a chip fab.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The Commodore 64 User's Guide - taught me my first programming language.
The Commodore 64 Technical reference guide - a riveting sequel.