Category — books

I just finished reading a most excellent book: Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning… Was the Command Line.

The title might seem to indicate that this is a very nerdy book, directed at very geeky people that are interested in the history of computer interfaces. But it is no such thing. It is, in fact, a highly entertaining and thought-provoking essay about the dangerous tendency that the so-called modern western culture has to over-simplify things.

Semi-random quote here:

Disney and Apple/Microsoft are in the same business: short-circuiting laborious, explicit verbal communication with expensively designed interfaces. Disney is a sort of user interface unto itself - and more than just graphical. Let’s call it a Sensorial Interface. It can be applied to anything in the world, real or imagined, albeit at staggering expense.

Why are we rejecting explicit word-based interfaces and embracing graphical or sensorial ones - a trend that accounts for the success of both Microsoft and Disney?

Of course, in this book Stephenson talks also about the history of OSes so far (well, that far, because the book was written in 1999, so according to this book Apple is still on the brink of bankruptcy), the fickle nature of users and their irrational behaviour, and why selling OSes is a bad business idea. But that is not what really caught my attention.

What interested me most were the bits about how we (i.e. citizens of the ‘civilized western world’) are increasingly giving up our ability to make choices and judgements in favor of easier-to-digest, simplified versions of life, the universe and everything. It almost made me feel guilty not only for owning an Apple machine, but also for actually *using* the sexy OS it came with. Luckily, in my old age I am becoming less and less dogmatic about OSes, life, the universe and everything, and even editors (!), so I am now using whatever system suits best my current mood and needs (in that order).

But I am babbling. I just meant to say that it is a cool book, and you should read it if (a) you are interested in computers, or (b) you are interested in modern culture, or (c) you enjoy easy-flowing, witty writing. (NOTE: the ORs in the previous sentence are inclusive ORs, not XORs.)

This morning, while listening to the latest edition of the TWIT podcast, I heard for the first time about Lulu.com, which has apparently been around for a while.

Lulu.com describe themselves as ’self-publishing’, but I prefer the ‘on-demand print’ description used in the podcast. The idea is simple: anyone can go to the site, register and put her book on sale, both as an e-book or in dead-tree version. Then, if someone does buy the book, it will be printed and shipped to the customer. The author can gets up to 80% royalties, which is a whole lot more than what an author with a ‘real’ publishing house gets. They claim to have some 13.000 titles available, and are currently experiencing a grow of around 1.000 new titles per month. Books published by Lulu.com are also available through Amazon. They also publish calendars, audio and video. If you are curious about the quality of the resulting books, check this post by Chris Davis, which includes close-up photos of books ordered off Lulu.com.

All this Lulu business means that you (or I) can write a book and make it available to millions of people on the internet, and make some money with it, without needing to go through a lengthy process of applying to publishing houses, getting rejected, applying again… Of course, the money will only be significant if thousands of people buy your book, but that is not totally impossible. I believe nowadays someone can effectively market his work on the internet at almost no cost, with active involvement in the appropiate communities, blogging and so on. And if you are not that interested in the money, you can lower the price of your book, as that is something you get to set yourself on the Lulu site.

In case you are wondering why was I listening to TWIT, I was curious about what makes it so (apparently) popular. But I did not find much of interest there. A bit too much of ‘we are the most subscribed-to podcast on iTunes’ stuff. And a bit too much time (1h 14min) for not-so-much content.

Lulu.com, though, is something to remember. Just in case you write a book. Or just feel like producing a printed version of your blog.

Reading Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect I have come across an interesting explanation of the origin of the meme concept.

Apparently, meme was coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in his book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976. Johansson explains that Dawkins described ideas as capable to evolve and spread, just like genes. Dawkins called these ‘propagating ideas’ memes, and he wrote about them (as quoted by Johansson):

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm and eggs, so do memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

Johansson goes on to point out that “Ideas, or memes, compete, in a real sense, for space in our minds. Some memes persist and transform, others die out; the process is similar to that of genetic evolution”.

I find this a wonderful idea: ideas as genes, propagating like a mutation! The best idea reaches the most people, becomes ingrained in our collective mind. And of course, the blogosphere, with most of its inhabitants being compulsive linkers as myself, is the best milieu for rapid spreading/imitation of the coolest ideas.

And that was just the fifth page of the first chapter of The Medici Effect. This book reads promising!

TheStar.com - Publisher pushes textbook ads: “[...] McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country’s largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts [...]”

I hope at least then the price of the books goes down…

(via Boing Boing)

I closed my first incursion into the world of comics with an introduction to the work of the Hern?ɬ�ndez Bros, for which I chose a collection named Chelo’s Burden, which contains stories by Jaime and Gilbert (Beto) Hern?ɬ�ndez.

The styles of both brothers are quite different, and so is the contents of their stories. As Art Spiegelman, they both write, paint and letter their stories, which is apparently quite uncommon in the comic world.

Here is a sample of Beto’s work:

As a break from the very tragic In the Shadow of the No Towers, I took Alan Moore’s (and Alan Davis’) The Complete D.R. and Quinch, a collection of moderately funny stories starring two misbehaved college-student extraterrestrials. Diminished Responsability’s character somehow reminds me of Zaphod Beeblebrox, though Zaphod has lots more style, of course. And smarter humour, too.

After Morse and Gaiman, I decided to get a taste of Spiegelman, which brought me to a style completely different to the more classic comic-look of Gaiman. In the Shadow of No Towers is Spiegelman’s exploration of his own feelings in the aftermath of 9/11. It makes a very personal, very emotional, very dramatic book.

After Spaghetti Western, next in my unguided exploration of comics was Neil Gaiman’s Midnight Days, which contains several short stories from different themes and times. Most of the stories I found quite uninteresting, except Hold Me (a Hellblazer story) and Sandman Midnight Theatre, which I found simply great. Gaiman, and specially Sandman, are now on my high-priority to-read list. Here is a sample of Teddy Kristiansen’s artwork for Sandman Midnight Theatre.

I have been curious about comic books (graphic novels?) for a while now. It is a literary genre I am completely unfamiliar with, but it looked like fun, so I finally took the time to borrow some comics at the local library.

I started by choosing a random one that looked cool. It turned out to be Spaghetti Western, by a certain Scott Morse.

The artwork is nice, but the story is absolutely ridiculous which, of course, is probably the point, as the book is supposed to be a homage to the cinematic spaghetti western genre.

Unlike his previous work, Gibson’s latest Pattern Recognition is set in the present. There is no fancy hi-tech, nanotech or body modification. There are just Macs, first-class flights, marketing and the Internet.

The story itself bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Count Zero, one of the earliest Gibson books which I have mentioned before: a filthy rich tycoon sends a young woman of extraordinary sensibilities on a quest after the author of an exceptional piece of art. And Cornell boxes are mentioned again, too.

During the first few pages I had an odd feeling: a Gibson heroine googling, checking her Hotmail and using a Mac? It just didn’t sound right. But this feeling quickly subsided, leading to an enjoyment very different from the one I got while reading previous Gibsons. While the earlier Gibson work has a style that makes me think of polished steel with razor sharp edges, Pattern Recognition has something infinitely more warm about it, something that brings the main character closer, something that made me more emotionally involved with her. And the writing is still sharp as a knife; as a nice good-quality WMF knife, not as a sci-fi nano-tech enhanced one.

A snippet:

The rain has stopped but drops still fall from ledges and awnings, beading on the nylon of her new Rickson’s. Absently she reaches to touch the place where the tape should be, but it isn’t there. No hole. History erased via the substitution of an identical object.

Just now she wishes lives could be replaced as easily, but knows that that isn’t right. However odd things seem, mustn’t it be to exactly that extent of oddness that a life is one’s own, and no one else’s? Hers has never been without its share of oddness, but something in its recent texture seems to belong to someone else. She’s never lived her life in such a way as to generate sliding doors and secret passages, the hallmarks, she believes, of some basis in bullshit, of an underlying lack of honesty that she doesn’t believe has been hers. She hasn’t ever, previously, been a person to be burgled, followed, assaulted with intent to rob. All the time she’s spent in the world’s various streets, scouting cool for the commodifiers, these things hadn’t happened. Why now? What has she done wrong?

I read Gibson’s Count Zero last week. Very good book, though probably the ‘less good’ Gibson I have read, and I have read most Gibson, except Idoru, Burning Chrome and Mona Lisa Overdrive (reading Pattern Recognition at the moment).

As Gibson needs no further introduction, I will limit myself to share a snippet from the book. Here it comes.

‘The solar banks are all still workin’, and they were meant to power the mainframes… Come on, then, lady, we’ll meet the artist you come so far to see…’ He kicked off and out, gliding smoothly through the opening, like a swimmer, into the light. Into the thousand drifintg things. She saw that the red plastic soles of his frayed shoes had been patched with smears of white silicon caulking.
And then she’d followed, forgetting her fears, forgetting the nausea and constant vertigo, and she was there. And she understood.
‘My God,’ she said.
‘Not likely,’ Jones called. ‘Maybe old Wig’s, though. Too bad it’s not doing it now, though. That’s even more of a sight…’
Something slid past, ten centimetres from her face. An ornate silver spoon, sawn precisely in half, from end to end.

Last week I read Viveca L?ɬ�rn’s Midsommarvals, and I found it a very humane, a very real book. Good, though not excellent.

The characters are real people, and the setting is familiar (small island in the Gothenburg archipelago). No wonder the SVT1 series based on L?ɬ�rn’s books are such a success. There seems to be no English translation, unfortunately for those who can’t read Swedish.

I finished Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged a couple of weeks ago and have been procrastinating writing this entry ever since. Partly because of the complexity of the ideas she presents, partly because I still need to think more about them and partly because I was being lazy.

The main idea behind the plot can be summarized with this quote:

“Mr. Rearden”, said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?”
“I … don’t know. What … could he do? What would you tell him?”
“To shrug.”

And the ‘Atlases’ are, according to Rand, the ‘materialists’, those that dedicate themselves to a productive activity:

“Dagny, we who’ve been called ‘materialists’ by the killers of the human spirit, we’re the only ones who know how little value or meaning there is in material objects as such, because we’re the ones who create their value and meaning. We can afford to give them up, for a short while, in order to redeem something much more precious. We are the soul, of which railroads, coppers mines, steel mills and oil wells are the body - and they are living entities that beat day and night, like our hearts, in the sacred function of supporting human life, but only so long as they remain our body, only so long as they remain the expression, the reward and the property of achievement. Without us, they are corpses and their sole product is poison, not wealth or food, the poison of disintegration that turns men into hordes of scavengers. Dagny, learn to understand the nature of your own power and you’ll understand the paradox you now see around you. You do not have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production. Wherever you are, you will always be able to produce.

During the first 200 pages I was quite bored, but then I started getting more into the story and the reading went faster. Unfortunately, the book is way too long, and Rand is not a good enough writer to justify 1.100 pages of repetition of the same ideas. And the end was simply ridiculous, in the style of the worst kind of Hollywood movie where you know beforehand that in the end all the ‘good guys’ beat hell out of the ‘bad guys’ and live happily ever after. However, I am glad to have read it, as it contains many interesting thought-provoking ideas around Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism which she summarized as:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Many of her ideas seem appealing to me, but I feel that sometimes she takes them a bit too far, and the passages where she exalts America and insults other countries are just outrageous. For example:

Who is enslaved by physical needs: the Hindu who labors from sunrise to sunset at the shafts of a hand-plow for a bowl of rice, or the American who is driving a tractor? Who is the conqueror of physical reality: the man who sleeps on a bed of nails of the man who sleeps on an inner-spring mattress? Which is the monument to the triumph of the human spirit over matter: the germ-eaten hovels on the shorelines of the Ganges or the Atlantic skyline of New York?
[...]
When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at your: How dare you be rich - you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you’ll give it all away.

If you are interested in getting acquainted with Rand’s ideas, maybe some shorter book of hers is better than Atlas Shrugged. For example, Josh Kaufman suggests For the new intellectual as a replacement for Atlas Shrugged in his “Personal MBA” Program book list.

Below are some bits that called my attention.

On the value of work

“Dagny, there’s nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they’ll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that’s on a gold standard.”

On the meaning of money

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and five value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?”

On what moves man

Man’s motive power is his moral code.

On thinking as an act of choice

To remain alive, he must think.
But to think is an act of choice.[...]

On the importance of volition

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.
A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral.

Sacrifice

A sacrifice is the surrender of a value.

Material values

And what do you think are material values? Matter has no value except as a means for the satisfaction of human desires. Matter is only a tool of human values.

Love and it’s relationship to values

Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Reason as an absolute

Moral perfection is unbreached rationality - not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

The value of work

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think [...].

Another take on “How To Read a Business Book”, from the 800-CEO-READ Blog has an interesting idea that I believe applies not only to management books.

To get the most out of a business book, you need to read two or three others on the same topic.

I believe this applies not only to books, but also to movies and other works of art / wisdom. The better your overview of the area, the better your understanding and the bigger your enjoyment.

This year I intend to loosely follow the popular proposal of reading 50 books in 2005, and to post about them, too. Here comes the first.

More than a week ago, I finished Coupland’s Generation X. I know that I am not a part of this generation but, hell, I did feel portrayed in many things. This one is, indeed, a justly celebrated book.

It is not just the depiction of a generation that has its ‘midlife crisis’ in their mid twenties. It is written so wonderfully, it has such humour, it is just so fun to read!

And don’t forget the banners and definitions at the bottom of the page, such as “Economy of scale is ruining choice” or “Rebellion Postponement: The tendency in one’s youth to avoid traditionally youthful activities and artistic experiences in order to obtain serious career experience. Sometimes results in the mourning for lost youth at about age thirty, followed by silly haircuts and expensive joke-inducing wardrobes”.

One of the many bits I specially liked:

We live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there’s a great deal in which we choose not to participate. We wanted silence and we have that silence now. We arrived here speckled in sores and zits, our colons so tied in knots that we never thought we’d have a bowel movement again. Our systems had stopped working, jammed with the odor of copy machines, Write-Out, the smell of bond paper, and the endless stress of pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause. We had compulsions that made us confuse shopping with creativity, to take downers and assume that merely renting a video on a Saturday night was enough. But now that we live here in the desert, things are much, much better.

This summer, while during trips around southern Sweden, I had the pleasure to discover the John Bauer museum. He was a painter and illustrator, born in J?ɬ?nk?ɬ?ping in the late 19th century. He is famous for his illustrations of trolls, dwarfs and princesses for Swedish fairy tales.

The pictures are quite dark, but usually with bright spots of color and light. Very beautiful. You can see some in the museum?Ǭ�s online gallery, and also on project Runeberg.

Just a couple of minutes ago I finished reading Good Luck, an inspiring tale with a clear message: Good Luck only depends one oneself. It might sound a naive and simple message, but the it is oh so true! And it is nicely written, too. A very easy read, suitable for everyone, no matter the age, profession or any other circumstances.

I will always need to read about this lesson, and many other lessons, about myself and life. Everything that stimulates reflection about this issues is always welcome. So big BIG thanks to my mom and dad who gave this book to me as part of my Christams present!

By the way, I finished reading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assasin a couple of weeks ago. She writes well, and the story is good. It was quite fun, but not fantastic. I am told that Atwood has some better novels, although it was for this one that she got the Booker prize. I definitely put her on my “must read more” list.

After Atwood I read, and just finished, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Simply great. Funny and humane. Specially interesting to read in this times of “war presidents”. More Vonnegut is now also on my list.

Also on my “want to read” list is the new Wolfe: I Am Charlotte Simmons.

I just finished reading The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. The title just caught my eye in Madrid’s FNAC and I decided to buy it.

The book tells the story of a Japanese soldier and a young Chinese girl, both Go players in occupied Manchuria in the 30s. The story is full of supressed passions and subtle emotions and written in a clear and elegant style. Some bits that stuck out to me:

I always listen to the sound the stones make, it betrays what the opponent is thinking. Early on in our game the Chinese girl would hold the stones between her first and second fingers and smack them gleefully onto the board; then, as the impact bacame quieter, it communicated her darker moods to me. Today it made a short, crystal-clear sound - she has rediscovered her confidence and vitality!

[...]

I forbid myself any calculations and I look at the board as a painter would an unfinished canvas. My stones are patches of ink with which I draw places and gaps. In the game of go, only aesthetic perfection leads to victory.

[...]

I think about my mother, her slender frame wrapped in a widow’s kimono. Next to this heartbreaking image I see that of the Chinese girl curled up on the grass. Despite the difference in age and background, they have a common fate: the insurmountable sorrow of an impossible love.

Women are the offerings we make to this vast world.

[...]

Life is an infernal loop where the day before yesterday has merged with today, and yesterday has been jettisoned. We think we are moving forward in time, but we are always prisoners of the past.

Quick review of latest Hitchhiker-related news:

• BBC’s Radio 4 is going to start broadcasting on the 21st of September the three last Hitchhiker books. Agrajag is played by Douglas Adams himself (the role was recorded before his death), and some of the actors from the 80s BBC TV series play original roles. More info at the BBC Radio 4 site.
• A film adaptation starring John Malkovich will be released in June 2005. More info at The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film homepage.
• Last, but not least: a text adventure written by Adams will be revived on Radio 4’s web site.
  

  The text adventure will appear on the station’s website and was described by the late Adams as “the first game to move beyond being ‘user friendly’”.

  “It’s actually ‘user insulting’ and because it lies to you as well it’s also ‘user mendacious,’” he said.

  (from Radio 4 revives Hitchhiker’s game)

If you don’t know what The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is,

1. DON’T PANIC
2. Go get the book!

Some interesting ideas about writing have called my attention while browsing through “How to Get a PhD”. This book was recommended to me by my MSc thesis supervisor as a
source of insightful observations about thesis writing; though it focuses on the PhD process, many ideas are also applicable to MSc theses. Here I quote some useful bits.

Authors often write and rewrite to discover what it is that they have to say.

[...]

Written language has been referred to as “the means of discovery of new knowledge”.

[...]

Writing makes people think about their work in a different way.

[...]

You should deliberately leave your work in the middle [...]. Your psychological need to complete the task provides you with extra internal pressure to return in order to finish what you have started. It also makes re-starting easier and quicker.

[...]

They suggest that “think-while-you-write” strategies be consciously adopted from the start of the writing process and not lapsed into by default when “think-then-write” strategies have failed.

[...]

The process of writing and rewriting is key.

[...]

Our recommendation is that you approach every piece of writing in the following way. [...]

• generate the main points [...], putting down everything that comes into your mind;
• organize them into an acceptable structure; [...]
• construct the points into grammatical paragraphs.

Interestingly, the “writing to learn” idea is in tune with some popular ideas about blog writing:

• Dave Winer: “writing makes you smarter”
• Anders Jacobsen: “I like to practice my English writing skills”. From a comment to his post: “I blog because it encourages me to reflect on what I read and what I hear”.
• Dennis A. Mahoney: “The advice ?��Ǩ?�write only what you know?��Ǩ�� increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”