Hacker News Books

Can't remember which book this quote is from, but "Critical Path" and "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" are great food for thought:

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-Kiyoshi-Kuromiya/dp/0312...

http://www.amazon.com/Operating-Manual-Spaceship-Buckminster...

I’d start with “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” He has a really interesting, albeit super rambling type of prose that is an acquired taste (I personally love it). This particular book is a great introduction to his worldview without being too exhausting. Check it out!

Book recommendation:

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - by Buckminster Fuller

Just the first chapter will blow your mind.

The sheepish feeling about app development made me think of Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth:

"For every 100,000 employed in research and development, or just plain thinking, one probably will make a breakthrough that will more than pay for the other 99,999 fellowships".

Marshall McLuhan's "Gutenberg Galaxy" and "Understanding Media".
Buckminster Fuller's "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" (and other books and essays of his).

> "Fuller told The New Yorker in 1966. Appealing to people to remedy their behaviour was a folly, because they’d simply never do it. Far wiser, Fuller thought, to build technology that circumvents the flaws in human behaviour – that is, ‘to modify the environment in such a way as to get man moving in preferred directions’. Instead of human-led design, he sought design-led humans"

You have to applaud Fuller for this insight which many similarly brilliant minds don't seem to grasp. Perhaps he can be included in this group;

1) Geodesic domes are a mathematically brilliant design but hopelessly impractical for many structures. Try fitting furniture in a curved house and dealing with a shape that either causes you to bump your head when you get to the edges or is so high in the center that you have an unnecessary volume to heat/cool.

2) The dymaxion car was similarly brilliant but completely missed the real reason that people buy cars: as a status symbol that looks cool, which the dymaxion did not.

The guy was a genius in my opinion but the failure of his incredible ideas to take off on a large scale shows that perhaps they appeal to my mind more for their idealism than practicality.

NOTE: Am currently reading Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth

This is such an important question. There are three things you can do for your kids,

1) Let them understand that asking any question is ok

2) Seeking answers to questions informs you about your world.

3) Anything really is possible with infinite time and money, use those goals as vectors to move your life forward.

In terms of recommendations I was pretty blown away by Buckminster Fuller's An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth[1] as he has such a great way of looking at things differently and to pull you out of your own preconceptions.

I would also recommend an encyclopedia, because frankly it is a great way to get answers to questions and way less dodgy than trying to figure out good data from bad data on the Internet (not to mention few people have gotten into trouble getting caught with an encyclopedia in their room, which can not be said for an Internet connected computer in their room.)

Understanding how to ask questions, how to test your understanding, how to theorize and make predictions and test those theories. Those are the life skills that turn a bright child into a force to be reckoned with early in life.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Operating-Manual-Spaceship-Buckminster...

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth - R. Buckminster Fuller

It turns out Bucky was a lot more than the man who invented Bucky Balls, this book was written in 1971 and is still incredibly accurate.

As an aside, I have been logging the books I read over the past two years here: http://crismannoble.github.io/tabula/

I think it's in the beginning of Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller, where he says that he determined that he could predict advances around 25 years out and still be reasonably accurate. After that, no bet. But people would still tell him he was a century ahead of his time. Anyway, same idea.

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth
By Buckminster Fuller

I first read it when I was ~25 and it made me think about the way the world is, the historical reasons it is this way and how we can nudge it towards being better.

It frustrates me that Fuller wrote the book nearly 50 years ago and all the same stupid crap continues to happen and humanity doesn't seem to be getting its collective shit together.

But then I remember the lessons from the book on why the world is like it is and how we can only nudge it slowly....

You can read it here: http://designsciencelab.com/resources/OperatingManual_BF.pdf

Edit to also mention; Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (as well as basically every other book he ever wrote).

Always go back to the classics

* The Design of Everyday Things
* Design for the Real World
* A Pattern Language
* Notes on the Synthesis of Form
* Never Leave Well Enough Alone
* Don't Make Me Think
* How Things Don't Work
* Usable Usability
* The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
* A Theory of Fun for Game Design

Other left-field books I've found myself going back to for design inspiration more than I would've thought

* The Death and Life of Great American Cities
* The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
* Influence by Robert Caldini
* Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
* The Art of Looking Sideways
* Cosmos
* Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
* The Theory of Moral Sentiments

And just specifically for computer UX, Smashing UX Design is a pretty good crash course.

* Thinking fast and slow - how to think and make decision and how to consider bias.

* Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - specialisation is for insects.

* Propaganda - 1928 book by the inventor of public relations and modern media. Know how they influence you.

* The war of art - being a professional. Honesty I don't think this book was written by a human this book completely changed my life and any other person I for to read this book had a similar experience.

I have more but I don't want to information overload anyone.