Tony Fadell – Build
Shamelessly self-aggrandizing autobiography dressed-up as self-help book for entrepreneurs.
Aging populations and the breakdown of global trade make that very bad things are going to happen all over the world, but less so in the USA
Peter Zeihan – The end of the world is just the beginning
Highly entertaining read with a lot of black humor, but incomplete in its analysis (e.g. of risk of internal conflicts in the USA and likelihood of collaboration between states in Europe).
Elections are not democratic but aristocratic, because only members of the elite get on the ballot
David van Reybrouk – Against Elections (read in Dutch)
It would be interesting to expand the solution space to include not just random selection of citizens but also modes of participation and collaboration from non-political domains like open source software development.
To learn how to make an source software project a commercial success, study business models in the media industry
Nadia Eghbal – Working in Public
Key insight of the book is that, conceptually, open source software is no different from other content that is published online.
To benefit the most from network effects: build local scale, fiercely fight for each new value pocket, and remember that every hockey stick will become an S-curve
The book proves that those A16Z folks are very good at marketing sauce on not-so-ground-breaking ideas (as described by Sebastian Mallaby)
Every measured quantity should come together with another, more intuitive, figure as a reference
Andrew Elliott – Is that a big number?
Charming book with some nice perspectives that preaches to the converted
The initial strength of the Hanseatic League was the fluidity of the institution, but that also limited the degree to which it could scale its power
Carsten Jahnke – Die Hanse (read in German)
Nice to read as an example of a successful alternative power structure (in the sense of Graeber en Wengrow), that is nonetheless is firmly rooted in proto-capitalist principles.
The strive for ever greater precision has been a driving force behind all landmark engineering achievements
Simon Winchester – The perfectionists
Nice collection of anecdotes which struggles to become more than just that.
The careful study of ancient wrecks reveals much about how – through the ages and across civilizations – engineers have solved for the same challenges in different ways
Richard Steffy – Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks
It would be worthwhile research topic to map the development of ship building to the principles of disruptive innovation as laid out by Clayton Christensen.
When structuring your tech-heavy organization it helps to think in archetypes of team roles and interaction modes
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais – Team Topologies
An elegant little book that provides a refreshingly clear view on how to make Conway’s law an effective principle for organizing products and platforms.
Earth is an unremarkable planet in an average solar system in a plain-vanilla galaxy in just one-of-many bubble universes
Neil de Grasse Tyson, Richard Gott, Michael Strauss – Welcome to the universe
The great thing about this book is the emphasis on HOW we know what we know about objects that are light years far away that are to our eyes not more than a dot in the sky.
A subversive branch of the French royal family has been responsible for the emergence of the low countries as a geopolitical entity
Bart de Loo – The Burgundians (read in Dutch)
Politics and court life in the high middle ages evoked in a juicy style.
Venture Capital has been of major importance in the making of the tech industry in general, and Silicon Valley in particular.
Sebastian Mallaby – The Power Law
Nice as a description of the historical evolution of the VC phenomenon, but rather condoning in its evaluation.
Drawing is a great way to structure your thinking and convey your ideas
Dan Roam – The back of the Napkin
The author has an impressively complete typology of explanatory drawings.
Indigenous societies show that, next to capitalism, there are many alternative blends of violence, knowledge and charisma on which a viable social power structure can be built
David Graeber and David Wengrow – The dawn of everything
The authors attack a overly simplified version of the theories they aim to refute, failing to recognize the necessarily non-linear nature of evolution.
Thinking of decisions under uncertainty as bets leads to better, more rational, choices by challenging our innate biases
Entertaining plea for rationality and scenario thinking.
A selfless focus on creating impact makes employees highly valuable for organizations
The book gives surprisingly little attention to the question how Impact Players can assure they get rewarded for the value they bring
Determining the value function is a difficult problem that is nonetheless key to safely and effectively using reinforcement learning
Brian Christian – The Alignment Problem
The analogies between human and machine learning strategies are skillfully narrated, but rather drawn out.
PayPal has been successful first and foremost because of ruthless competitiveness and a maniacal work ethic
In hindsight, the early internet was shockingly primitive.
The early 20th century provided a thriving pan-European intellectual and scientific environment, for those men who had the brains and could afford to participate
Margriet van der Heijden – Denken is verrukkelijk (“Thinking is delicious”; in Dutch)
Thorough biography of Paul Ehrenfest and Tatiana Afanassjewa.