Eben Hewitt – Technology Strategy Patterns
The ‘cookbook’ approach does a lot to demystify Strategy and Architecture, while the digressions into philosophy make the relatively basic content also palatable for the advanced reader.
If the talent density in your organization is high enough and your corporate culture strong enough, you could give extreme freedom to your people to increase te level of innovation
Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer – No Rules Rules
Pretty strong boundary conditions need to be fulfilled in order for this scheme to work; including broad acceptance of a high level of interpersonal ruthlessness.
There are a huge number of ways in which Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) can take over the world, rendering humanity essentially useless
Nov. 2017: Interesting exploration of the implications of AGI, faulted by the typical preference of Analytical Philosophy for construction of intricate, highly theoretical scenario’s, under-emphasizing basic challenges (in the case of AGI: lack of robustness / antifragility).
Jun. 2023: The writer has leveraged the recent rise of LLMs like ChatGPT to further fuel fear about an AGI break-out – even though other AI-related risks require more imminent attention.
When you push the laws of physics to their extremes, weird things can – and will – happen
Katie Mack – The end of everything
Highly entertaining take on building a rudimentary astrophysics.
Over her impressive and long career, Agatha Christie evolved from an ground-breaking writer into a global brand
Lucy Worsely – Agatha Christie
The book over-indexes a bit on the domestic context, which does not help in de-mystifying the genius of its subject.
Neuroscience increasingly provides evidence how the Arts influence psychology and social behavior
Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross – Your brain on art
Interesting to read how advances in brain science lead to confirmation of intuitive but traditionally hard-to-prove hypotheses.
Crowd-sourced analysis of publicly available data can be a powerful tool in exposing lies, as is proved by an impressive track record of impactful scoops.
Eliot Higgins – We are Bellingcat
The book raises the question what happens if online sleuth methods are applied for profit maximization rather than for truth seeking.
If you update the brain-in-a-vat argument to the current state of technology, it reads: ‘We cannot prove that we are not in a simulation.’
The vocabulary of ‘sims’, and ‘VR’ makes for entertaining examples of traditional philosophical concepts; but the author’s core arguments about simulation and physical reality seem to implicitly assume a suspicious form of Cartesian dualism.
Contrarian thinking is a powerful weapon, if combined with genuine curiosity and a deep respect for facts and data
Richard Feyneman – Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman
Not all anecdotes have aged well but there are enough gems to make the book worthwhile.
The success of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is an excellent example of how accidental biases affect scientific progress
A well-written account of the history of quantum physics in the wake of the Bohr v. Einstein controversy.
Structural shifts in energy production and usage (especially shale oil and EVs) have fundamentally affected the global power balance
The ‘it is all about oil’ narrative of international politics over the last 20 years made explicit is a comprehensive yet digestible form.
Metaphysical theories are constraint by the scientific knowledge, but plenty degrees of freedom remain for those in search (or need) of meaning
Sabine Hossenfelder – Existential Physics
Elegant combination of depth, playful curiosity and humbleness.
From its earliest origins math has been seen both as an formalization of divine perfection and as an effective, practical tool for solving real-world problems
Paolo Zellini – The Mathematics of the Gods and the Algorithms of Men
Guided tour through the philosophy of mathematics, seldomly deviating from the expected and missing in-depth reflection on the role of data science in this regard.
Africa and Africans have never been taken seriously by the Western world, simplifying the story of the continent to ‘famine and safaris’
Dipo Faloyin – Africa is not a country
Well known story told in a fresh style, which unfortunately still serves a purpose.
The lack quality control on generic drugs opened the door to fraud and deceit, endangering health and lives of the world’s poor
Katherine Eban – Bottle of lies
Impressive and concerning whistleblower story illustrating the subtleties in developing and producing effective generic drugs.
When managing your enterprise data, you should aim for a flexible, loosely coupled architecture that can handle large-scale batch and streaming data as well as APIs
Piethein Strengholt – Data management at scale
Thorough expose that goes through a lot, over-indexing on the architecture side.
To succeed in business: conform to reality, be cunning, but stick with whatever moral compass you have
Robert Ringer – Million dollar habits
Life advice packaged as ‘business zen’ but lacking elementary kindness towards others and ‘borrowing’ its title from the more well known Bryan Tracy book.
Since the invention of the micro processor, chip production has become of imminent strategic importance for both the USA and other geopolitical power blocks
Nice historical overview, very topical in an era where technology significantly affects the Ukraine war and the power play between the USA and China around Taiwan.
Silicon valley types and tech icons all recommend using OKRs for business steering, but each means something slightly different
John Doerr – Measure what matters
If you look past the author’s boundless Andy Grove adoration, there are some useful lessons to be learnt.
The issues and conflicts plaguing modern Spain are rooted in a troubled history that until shockingly recently was a dictatorship
Great overview that brings together different perspectives in a shocking narrative without becoming judgemental.