

Key Reads for the young technologist - dcter2288

Given the opportunity to identify 3-4 key texts for a young technologist, what would you select? Topics could span from histories to technical works, open key crypto to mobile computing.
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sixtofour
To Engineer is Human, by Henry Petroski
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfJ0EkrXqg>

And/or anything else by Petroski <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Petroski>

Systemantics, by John Gall <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics>

"27. The Fail-Safe Theorem: When a Fail-Safe system fails, it fails by failing
to fail safe."

Someone will inevitably suggest Brooks' Mythical Man Month to a young
technologist, so I'll leave that suggestion to that person in this young
technologist's career.

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turbojerry
I would say the most important thing is to stimulate your thinking in
different ways, here are a few books that might help in that regard-

Technomanifestos: Visions from the Information Revolutionaries by Adam Brate

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel De Landa

Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes edited by Roy Christopher

I would also recommend reading the works of Ted Nelson and Buckminster Fuller,
as well as some fiction by Neal Stephenson, Robert Anton Wilson and other SF
authors.

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convulsive
Great list. I didn't know about De Landa's work, looks really interesting. In
the same spirit, and for something more recent, I'd recommend Lanier's You Are
Not a Gadget. I also find Erik Davis' Techgnosis to be a criminally well-
written book.

