

Articles, Ideas, Books and/or Concepts that have changed your life - adammichaelc

I'm really curious to see what has influenced you all to become the people you are. What ideas? A quotation from an obscure philosopher? What books? What articles?<p>One for me is this article on the "Design Document" by Rex Parker of StreetSmartinc.com<p>http://streetsmartinc.com/design_doc.php
======
pg
When I was a kid, the documentary series _Connections_. It was the first time
I'd ever seen someone follow vectors through history instead of recounting it
one period at a time, like most books and classes do.

Discovering Lisp was a big one. This was in 1983, when the default programming
language was Pascal. Lisp seemed (and in retrospect was) startlingly better.
There was no one single book or quotation, but I remember how excited I was to
get my hands on a photocopy of the InterLisp manual.

Kenneth Clark's documentary series _Civilisation_ (and the accompanying book)
impressed me a lot. In fact, it was clearly the model for _Connections_. I've
never read anything else better about art. His ideas are extremely subversive,
but few get it because he usually speaks in code. And he had access to stuff
like no one else ever will again.

I also learned a lot from his book _The Nude_.

One of the biggest influences on my ideas about startups was an essay by TJ
Rogers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor. I don't remember the title, but it
cut through the usual corporate bullshit like a knife. For me the important
thing was not just what he said, but that one could even be that candid.

Of all the books I've read in the last 5 years or so, Hardy's _A
Mathematician's Apology_ is probably the one that stuck most in my head.

~~~
andreyf
For those interested, _A Mathematician's Apology_ is available online here:

[http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mss/misc/A%20Mathematician's%20...](http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mss/misc/A%20Mathematician's%20Apology.pdf)

YouTube links to the first episode of the series "Connections 1" (from 1978):

1/5 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbCNycm0nQ>

2/5 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlKykc6ipY4>

3/5 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIVnaq0spdE>

4/5 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNPL92tvqhY>

5/5 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRZ18GpOhg>

The rest are on YouTube also, as well as bittorent:

[http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4039213/BBC_-_Connections_-
__Com...](http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4039213/BBC_-_Connections_-
__Complete__History__Science)

Depending on whether or not you think paying ~$500 for them would serve "to
promote the progress of science and useful arts", you might be legally obliged
to buy them on Amazon.

~~~
Alex3917
I just read _A Mathematician's Apology_. Really interesting, it really puts
Hesse's _Glass Bead Game_ in context.

~~~
tel
_A Mathematician's Apology_ is a beautiful read, by definitions both plain
and, to some degree, those elaborated in the essay itself.

One interesting thing about the relevancy of the essay is the potential change
in the aesthetics of mathematics in wake of the proof of the Four Color
Theorem. Personally, I have to believe that some day someone will find a proof
that has all the elegance mathematicians are looking for.

 _"We do not want many ‘variations’ in the proof of a mathematical theorem:
‘enumeration of cases’, indeed, is one of the duller forms of mathematical
argument. A mathematical proof should resemble a simple and clear-cut
constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way."_

If you consider his constant foil in Chess, it's fun to think that perhaps
he'd see some degree of beauty in computer algorithms that solve the many
enumerations of chess in far more "general" and "surprising" ways.

------
Prrometheus
Some books:

"The Fountainhead" - gave me the gift of self-confidence

"The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution" - helps me
understand where I come from and where I fit in the Biosphere

"The Use of Knowledge in Society" - This, along with other pieces on economics
and capitalist anarchism, gave me an appreciation for distributed non-
hierarchical systems. (<http://www.econlib.org/Library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>)

Paul Graham's stuff - Got me to the point where I'm quitting my job in two
weeks.

I read a ton of fantasy, sci fi, and historical fiction growing up. I'm sure
that has something to do with my grand imagination, distaste for authority,
and idealism.

~~~
ovi256
Read The Djinn's Wife
(<http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0704/thedjinnswife.shtml>).

If you lack motivation to work on advanced software, this should put you right
back on track. It is... Asimovesquely inspiring.

~~~
wallflower
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070502134255/www.asimovs.com/_i...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070502134255/www.asimovs.com/_issue_0704/thedjinnswife.shtml)

------
wallflower
"It's not important to get it right; it's important to get it going."

I believe this encapsulates the dangers of perfectionism, the importance of
iterating, and the reason we should risk failure. And I find the concept
difficult to apply in some aspects of my life. I believe as you progress down
a particular route in life your mind's pattern recognition will find meaning
in particular quotes, books because you are trying to. And by extension, you
will meet like-minded people the more committed you are. Like buying a new car
and suddenly seeing it everywhere. Until we have immersive VR, I believe that
some experiences must be learned first-hand - and emotionally.

~~~
huhtenberg
"What does not break you, makes you stronger".

Helps to get through times when things are completely sour.

------
Alex3917
I only read non-fiction that's counterintuitive. I figure, hey, I'm pretty
smart, so if it's intuitive then I can probably figure it out on my own. A
list of stuff I cite most often:

No Contest & Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

PG's essays & ITConversations interviews

The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto

The Singularity is Near by Kurzweil

This graph: <http://alexkrupp.com/picture_library/plot.jpg>

Dee Hock's essay on leadership

A handful of blog posts by Mark Cuban

All Marketers are Liars & Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. All of the books
that Seth recommends are also worth reading.

Bruce Schneier's interview on ITConversations

Magic Ink, an essay by Bret Victor

War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

The Cluetrain Manifesto (the book)

I'm sure there's a lot more, but that's what comes to mind right now.

------
walterk
Without a doubt, Heidegger's explanation of readiness-to-hand in Being and
Time has done more for my usability and process inefficiency evaluating skills
than even Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things or any HCI book I've ever
read. While Norman's book comes in a strong second, the benefit of the first
few chapters of Being and Time is the incredibly low-level cognitive access it
gives you to the work your brain does when engaged in a task. (If you're
interested and don't mind slogging through some tough writing, pick up the
hardcover version and Dreyfus' Being-in-the-World and read them together.
Reading a Wikipedia article or some other summary fails to deliver the same
degree of low-level access.)

I'll also mention Ayn Rand as someone who wrote inspiringly about the
entrepreneur as a (potentially) heroic figure, but hasten to add that her
sociology of looters and movers is way too simplistic to ground some of her
views on ethics.

John Stuart Mill's "Utilitarianism" was my first assigned reading in a
political philosophy class, and remains my favorite.

Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals prompted me to question whether the
values I had always held were really all that valuable.

Eleanor Rosch's work on basic categories and prototype theory (without which
Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things--not to mention Weinberger's
Everything is Miscellaneous--would likely not have been written) is fantastic,
debunking empirically the Aristotelian theory of categories as being defined
by necessary and sufficient conditions (they can be, where we intentionally
define them to be from a top-down point of view, as in geometry, but bottom-up
the construction of categories is much looser and based on family resemblances
with one or several prototypes serving as the central point of comparison:
hence, when I say "bird" you're more likely to think of a bluebird-type bird
than a penguin or an ostrich). Knowing this does a lot to help loosen up your
understanding of things, which can become rigidified by traditional
mathematical, scientific, and analytic philosophical education.

Several others worth mentioning, but I've got to get back to work!

------
tom_rath
I'm not sure if "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" changed my life, but it
reassured me I was on the right track in starting a business. It reads very
well today and I'd recommend it to any professional.

I was particularly struck by this quote:

"I really don't know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but
it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in grey
flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere. They
seemed to me to be pursuing neither ideals nor happiness -- they were pursuing
a routine. For a long while I thought I was on the side lines watching the
parade, and it was quite a shock to glance down and see that I too was wearing
a grey flannel suit."

~~~
skmurphy
This is a really outstanding quote. I had read William Whyte's "The
Organization Man" which deconstructs the same situation from a sociological
perspective, but I had overlooked this novel: sometimes there is more truth in
fiction.

------
iamelgringo
Hackers and Painters, especially How to Make Wealth. I grew up overseas, and
really didn't have a decent grasp of how the whole money thing worked until I
started reading up on economics and money. How to Make Wealth really
crystalized a lot for me.

------
bumbledraven
Free 10-day Buddhist meditation retreats, incl. room & board, at one of the
many Vipassana Meditation Centers world-wide (<http://www.dhamma.org>). Very
old-school; the real deal.

The Goal, by Eliyahu Goldratt
(<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0884270610>). Most real-world systems
have a single constraint that limit the system's ability to achieve goal
units. The best way to improve the system is to (0) define the system's owners
and their goal for the system, (1) identify the constraint (2) improve the
situation at the constraint in a way that does not require significant
investment; (3) if the improvement resulting from the previous is not
sufficient, decide how to improve the constraint in a way that does require
significant investment; (4) subordinate everything else in the system to the
decision arrived at in the previous step; (5) start over at step 1.

The Game, by Neil Strauss
(<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060554738>)

~~~
inovica
dhamma.org looks great. Just got to find the time to do one of these 10-day
courses. They look intense from what I've been reading, but I think I'd really
benefit. Did you do one of them?

~~~
bumbledraven
They intense and worthwhile. I did my first one back in high school.

[http://novemberfive.blogspot.com/2007/11/ten-days-story-
of-m...](http://novemberfive.blogspot.com/2007/11/ten-days-story-of-my-
meditation-retreat.html)

------
maheshcr
A worn out, moth eaten copy of Lord Byron's complete works. It took me almost
a decade to outgrow the influence. Especially the poem Manfred, and the
soliloquay at the beginning!

The Sanyasin - Satprem. I walked the streets of Chennai not knowing what the
hell was happening, while reading this. Magical, mystic..anyone who has ever
held any spiritual notions should read this...

Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantikakis, what can I say..every word has drilled
through me!

Ka by Roberto Calasso, this made me confront my own culture and religion like
no other.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

Godel, Escher & Bach - Douglas Hofstadter. Barely made it to 4th chapter but
that alone has shattered opinions I held about my style of thinking.

And Sri Aurobindo...almost everything that he has written touches me like no
other. It was like coming home after being in exile. Not that I understand
anything but...

And of course Don Box's talk on DDJ about the origins of .NET!

------
elq
The half dozen or so books about Richard Feynman life and approach to
problems.

(somewhat cliched but) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

GEB.

------
ojbyrne
Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing: <http://philip.greenspun.com/panda>
and other Greenspun writings. Yes the technical stuff in that book is dated,
but what I really liked was the approach to building websites (and companies)
from "first principles," rather than just trying to copy what other people
were doing.

Also since I was trying to write a Ph.D. thesis, it was just a revelation to
see that MIT accepted something interesting and readable for his thesis.

------
skmurphy
in no particular order:

Myers-Brigs Model for Personality

"Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank

John Boyd's OODA Loop as a model for competitive decision making

Decision Analysis techniques: in particular decision trees, expected value of
perfect information, and good decision bad outcome

BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) concept for negotiation
planning

"Secrets of Consulting" by Gerald M. Weinberg

"Bionomics" by Michael Rothschild

SimCity computer game

Analysis of Competing Hypotheses methodology

wiki (social process) model for small team collaborative document development

community of practice model for knowledge management

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein (in particular TANSTAAFL)

activation energy, catalyst, and phase change concepts from physics/chemistry

Amplify Positive Deviance model from Jerry Sternin (Save the Children)

"The Empowered Manager" by Peter Block, in particular his trust vs. agreement
matrix

"Crossing the Chasm" & "Inside the Tornado" by Geoffrey Moore

"Maneuver Warfare Handbook" by William Lind

"Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" by Daniel Amen

"Micromotives and Macrobehavior" by Thomas Schelling

Appreciative Inquiry Techniques

~~~
bumbledraven
<http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/uploads/whatisai.pdf> A Positive
Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry

I started reading this and was amazed. It's written for organizations but it
rings true when read as applying to an individual as well.

------
macmac
The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

Lila: An Inquiry into Morals - Robert M. Pirsig

The Open Society and its Enemies - Karl. R. Popper

The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks

Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And
that has made all the difference." from "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost

------
thingsilearned
My grandpa giving me "How to win friends and Influence people" in 7th grade.

My Mom teaching me to code in 6th grade.

------
mattmaroon
No specific book or article, but for me it's been what I've read about
Memetics and Evolutionary Psychology. It's not only enabled me to understand
human behavior, including my own, but has influence the way I think about
everything from career to diet.

------
enki
Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene

------
PCGuy
Anything by Heinlein - "Starship Troopers" especially Ayn Rand - "Atlas
Shrugged"

------
ambition
More than any books or articles, I've been influenced directly by the people
in my life, especially friends, mentors, family, and girls I wanted to
impress.

PG & Joel Spolsky, the Alchemist, the Little Prince.

------
hs
when i was a kid:KOEI historical games - got me into using hex editors to
change the stats :D

the games exposed me to sun tzu art of war

local book about python and unix - i used python around 2004 and beat the
courses assignments ('beating the avg' reminds me of those days) ... later
pg's great hacker on slashdot and then lisp - settled with newlisp now

iBookG4 exposed me to unix, designs, hardwares and most importantly, woz and
jobs ... later my ibook was broken. I am very happy with OpenBSD now

chemistry (and later internet recipes): now i bath using soda ash and citric
acid at very low conc - eliminate the need to restore soap and shampoo (great
time and $ saving for me) ... i also make my own fertilizer for aquarium use

among other things: open source, MIT+BSD license statistics, design of
experiments, bayes, simulation wikipedia and generic drugs low calorie for
longevity vegetarian dog, vegan, glycemic index no television vim, jquery pg
essays esp how to make wealth and the other road ahead Wild animals are
beautiful because they have hard lives "The less confident you are, the more
serious you have to act."

perhaps these things teach me that having great control at raw level (source
code, chemical, generic drug etc) gives me power to go vertically (own
hardware, os, language) as well as horizontally (own tweaks, foss libraries)
without much dependencies

~~~
kcy
Going off the Apple point - I remember getting my first Macintosh, booting it
up and being completely blown away by the richness of the interface. Despite
the analogy being a bit confusing for some, I was particularly intrigued by
how you could drag an icon of disk to the trash and the disk would actually
eject in the real world. That link between something as conceptually driven as
software and as physical as a floppy disk all happening in a box on my desk
really resonated with me. Apple as a company also always impressed me as an
example of entrepreneurship.

------
andreyf
Ideas/books/concepts of George Lakoff and his colleagues. In the same way,
Jeff Hawkins. Their approach to cognition as a problem that is comprehensible
is incredibly far-reaching.

In a similar vein, the writing and blog of Scott Adams:

<http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/>

The vast majority of it is humor, and the inspiring pieces are subtle, but
they're like a honey bunch of oats in your cereal (except more rare (and with
better metaphors than this)).

------
NewWorldOrder
:the_dip => 'by Seth Godin', :essays => 'by Paul Graham', :art_of_the_start =>
'by Guy Kawasaki', :the_innovators_solution => 'by Clayton Christensen &
Michael Raynor', :rich_dad_poor_dad => 'by Robert Kiyosaki',
:seven_habits_of_highly_effective_people => 'by Stephen Covey',
:stanford_technology_ventures_program => 'by Reid Hoffman (i.e., the session
he did for STVP)'

------
andrewl
D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths

Star Trek, the original series

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. The first science fiction story I read, which lead
to all the others.

The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner. That's Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll, with
wonderful annotations by Martin Gardner.

------
jlk
Ulysses by James Joyce Code Complete by Steve McConnell Walden by Henry David
Thoreau Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Watermelon Sugar by
Richard Brautigan Murphy by Samuel Beckett Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

------
gibsonf1
_Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_, Ayn Rand

The "Organon" books by Aristotle

_Introduction to Logic_, H. W. B. Joseph

_An Invitation to Formal Reasoning_, Fred Sommers & George Englebretsen

------
ca98am79
"The Kingdom of God is Within You" - Leo Tolstoy "Atlas Shrugged" - Ayn Rand

------
justindz
A quote for me:

"It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ Yet men die miserably every day/
for lack/ Of what is found there." - William Carlos Williams

------
dreish
Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I saw it when I was a kid, and didn't realize how big an
effect it had had on me until I watched it again a couple of years ago.

------
snowbird122
<http://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/news/magazine/99f/success.asp>

------
Fuca
Tao te ching, Shakespeare, and the pharse "Your will only have 2 friends: your
dad and a dollar in your pocket"

~~~
Tichy
How is that phrase inspiring? It sounds very demotivating to me. (Other
variation on the theme: "Want a friend? Get a dog").

------
tonyvt2005
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

------
jamesbritt
Here Come the Warm Jets; Brian Eno

Godel, Escher, Back, book; Douglas R. Hofstadter

------
edw519
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

But not for the standard reasons of food safety or socialism

To get a real taste of how regular people lived and struggled back then. That
was the life my great-grandparents and grandparents escaped so that I could
have a real life.

So whenever I "think" things are tough, I just slow down and imagine that it's
Packingtown, Chicago in 1906. Things suddenly seem a whole lot brighter now.

Here and now is a special time and place. Let's not any one of us squandor it.

------
mov
Lisp, SICP, PAIP

------
aswanson
Lucifer Principle -- Howard Bloom.

------
falsestprophet
Cosmos by Carl Sagan

------
strey
For me, it's mainly been people and their lives. The ideas and such flow from
that.

This is an undergrad teacher who has had the most influence on me:
<http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/author/john-mark-reynolds/>

------
sarvesh
Star Trek, Plays by George Bernard Shaw, Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Firefly

