This. Delete: The Value of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. Takes the privacy debate to a whole new level.
What Am I Reading?
1
Category Archives: Books
Best Books about the Future (non-fiction)
As you can see from above image I’m still largely looking at the ceiling. Here’s my promised list of best books about the future – not ranked.
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
The Next 100 Years by George Friedman
Footprints of the Future by Richard Neville
Faster by James Gleick
Tomorrow’s People by Susan Greenfield
The 500 Year Delta by Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker
The Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand
Futurewise by Patrick Dixon
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
When Things Start to Think by Neil Gershenfeld
Envisioning the Next 50 Years Bruce Sterling
The Catalog of Tomorrow by Andrew Zoli
More than Human by Ramez Nan
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Future Perfect by Robyn Williams
Future Hype by Bob Seidensticker
Best Books on the Future (fiction)
Following yesterday’s list of my favourite films about the future he’s my list of best books about the future. Tomorrow I’ll do a list of non-fiction titles (probably a much better list because that’s largely what I read). Again, this list isn’t ranked.
- 1984
- Brave New World
- The Road
- War of the Worlds
- The Time Machine
- Fahrenheit 451
- Neuromancer
- Snow Crash
- The Shockwave Rider
- The Illustrated Man
My Schizophrenic Reading List
Thought I’d cover both bases. Nice quote in Faster by James Gleick. It’s a bit trite but I like it.
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”
The Next 100 Years et al
There seems to be a trend for books about the future (who saw this coming?). I’ve just read two more. The first – and best – is The Next 100 Years by George Friedman. The first half of the book is concerned with some familiar trends. The second half is a scenario for a future war. Friedman can be a bit US-centric but overall it’s pretty fabulous. Totally recommended.
The second book is A Brief History of the Future by Jacques Attali. This book is again in two halves. The first half is very interesting but I think it goes off the rails in the second half. I suspect that this might be due to the translation from the French. Still a good read.
PS — My own book Future Files: A History of the next 50 years is coming out in an updated edition in Aus/NZ towards the end of the year.
The Future of Technology
Funny but I’m starting to use my blog as a personal to do list…somewhere to put ideas where I know I’ll be able to find them in the future. Case in point a book called Desirable Future?: Consumer Electronics in Tomorrow’s World by Jack Challoner. The book is about what technology may be like in 2050 and could provide an interesting contrast to my own book Future Files, which also goes out to the year 2050 in part.
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.23861