From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Mon Oct 13 1997 - 23:14:51 MDT
maxmore@primenet.com (Max More) writes:
>I don't have a good book chosen to cover AI. I don't regard Minsky's
>Society of Mind as appropriate here. I'd like something more accessible
>that covers the field more broadly.
I'm fairly certain you won't find anything which better meets those
2 criteria. I'd suggest a cognitive science/AI section with SOM,
Dennett's Consciousness Explained, and maybe William Calvin's
The Cerebral Code (I haven't read this yet, but from his prior books
and what I've heard of this one it belongs on the list).
>which to pick. Also needed: A good book on space and space travel.
Maybe Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones; (eds.),
Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience
I'm also tempted to suggest Barrow and Tipler's The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle, but it probably has too much tensor calculus, or Tipler's
Physics of Immortality, which is probably too controversial.
>IMPORTANT TECHNOLOGIES
BC Crandall (ed) Nanotechnology
This is at least as easy to read as the ones you listed, and more up to date.
>ECONOMICS/SOCIETY
I'd add:
Thomas Sowell Knowledge and Decisions
and at least one book by Hayek; I think my favorite is:
F. A. Hayek Law, Legislation, and Liberty (volumes 1 and 3)
Richard Epstein Simple Rules for a Complex World
Michael Rothschild Bionomics
Robert Axelrod The Evolution of Cooperation
I'd like to see Atlas Shrugged replaced in the top 10 by a Hayek or Sowell book.
Also, Vinge's The Ungoverned probably should be mentioned here.
>PSYCHOLOGY
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience
>GENERAL FUTURE
Kevin Kelly Out Of Control
>FICTION:
Linda Nagato Tech Heaven
(Not a particularly outstanding book, but contains a good description
of current cryonics organizations).
Greg Egan Permutation City
I found these 2 to be rather boring and would recommend removing them:
>Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age
>David Zindell: Neverness
The papers by Mark Miller and Eric Drexler in Ecology of Computation
might also be worth mentioning.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey | caffeine O CH3
pcm@rahul.net | || |
pcm@quote.com | H3C C N
http://www.rahul.net/pcm | \ / \ / \
http://www.quote.com | N C C
| || ||
C C---N
// \ /
O N
|
CH3
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:45:02 MST