Kevin Kelly
Senior Maverick at Wired, author of bestseller book, The Inevitable. Also Cool Tool maven, Recomendo chief, Asia-holic, and True Film buff.
10+ Book Recommendations by Kevin Kelly
The Art and Soul of Dune
Tanya Lapointe
Immerse yourself in the world of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and discover the incredible creative journey that brought Frank Herbert’s iconic novel to the big screen. Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune has been brought to life like never before in the breathtaking film adaptation from acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival). Now fans can be part of this creative journey with The Art and Soul of Dune, the official companion to the hugely anticipated movie event. Written by Dune executive producer Tanya Lapointe, this visually dazzling exploration of the filmmaking process gives unparalleled insight into the project’s genesis—from its striking environmental and creature designs to its intricate costume concepts and landmark digital effects. The Art and Soul of Dune also features exclusive interviews with key members of the cast and crew, including Denis Villeneuve, Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, and many more, delivering a uniquely candid account of the hugely ambitious international shoot. Showcasing Villeneuve’s visionary approach to realizing Herbert’s science fiction classic, The Art and Soul of Dune is an essential companion to the director’s latest masterpiece.@insighteditions @nchan The unlimited regular edition is now available on Amazon as well. https://t.co/YjOCWUNoB5
The Genius of China
Robert Temple
Revised, full-color illustrated edition of the multi-award-winning, international bestseller that charts the unparalleled and astounding achievement of ancient China • Brings to life one hundred Chinese “firsts” in the fields of agriculture, astronomy, engineering, mathematics, medicine, music, technology, and warfare • Based on the definitive work of the world’s most famous Sinologist, Joseph Needham (1900-1995), author of Science and Civilisation in China • Organized by field, invention, and discovery for ease of reference Undisputed masters of invention and discovery for 3,000 years, the ancient Chinese were the first to discover the solar wind and the circulation of the blood and even to isolate sex hormones. From the suspension bridge and the seismograph to deep drilling for natural gas, the iron plough, and the parachute, ancient China’s contributions in the fields of engineering, medicine, technology, mathematics, science, transportation, warfare, and music helped inspire the European agricultural and industrial revolutions. Since its original publication, The Genius of China has won five literary awards in America and been translated into 43 languages. Its Chinese edition, The Spirit of Chinese Invention, was approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education for use in connection with the national secondary curriculum in China. Based on the immense, authoritative scholarship of the late Joseph Needham, the world’s foremost scholar of Chinese science, and including a foreword by him, this revised full-color illustrated edition brings to life the spirit and excitement of the unparalleled achievements of ancient China.@jasoncrawford Depending what aspect of Needham's China you are interested in, I found this one-volume summary by a co-author to be useful. Genius of China https://t.co/AlK1bkf9cu
Empty Planet
Darrell Bricker
Explores the pros and cons of a declining global population, including worker shortages, lower risk of famine, and greater affluence and autonomy for women.@randopedestrian Yes, it's a fantastic book. Recommended.
The Silver Cord
Kevin Kelly
Includes "Silver Cord volume 1," originally published in 2012.I really enjoyed @PixarSoul movie. It depicted souls, a birthing ring, astral travel, and cheating the great beyond. We cover all that in our graphic novel @Silver_Cord and it's even better. https://t.co/GD7QuLOKXL
Agency
William Gibson
In William Gibson's first novel since 2014's bestselling "The Peripheral," a gifted "app-whisperer," hired to beta test a mysterious new product, finds her life endangered by her relationship with her surprisingly street-smart and combat-savvy digital assistant. Residence: Vancouver, B.C. Print run 150,000.I have not yet read @GreatDismal 's new novel, Agency, but I'm urged to do it sooner by this great review: https://t.co/WJvNdNKB3C
- (Black & White Edition). Creative people tend to accrue a nifty set of tools. Great tools enable efficiency and further creativity, and sometimes inspire whole new ways of working. For the past five years, we have interviewed notable creators in a 25-minute podcast for Cool Tools, asking them to rave about four of their favorite tools. These tools range from classic handtools, to state-of-the-art laser cutters, to perfect pencils. Each pick is a surprise and a lesson. The 150 best past responses from the Cool Tools podcast are presented in this book. The result is 300 pages of concentrated goodness and tool fandom.
We asked 150 remarkable people to rave about four of their favorite tools. Then we packaged their reviews into a 300-page book: Four Favorite Tools ($13). Great source of gift ideas and a good gift itself. https://t.co/7yHh0fDAsu
- (Black & White Edition). Creative people tend to accrue a nifty set of tools. Great tools enable efficiency and further creativity, and sometimes inspire whole new ways of working. For the past five years, we have interviewed notable creators in a 25-minute podcast for Cool Tools, asking them to rave about four of their favorite tools. These tools range from classic handtools, to state-of-the-art laser cutters, to perfect pencils. Each pick is a surprise and a lesson. The 150 best past responses from the Cool Tools podcast are presented in this book. The result is 300 pages of concentrated goodness and tool fandom.
Our four favorite tools. 150 creators talk about their four favorite tools in this new book we made. Printed on demand. https://t.co/cGDk9cf6ir
Empty Planet
Darrell Bricker
From the authors of the bestselling The Big Shift, a provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanization, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline--and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States is well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism and anti-immigrant backlash lead us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever before. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.@stewartbrand @janemetcalfe Definitely read the new book Empty Planet.
Out Of Control
Kevin Kelly
Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.25 years ago I published my first book Out of Control. Still in print, and still useful: https://t.co/N6Rr4VjAMP. To celebrate I’m going to tweet the best lines from it, #OoC25.
What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
My previous book "What Technology Wants" got a makeover and clean crisp, friendlier new cover. Still powerful inside. https://t.co/lC2Jmu13fW
- A comprehensive three-volume reference work offers six hundred entries, with the first two volumes covering themes and the third volume exploring two hundred classic works in literature, television, and film.
@chr1sa @josephflaherty @smc90 My first was Dec 1995. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Good book. https://t.co/d2yN5FrSSv
The Inevitable
Kevin Kelly
A New York Times Bestseller From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the twelve technological imperatives that will shape the next thirty years and transform our lives Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges. From the Hardcover edition.A masterful summary of my book The Inevitable in one longish page: https://t.co/aXCkdpshJs
What the Dormouse Said
John Markoff
Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ’70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.@om Add @markoff 's What the Doormouse Said.
The Fatal Shore
Robert Hughes
In this bestselling account of the colonization of Australia, Robert Hughes explores how the convict transportation system created the country we know today. Digging deep into the dark history of England's infamous efforts to move 160,000 men and women thousands of miles to the other side of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Hughes has crafted a groundbreaking, definitive account of the settling of Australia. Tracing the European presence in Australia from early explorations through the rise and fall of the penal colonies, and featuring 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps, The Fatal Shore brings to life the incredible true history of a country we thought we knew.@bfeld By far, Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore is the best history book on Australia for you.
The Inevitable
Kevin Kelly
Becoming -- Cognifying -- Flowing -- Screening -- Accessing -- Sharing -- Filtering -- Remixing -- Interacting -- Tracking -- Questioning -- Beginning@danmachen Pub date June 7 https://t.co/XuSthFODhv
The Silver Cord
Kevin Kelly
Includes "Silver Cord volume 1," originally published in 2012.It's the season for angels -- and robots! What is Christmas without AIs? More in my big graphic novel @Silver_Cord https://t.co/k6qoBZcWw0
WTF?
Tim O'Reilly
WTF? can be an expression of amazement or an expression of dismay. In today’s economy, we have far too much dismay along with our amazement, and technology bears some of the blame. In this combination of memoir, business strategy guide, and call to action, Tim O'Reilly, Silicon Valley’s leading intellectual and the founder of O’Reilly Media, explores the upside and the potential downsides of today's WTF? technologies. What is the future when an increasing number of jobs can be performed by intelligent machines instead of people, or done only by people in partnership with those machines? What happens to our consumer based societies—to workers and to the companies that depend on their purchasing power? Is income inequality and unemployment an inevitable consequence of technological advancement, or are there paths to a better future? What will happen to business when technology-enabled networks and marketplaces are better at deploying talent than traditional companies? How should companies organize themselves to take advantage of these new tools? What’s the future of education when on-demand learning outperforms traditional institutions? How can individuals continue to adapt and retrain? Will the fundamental social safety nets of the developed world survive the transition, and if not, what will replace them? O'Reilly is "the man who can really can make a whole industry happen," according to Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet (Google.) His genius over the past four decades has been to identify and to help shape our response to emerging technologies with world shaking potential—the World Wide Web, Open Source Software, Web 2.0, Open Government data, the Maker Movement, Big Data, and now AI. O’Reilly shares the techniques he's used at O’Reilly Media to make sense of and predict past innovation waves and applies those same techniques to provide a framework for thinking about how today’s world-spanning platforms and networks, on-demand services, and artificial intelligence are changing the nature of business, education, government, financial markets, and the economy as a whole. He provides tools for understanding how all the parts of modern digital businesses work together to create marketplace advantage and customer value, and why ultimately, they cannot succeed unless their ecosystem succeeds along with them. The core of the book's call to action is an exhortation to businesses to DO MORE with technology rather than just using it to cut costs and enrich their shareholders. Robots are going to take our jobs, they say. O'Reilly replies, “Only if that’s what we ask them to do! Technology is the solution to human problems, and we won’t run out of work till we run out of problems." Entrepreneurs need to set their sights on how they can use big data, sensors, and AI to create amazing human experiences and the economy of the future, making us all richer in the same way the tools of the first industrial revolution did. Yes, technology can eliminate labor and make things cheaper, but at its best, we use it to do things that were previously unimaginable! What is our poverty of imagination? What are the entrepreneurial leaps that will allow us to use the technology of today to build a better future, not just a more efficient one? Whether technology brings the WTF? of wonder or the WTF? of dismay isn't inevitable. It's up to us!Reading this hilarious tweet storm live from O'Reilly's WTF Future of Work conference was better than attending it. https://t.co/PpPTwheojy
The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking
Edward B. Burger
The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking presents practical, lively, and inspiring ways for you to become more successful through better thinking. The idea is simple: You can learn how to think far better by adopting specific strategies. Brilliant people aren't a special breed--they just use their minds differently. By using the straightforward and thought-provoking techniques in The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking, you will regularly find imaginative solutions to difficult challenges, and you will discover new ways of looking at your world and yourself--revealing previously hidden opportunities. The book offers real-life stories, explicit action items, and concrete methods that allow you to attain a deeper understanding of any issue, exploit the power of failure as a step toward success, develop a habit of creating probing questions, see the world of ideas as an ever-flowing stream of thought, and embrace the uplifting reality that we are all capable of change. No matter who you are, the practical mind-sets introduced in the book will empower you to realize any goal in a more creative, intelligent, and effective manner. Filled with engaging examples that unlock truths about thinking in every walk of life, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking is written for all who want to reach their fullest potential--including students, parents, teachers, businesspeople, professionals, athletes, artists, leaders, and lifelong learners. Whenever you are stuck, need a new idea, or want to learn and grow, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking will inspire and guide you on your way. To share thinking stories, go to: http://5elementsofthinking.wordpress.com@mikedariano Do you want to review Five Elements for Effective Thinking for Cool Tools?
COOL TOOLS
Kate Klippensteen
Presenting Japanese cooking utensils that are functional and artistic, this book treats them as both works of art and items of practical interest. The text, by a long-time columnist on Tokyo dining and entertaining, presents the history, the usage, and the people behind these tools, in brief entries. Japanese cuisine is flourishing among the food-conscious all over the world, as are the cookbooks featuring recipes from a wide variety of styles. Now, Cool Tools' goes deep inside the kitchen, into the cupboards and the drawers, to the stove tops and wall hangers where a variety of'I made a video explaining how the hippie Whole Earth Catalogs became my new book Cool Tools, a resource for DIY-ers. http://t.co/aw5eiEYvby