Summer reading has most people thinking of reading as if it were a summer blockbuster movie (i.e. popcorn, lots of explosions, and it is mostly forgotten by the time you get back home…). I have been looking for some more interesting lists of books to read fort the summer, I have a few to share with you here:
Science-fiction classics that have rewired your brain
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/science-fiction-classics-that-have-rewired-your-brain
Time travel trouble
A Sound of Thunder is the story of a man who travels back in time to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Ray Bradbury’s seminal story introduced readers to the now-familiar butterfly effect: the notion that a tiny change can have world-shattering consequences.
During his trip, the hunter is panicked by the dinosaur and accidentally kills a butterfly. When he returns to the future he finds it irrevocably damaged, as an indirect result of the butterfly’s death.
A movie version was released in 2005, to catastrophic reviews. According to the New York Times, it "achieves a level of badness that is its own form of sublimity.”Dark future
Yevgeny Zamyatin ‘s We is an early example of one of science fiction’s most enduring tropes: the futuristic dystopia.
In We, people are referred to by numbers only, wear identical uniforms, and are slaves to the state – which can spy on everything they do because all buildings are made of glass.
Written in the years following the Russian revolution, it implicitly criticizes the way socialism morphed into totalitarianism. George Orwell read it shortly before beginning work on Nineteen Eighty-Four.
10 Books That Will Fry Your Mind This Summer
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/05/summer-reading-2011
Supergods
Author: Grant Morrison
Big idea: Subtitled What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, this trippy autobiography-cum-critical essay gathers up deep thoughts and otherworldly hallucinations experienced by the comics writer who became rich and famous after co-creating the Batman best-seller Arkham Asylum.
Embassytown
Author: China Miéville
Big idea: Alien life forms cohabitate a distant planet with human colonists, including Avice Benner Cho. She straddles both worlds from a unique perspective: Unable to speak the bizarre language used by the Ariekei, she functions as a "living figure of speech" for the aliens.
10 Essential Books for Thought-Provoking Summer Reading
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/05/10-essential-books-for-thought-provoking-summer-reading/239657
AN OPTIMIST’S TOUR OF THE FUTURE
After life threw comedian Mark Stevenson a curveball that made him face his own mortality, he spent a year traveling 60,000 miles across four continents and talked to scientists, philosophers, inventors, politicians, and other thought leaders around the world, looking for an antidote to the dystopian visions for the technology-driven future of humanity so pervasive in today’s culture. He synthesized these fascinating insights in An Optimist’s Tour of the Future: One Curious Man sets Out to Answer "What’s next?" — An illuminating and refreshingly hopeful guide to our shared tomorrow.
From longevity science to robotics to cancer research, Stevenson explores the most cutting-edge ideas in science and technology from around the world, the important ethical and philosophical questions they raise, and, perhaps most importantly, the incredible potential for innovation through the cross-pollination of these different ideas and disciplines.
THE INTERNET OF ELSEWHERE
Barely halfway though, 2011 has already been one of the most tumultuous years for global politics and civic unrest in modern history. And the most dramatic changes have taken place in societies where emerging technology is disrupting how citizen relate to their government and one another. While countries like Libya and Egypt have been the eye of the media storm, some of the most fascinating effects of these shifts have been in countries still off the mainstream radar. In The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World, California-born, Germany-based technology journalist Cyrus Farivar explores the role of the internet as a social, political and economic catalyst through compelling case studies from four unexpected countries: Iran, Estonia, South Korea, and Senegal.
From how Skype was invented in Estonia to why Senegal may be Sub-Saharan Africa’s best chance for widespread public Internet access to what makes South Korea the most wired country in the world, the book offers profiles of local tech pioneers alongside insightful analyses of cultural context and what the "developed world" can learn from these countries, in some cases years ahead in harnessing the sociopolitical virtues of web technology. And, in a Meta move true to the subject matter, Farivar successfully funded the book’s European tour on Kickstarter.
A NEW CULTURE OF LEARNING
Reinventing the broken system of today’s formal education is one of our era’s most pressing cultural concerns. And while most conversations on the subject can be redundant, navel-gazy and ultimately ineffectual, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown bring a refreshing perspective on the subject with equal parts insight, imagination, and optimism. Besides being one of our 7 must-read books on education, their A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change is the most popular book featured on Brain Pickings this year, and for good reason — it makes a compelling case for a new kind of learning, one growing synchronously and fluidly with technology rather than resisting it with restless anxiety, a vision that falls somewhere between Sir Ken Robinson ‘s call for creativity in education paradigms and Clay Shirky ‘s notion of "cognitive surplus."
