Posts Tagged ‘books’
Emergence
Posted by: clare on: March 12, 2013
Published in 2001, this is a fairly neat book, although it felt a tad repetitive. As you’d imagine from the title, this book concerns the phenomenon of emergence, the (often unexpected) complex macro behaviour and systems that can arise from simple micro interactions. It has some really nice concepts, looking at emergence in different contexts [...]
Seven Languages in Seven Weeks
Posted by: clare on: January 20, 2013
I bought this as a birthday gift for my husband, but didn’t take long to borrow it… As you might guess from the title, this book is about whizzing through the philosophy and usage of seven programming languages in seven weeks. Each language is split across three days, and each day has a bunch of [...]
Geeks Bearing Gifts
Posted by: clare on: December 10, 2012
tl;dr: read this book. It is excellent. It turns out that WAIS have a library, and that the WAIS library has a copy of Ted Nelson’s Geeks Bearing Gifts. This is a stimulating, inspiring read that had me googling phrases and trying websites I hadn’t heard of before, not to mention browsing the GPL FAQ. [...]
The Non-Designer’s Design Book
Posted by: clare on: November 18, 2012
As a Computer Scientist who is intensely interested in design, I was intrigued to spot this book in a friend’s home. He was happy to loan it to me. The very short version of this review is, this is a good book. The book opens with a good analogy about how if you are able [...]
Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design
Posted by: clare on: December 3, 2011
AndySC was kind enough to loan me his copy of Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design. It’s a good book! It divides itself into two parts, frameworks and techniques. The first section struck me as particularly strong, with some really nice discussions of information as a material, and the history and use of metadata. The [...]
