Things to read to learn about FPGA programming:
- Designing Video Game Hardware in Verilog (recommended by @indigo)
FPGA reading
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Category Archives: Book
The Divided Brain
Here is a presentation of the work of Iain McGilchrist: The Divided Brain.
McGilchrist has written a number of books, including:
Stolen Focus
I have finished reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari (affiliate link).
I went into this book much more worried about the state of attention in our communities than I was when I came out. Having read about it I kinda don’t feel that we really do have an urgent problem with so many people on earth being constantly engaged with their smart phones.
I might have trouble now starting a conversation with a family member because they are engrossed in their phone, and I might think this is new or different, but thirty years ago it would have been the same thing if they had their nose in a book or a newspaper.
I think by and large it’s good when we’re paying attention to things and engaging with them. That’s not only how entertainment gets done, that is also how work gets done.
I suspect one of the driving forces behind the surge in ADHD diagnoses (and Hari didn’t say this) is that people are getting the diagnosis deliberately because they want access to prescription amphetamines.
Anyway. I would still recommend reading this book. Hari does a good job of covering all the bases and investigating all the topics, including:
- context switching and its effects
- effects on flow
- physical and mental exhaustion
- sustained reading
- mind wandering
- tracking and manipulation
- stress and its triggers
- diet and pollution
- ADHD
- physical and psychological confinement
Johann Hari
Johann Hari is definitely a crank. I like him already! He wrote a book about drugs and addiction called Chasing the Scream, and there was a famous TED talk he did about that. I haven’t read Chasing the Scream, but this evening I am going to read Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again.
Note: the links to Amazon above are affiliate links. I recently signed up for an affiliate account with Amazon. Is that cool? Is that not cool at all? What sort of disclosures are appropriate when you use affiliate links? I have never used them before and am not expecting to make any significant amount of money with them, so maybe I should just not use affiliate links at all? I dunno. Would be happy to hear from you if you have an opinion.
Books by Kevin Kelly
Here is a list of books from Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired. This is just notes for Future John. I’m planning to read the first two, and maybe the last one; the others are old and hard to find in ebook or audible forms.
- Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier
- The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
- Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
- New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World
- Asia Grace
- What Technology Wants
- Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities
Four pillars of virtualization
I’m reading Mastering KVM Virtualization and it says the four pillars of virtualization are:
- CPU
- memory
- storage
- network
Circle that presses them
There’s a great quote from Carlos Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan: “A warrior proceeds strategically. If one wants to stop our fellow men one must always be outside the circle that presses them. That way one can always direct the pressure.”
The Problems of Philosophy, further reading
At the end of The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell says:
The student who wishes to acquire an elementary knowledge of
philosophy will find it both easier and more profitable to read some
of the works of the great philosophers than to attempt to derive an
all-round view from handbooks. The following are specially
recommended:
- Plato: Republic (especially Books VI and VII)
- René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
- Baruch Spinoza: Ethics
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Monadology
- George Berkeley: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous
- David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity
Ah, click bait. Sign of the times! MEGATHREAT: Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity | Mo Gawdat.
Mo Gawdat is an Egyptian entrepreneur and writer. He is the former chief business officer for Google X and author of the books Solve for Happy and Scary Smart.
Mo says there are some things we shouldn’t waste time talking about because they are going to happen, inevitably. These are:
- There is no shutting down or reversing AI, we can’t stop it
- AI will be significantly smarter than humans
- Bad things will happen in the process of developing AI (the specifics to be determined)
…and the fourth inevitability? Utopia..?
Reading Jacques Derrida
I’m interested in reading more Jacques Derrida and I think I might start with Margins of Philosophy.