Reader’s Digest

Or what Ilya has been up to in the past few weeks...

The Pattern on the Stone (Daniel Hillis)

I bought this one hoping to get some insights into Genetic Programming and parallel computing. Ironically, the sections that I was initially interested in only occupied the last 10 pages. The book is a general overview of the entire field of computer science (as of ~1998, granted not that much has changed), and kudos to the author, it's a good one too. Just reading through the chapters brought back the memories of all of my 1st, 2nd and 3rd year CS courses. It's interesting to look at all of these things in perspective (having completed the courses) and to draw connections between each. Great book. Section on AI has some interesting insights as well.

The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)

Between the more technical readings, sometimes it's nice to pick an easy read, and that's exactly what this book is. This one has a very similar flavor to "Blink" (well, it is the same author). Gladwell goes through a number of social phenomena and psychology/sociology research topics to formulate his thesis of a 'tipping point', or how and why some ideas take off so rapidly. Again, I don't agree with some of the authors conclusions (ex. conclusions on smoking), but overall there are some interesting observations in the book. The book avoids any/all mathematics involved with the concepts of spread of information and I think that, that is the weakest point of it and could have been improved on. Granted, the book is a bestseller and was made to appeal to a large non-technical-all-walks-of-life audience, but some definitive models could have illustrated the points much better.

Incompleteness (Rebecca Goldstein)

This is part biography of Kurt Godel and part explanation of his famous (or infamous) proof of Incompleteness. This is a well written book, by description aimed at a general audience but has a distinct mathematical flavor to it. And that's exactly what I liked about it the most. Goldstein spends almost half of the book setting up the stage for Godel's work to explain its significance to the mathematical community (and philosophical). The latter half is spent on the actual proof of Incompleteness and its implications. Really interesting stuff. Once you get into the details and finally figure out what it really means it's funny how many misinterpretations of it you can find.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (Steven Johnson)

This book is much more technical than I anticipated but that's exactly what makes it stand out from the crowd. The author is a member of the Santa Fe Institute and you can feel the heavy vibe of interdisciplinary collaboration throughout the book. The range of topics is broad, exactly as the title suggests but the underlying patterns are the same. This is the book that made me write my Genetic Programming experiment, and given me much more to think about for sure. The bibliography alone will keep me busy for a while. A++ book, hands down.

Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki)

"While markets appear to work in practice, we are not sure how they work in theory". Thought provoking book for sure. It's been sitting on my Amazon wishlist for at least a year (too expensive), and just recently they finally released the paperback, so I finally got it. This book covers a lot of ground with respect to sociology, economics, politics, and group organization problems. Surowiecki exposes a lot of everyday behaviors which you never stop to think about on your own. Again, the bibliography is going to keep me busy for a while!

P.S. Amazon and Chapters are killing my credit card.