| Title | Author | Description | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Study of the Toyota Production System (Produce What Is Needed, When It's Needed) | Shigeo Shingo, Andrew P. Dillon | An in depth study of the industrial engineering concepts and logic behind the Toyota Production System. The author was the technical point person for the development of some truly amazing techniques in production. This book changed how I view making stuff, and rehabilitated hope in the industrial mode of production. | |||
| Signal and Power Integrity | Eric Bogatin | The best electrical engineering text. Long and full of wonderful language, it helps you to build intuition about the basic physical processes that underly design decisions. For anyone who will ever need to design a circuit board, I recommend reading at least the first chapters of this book. | |||
| Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy | Wayne R. Moore | If you like machine tools, read this book. The author, a principal at the Connecticut based Moore Tool and Die company, talks about the fundamentals of making things straight. The techniques are ingeniously simple, developed before computers, but incredibly complex and specialized. | |||
| Intelligence and Spirit | Reza Negarestani | Reza's smash succesor to Cyclonopedia. I really like this book, but maybe because I have a kink for not understanding what I'm reading. | |||
| Civilization and Capitalism | Ferdinand Braudel | I haven't read much of this. Without intention, I have found myself in a niche where a lot of different authors I'm drawn to will reference Braudel. So it seems like I should read this, and it seems extremely well written, but it's hard to have energy to read about medieval civilization. | |||
| 10,000 Years of Nonlinear History | Manuel Delanda | One of the first books I read that approached its subject matter with what you could call a "systems" perspective. Very accessible and will introduce you to valuable analogical tools like autocatalysis, or chemical systems far from equilibrium. | |||
| Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus | Bernard Stieglerthe | Fantastically written, makes you think about technology in an unfamiliar way. The classical allusions went over my head like usual, but overall very good book to elicit insights. | |||
| The Ant Trap | Brian Epstein (no relation) | I remember loving this book when I read it in Sophomore year of college. I learned a Python module to simulate the interactions of agents, but never found the time to do much with it. One of my unexplored research interests is the design of complex dynamic (social?) systems by simulation. | |||
| Everything Must Go | James Ladyman and Don Ross, David Spurrett, John G. Collier | Insanely dense book. A reference goldmine, but hard to get beyond Chapter 3. Definitely has a sense of giddiness and a bit of punk ethos which I like. | |||