A few of the better books I read this year are shown below:
- Idea Makers, Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram's thoughts on some great thinkers)
- The Nature of Technology, W. Brian Arthur (every engineering student should read this book before starting their degree)
- An Introduction to Agent-based Modeling, Uri Wilensky and William Rand
- Chaos, James Cleick
- NEXUS: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, Mark Buchanan
- From Material to Life, Sara Imari Walker et al (quantum mechanics, evolution and information theory)
- Your Next Government, Tom W. Bell
- Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography, Vlad Tarko (only woman Nobel Laureate in economics)
Best book was definitely From Material to Life, which I am going to teach in my Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking course this spring.. Fantastic demonstration of how to approach an impossible problem--how did life emerge.
Elinor Ostrom is a manual for how to live in a Blockchain directed government less world, although she researched for much less aggressive purposes.
Everyone interested in social problems should read about agent-based modeling. I believe we are on the verge of modeling social problems to derive real insight.
Not a year for much light reading, but a great year for learning.