Personal canon
What are the books and creative works that have inspired you most, that guide your worldview? There's my quick list:
Books
- Philosophy & technology: The World Beyond Your Head crystalized a lot of thoughts that I already had about technology and what it means to be a person in the world. Despite being published well before the "AI era" it is endlessly useful as a framework for understanding LLM culture.
- Government: Achieving our Country captures a lot of how I feel about governing and government. Essentially that it's a lot of work to keep society running and for my particular brand of ideal politics, which is closest to a combination of market socialism, georgism, and sewer-socialism, if you want a functioning government, people need to work in the government and do a good job. This book is mostly in opposition to libertarianism on the right and Marxist anti-statism on the left.
- Economics: Capital in the Twenty-First Century gave me hope for economics. Instead of arbitrary equations and vague theory, Piketty and his crew (Zucman and Saez) show the way to an economics that's grounded in reality and data analysis: building the whole thing from the arithmetic up.
Articles
- Business and people: The Web is a Customer Service Medium changed the whole way that I think about the internet and talking to people over it. It helped me let go of my annoyance with people treating me (as an open source software maintainer) like I was the manager of a store and bringing their complaints: the truth is, that's the default state. As long as we have capitalism, at least.
Albums
- Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs was my favorite album for more than a decade. It introduced me to so many new ideas in songwriting: loop pedals, odd meters, little corners of jazz, reinvention of your own songs. Andrew Bird's folk covers introduced me to Charlie Patton and The Handsome Family. This album was so influential.
- Gymnopédies was the first 'classical' music that I connected with, and is still the anchor for finding new works.