The Shape of Code

The following are the really interesting books I read this year (only one of which was actually published in 2018, everything has to work its way through several piles). The list is short because I did not read many books and/or there is lots of nonsense out there.

The English and their history by Robert Tombs. A hefty paperback, at nearly 1,000 pages, it has been the book I read on train journeys, for most of this year. Full of insights, along with dull sections, a narrative that explains lots of goings-on in a straight-forward manner. I still have a few hundred pages left to go.

The mind is flat by Nick Chater. We experience the world through a few low bandwidth serial links and the brain stitches things together to make it appear that our cognitive hardware/software is a lot more sophisticated. Chater’s background is in cognitive psychology (these days he’s an academic more connected with the business world) and describes the experimental evidence to back up his “mind is flat” model. I found that some of the analogues dragged on too long.

In the readable social learning and evolution category there is: Darwin’s unfinished symphony by Leland and The secret of our success by Henrich. Flipping through them now, I cannot decide which is best. Read the reviews and pick one.

Group problem solving by Laughin. Eye opening. A slim volume, packed with data and analysis.

I have already written about Experimental Psychology by Woodworth.

The Digital Flood: The Diffusion of Information Technology Across the U.S., Europe, and Asia by Cortada. Something of a specialist topic, but if you are into the diffusion of technology, this is surely the definitive book on the diffusion of software systems (covers mostly hardware).