The DesignMeets Summer Reading List

I'm intrigued by a narrative about carbon, more broad than the negative ones we typically hear, through the lens of life-giving.

I've heard Björkman on podcasts, and find his thoughts on how we find and make meaning in today's world really interesting, so I want to explore his ideas more.

I love speculative fiction. I grew up on cyberpunk. I love the way authors can play with ideas for the very near future. Elvia Wilk is an architectural critic and this is her first novel. This is my second time reading I (first in the pandemic). The atmosphere of the central house (basically a character) and the mountain in this book is almost physical. I could feel being there. The fracturing of relationships and urban environment are so enveloping. Elvia Wilk creates a weird Berlin but one of the surprising parts is the evangelism for the central corporation. In review if you like Severence this has an odd reality that is similar.

Truth is sometimes more fun than fiction. Like a lot of designers I have a fascination with Andy Warhol and The Factory. Warhol is just such a character, such a personal brand. This documents a road trip that Warhol and friends took from New York to Los Angeles to the opening of his second solo show hosted in Hollywood by Dennis Hopper. As expected it is layered with almost unbelievable stories and includes Peter Fonda, Marcel Duchamp, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and of course filmmakers, artists, poets, socialites and hippies.

I had this book on the shelf, but then had to put all my books in storage so I don't have a copy at hand. But — I was on vacation and wandered into a little independent book shop. I saw it on the shelf and decided that was just the book I needed to read right now.

It's a kind of literary probe of the collision between the transitory and fleeting character of screens and digital images and the sense that I think many people have for finding something grounded and enduring. It's like we want an authentic voice, but we're all unmoored by the rapidity of the visual field (as, for example we scroll endlessly). So things like authenticity, ownership, a sense of having one's feet on the ground and feeling a defensible path towards the safety or sense of home — all of that is lost. So providing that sense of authenticity becomes contested amongst all these entities out there. Who's going to show us the path home? 

Its style is also super interesting. Fragments who are all in this overlapping web of conversation with each other. Shields is playing with the subject of his writing in the way the ideas are organized. Brilliant stuff both in terms of the content itself, as well as the visual layout of the text.

The lush strangeness of plants, including their ability to exhibit a kind of organic decision-making, seemed like an excellent summer read as I look out on the tangle of the garden that is persistently trying to overtake my house. Who knew that defining "intelligence" in plants could be so controversial? Just started, but so far I've learned that some plants can chemically warn others to alter their chemistry and repel or poison insect marauders— sounds smart to me!

Because I spend so much of my work life thinking about what tomorrow might be like, I thought I was due to explore this tech sceptic's perspective on creating a humane, decentralized, digital future— essentially tech-for-good. (It's from 2018, so may not be fully AI relevant, but still it's interesting to explore pragmatic proposals).

Larson is a computer scientist who has worked in commercial environments building machine learning systems and who now focuses on research and writing about the future of intelligence. One of the most important insights of Larson's work is about the narrowness of the concept of intelligence (which he describes as "intelligence as problem-solving") which dominates thinking, research and development of AI technology at present.

Lui is best known as a speculative fiction writer. What is so great about this book is both the beauty of his translation into elegant and contemporary English AND the thoughtful and insightful commentary which punctuates the presentation of the chapters of the text. Particularly for those who have never read this core text in the Taoist tradition, Lui's version provides a sensitive and timely path to engaging with the simple and powerful lessons of Lao Tzu's ancient wisdom.

I am currently reading the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, and I am learning to understand the way people think about and deal with money. It teaches me some personal development things, as well as gives me insights about things useful for Life-Centered Design.

A wonderful little design book.

This feels very relevant to my government work. Complex, ambiguous projects are overwhelming. Priorities shift, teams are siloed, people get exhausted, they leave…And while service design brings clarity, even then it can be hard to get things going. I’m hoping to get some fresh and practical perspectives that I can apply in our work.

I’ve been excited about this one for a while, especially because one of the cities, Cahokia, has been on my bucket list for years. The book focuses on how four cities came to be, what made them work and why they ultimately faded. I loved Newitz’s Scatter, Adapt and Remember and the way it explored various ways communities could survive and thrive.