Cobb

I'm curious, why the Bloom? I've not read any of the others and only (rather large) patches of the Bloom.

Argh! Must you insist on exposing my fraudulence? I threw it in there to make it round five. But clearly it is the one thing that is not like the others, which I've actually read.

I probably should have put in Non-Zero instead (also unread) but I was just glancing at my shelf and decided Bloom over Donald Brin's 'Transparent Society' (halfway read).

In fuller disclosure still, I was going to list the non-text science books that I actually read as an undergraduate, but I found the list a bit narrow. Only the Feynman books made that list which included

• GEB - only partially understood and partially consumed, and quite frankly I think any undergraduate who says they understand GEB is lying through their milk teeth.
  
• Metamagical Themas - which i did understand and it of course rocked my world.
  
• The Mind's I - ultimately far more influential on my thinking, as it linked the world of philosophy and the humanities to computers in a way that sustain geeks like I was and spark our awareness of English as a language to be used for other purposes than ordering burgers and trying to seduce chicks.
  
• Soul of a New Machine - People talk about Andy Grove as the man behind all the caffiene and paranoia of computer energy, but I wonder which came first, his attitude or this book.
  
• Megatrends
  
• In Search of Excellence
  

I include these last two because they were a new kind of book at the time, a disciplined scientific look at business. I should talk about that more.

LOL!

I know Bloom and he's a trip. He played an important role in getting me the contract for my music book and he runs an often fascinating online salon. But . . . you have to let him set the agenda, and that's a limitation.

He's brilliant, imaginative, knows a lot, but he's not deep and lacks intellectual discipline. He insists on being taken seriously in his efforts to create a theory of everything. "Global Brain" is jam packed with interesting though-bites. But you'll find that Bloom doesn't think of the global brain as a grand metaphor; rather, as far as he is concerned, the network of life on earth in its totality really is a freakin' global brain.

Homie don't play that.

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"Soul of a New Machine" is a classic & perhaps the first book to really get inside the head of high tech biz. Both Mtrends and Excellence have their points. I think Hofsstadter is over-rated, but to each his own.