Culture 3.14 · What we read
What we read
We read in order to connect fields that rarely talk to each other.
We collect books, papers, articles, projects and technical references that have changed a question, a design decision or the way we interpret a problem. Each reading explains what it moved in the work.
We read in fields that rarely talk to each other, and that is precisely the reason:
- artificial intelligence
- information systems
- machine learning
- organisation and operations
- language and linguistics
- design
- software
- agents
- robotics
- science
- strategy
- working culture
A reading enters here when it has changed something: a decision, a question, an architecture or an interpretation. That is what we tell about it.
The Creators · Daniel J. Boorstin
Boorstin runs through some three thousand years of artistic and intellectual creation and lets a craft show through: creating for an audience and a result, with the means of each age and often ahead of them.
Thinking in Systems · Donella Meadows
A system's behaviour comes from its structure, and the points where an intervention changes something are rarely the most visible ones.
Out of the Crisis · W. Edwards Deming
Reacting to the normal variation of a process as though it were a signal makes the process worse; most errors come from the system and not from people.
Plans and Situated Actions · Lucy Suchman
A plan is not what people execute, but a resource they use to orient themselves while improvising inside a specific situation.
The Design of Everyday Things · Donald Norman
An object communicates what can be done with it and gives back a signal of what has happened; when one of the two fails, the blame appears to lie with the person using it.
We read in order to build an idea into a question, a test or a decision that carries on.