Recommended Reads:

What Scientists Think

Jeremy Stangroom, co-editor of The Philosopher's Magazine, sits down with twelve of today's leading scientists and chats with them about what they've been doing and what it might mean. Stangroom's tone is engaging and accessible so the lively discussions investigating issues in neuroscience, climate change, cancer research and evolution would be enough, on their own, to warrant a recommendation. (Readers will find cogent scientific opinions that cut through current media hype on topics like GM food, animal experimentation, Intelligent Design and stem cell research.) .

Lightness: The Inevitable Renaissance of Minimum Energy Structures

This is an extraordinary look at the effect that the lightness of material has on construction, and how super-light materials can, will and must reinvent the way objects and structures are created. The natural world, and the ancient human world, are filled with elegant examples of engineering with lightweight materials - solutions that we are only now rediscovering.

Written by Adriaan Beukkers of Delft Unveristy's Laboratory of Structures and Materials of the Faculty of Aerospace Technology, Lightness is full of terrific design inspirations, from Zen archers to Kazakh yurts.

Rapture: How Biotech Became The New Religion

Biotech has certainly generated considerable interest from venture capitalists, bioethicists and the medical establishment, but it's also generated several near-cult-like movements.

Collectively known as the transhumanists, these acolytes of pharacogenomics, cryonics, bionics, medical nanotech, artificial intelligence and the like look to the technology not only to improve, but transform and transcend human life as we know it. (Some of their more famous gurus, like Ray Kurzweil, are actively planning for a date in the next decade or two when such technology will enable them to live forever.) In this important and entertaining guide to the transhumanists, Wired contributor Brian Alexander explores the movement and its structural similarities to other systems of faith. Highly recommended!

The Culture of Defeat:On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery

The Culture of Defeat is the most timely and relevant book I've read in the last year. Wolfgang Schivelbusch's extraordinary treatise on societies' psychological responses to being defeated in war is brilliant, and has done more to add to my understanding of the current situation in post-Saddam Iraq than any other work. This is a must-read.

Futuro: Tomorrow´s House from Yesterday

The Futuro house designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen was first introduced in 1968.
Its flying-saucer-like, ultra-mod elliptical shape still retains its appeal even today, reflecting the space-age optimism of the sixties and a utopian vision of "a new stance for tomorrow". This book edited by Marko Home and Mika Taanila is a detailed history of the Futuro as well as a journey into our recent futuristic past. More on the charmingly retro Futuro house can be seen here. (This book is only available directly from the publisher in Finland.)

The Penguin State of the World Atlas (7th Ed.)

Dan Smith, who has been the director of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), and chairman of the board for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, in London, assembles this terrific visual guide to the current state of the world.

In beautifully designed spreads that bring abstract statistics to life, the Atlas covers such subjects as The Rise of Globalization, Control of the Seas, Control of Space, Population Growth, Urbanization, Traffic, Energy Use, Global Warming, Biodiversity, Stock Markets, Human Rights, Children's Rights, The Internet and Digital Media, Global Investment and Health and Disease.

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

Peruvian economist Hernando DeSoto, who leads the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, (the 'second-most important think-tank in the world', according to The Economist) has crafted an extremely compelling account of why capitalism fails in places like the former Soviet Union and broad swathes of the developing world, but succeeds in the developed West.

In DeSoto's view, these unerperforming societies don't lack for either motivation or for raw resources. Rather, they lack the complex system that allows tangible assets - like homes - to be turned into abstract forms of working capital. Without a system of deeds, mortgages, etc. the impoverished citizen of Manila or Sao Paolo can't unlock the value of their otherwise 'dead' capital.

The process by which the West installs free market reforms in these courntries doesn't really address this glaring hole. As a result, Capitalism's deeper promise doesn't penetrate to the extent that it could, instead remaining concentrated at the very top of these countries' socioeconomic pyramid.

DeSoto's book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the modern dynamics of global capitalism.

The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness

Over the course of the last ten years, design has undergone an profound economic and cultural renaissance. After years of producing ugly, 'merely' functional products, modern industry has begun to awaken to the power of aesthetics - witness the iPod, the Cooper Mini, and Michael Graves housewares in the aisles of your local Target. Powered by new technologies and a recognition that design is a powerful business differentiator, we've experienced a tremendous flowering of aesthetic forms and choices.

Lots of critics suggest that this great multiplication of forms is wasteful, decadent, or superficial, but author Virginia Postrel provides a very compelling defense of the aesthetic economy, with lots of engaging prose and examples. She untangles the complex forces that have underwritten design's rebirth. And she suggests that we can find not only pleasure in style, but deep meaning as well.

This is as cogent and compelling an exploration of design as I have ever read. Everyone, (and especially designers) who want to understand the rise of the Age of Aesthetics should have a copy of this book on their shelf.

The New Everyday

Emile Aarts and Stefano Marzano of Philips Design have put together the most cogent and deep exploration of ambient intelligence (the embedding of computing and communications capability into everyday objects) yet written. This book is a MUST HAVE for interactions designers who want to prepare for the coming world of ubiquitous computing.

 

A New Deal for New York

In the wake of the September 11th attacks, New York historian Wallace argues that we not just rebuild and memorialize the World Trade Center site, but rethink and plan more broadly for the entire city’s future. Wallace will be well-known to anyone who saw Ric Burn's masterful documentary New York on PBS, in which he featured prominently.

He tells the fascinating and largely-unknown history of the financial center, exploding myths about the city’s success in recent years. He summarizes a wide variety of ambitious but viable projects to improve all of New York by launching what he calls “the new New Deal”—a multipronged plan that, mindful of both the successes and disappointments of the original New Deal of the 1930s, would feature such longed-for improvements as a revitalized port, improved mass transit, and more affordable housing. In short, he argues, September 11th has provided us an “opening, as a city, to make our own course corrections on the river of history—if we have the desire, if we can summon the will. Happily, there are substantial grounds for believing that, under the press of hard blows and hard times, our audacious metropolis will again lead the nation in recalling our history, reimagining our future, and seizing hold of our collective destiny.”

 

Small Worlds:The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness

In the last few years, social network theory has emerged from the soup of complexity science, chaos theory, chaordic systems analysis and computational sociology. One of the hallmarks of this area is the so-called "small world" phenomenon (better known to us as the "six degrees of separation") that link just about everybody somehow.

This book is dense, and heavy with mathematical modelling, but it does a terrific job exploring the implications of the small world phenomenon.

 

Soon: The Brands of Tomorrow

This terrific book, (available only from Amazon UK) imagines the brands of the future, and how we might interact with them. After researching demographic, cultural, technological,and consumer trends, designers created new visions of how we might buy.

 

Linked: The New Science of Networks

Consider this The Tipping Point for networks - an accessible guide to the complex science of networks and the way they impact virtually every part of our lives. This is a terrific, often quite funny book that is a good "on ramp" to understanding the basics of network theory- and will help make more advanced volumes more understandable.

 

Twenty Ads That Shook the World

James Twichell is perhaps one of American culture's most underrated critics. This very readable history of the development of advertising is also a profound social commentary. By looking at the story-behind-the-story of everything from P.T. Barnum to the Volkswagen Beetle, Twitchell provides a real look into the forces that shaped American society over a century.

 

Economic Alternatives to Globalization:

Written by a premier group of thinkers from around the world, Alternatives to Economic Globalization is a watershed in the antiglobalization movement. While I disagree with many of the conclusions, this is extremely though-provoking and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand globalization and its discontents.

Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World

Douglas Mulhall provides an accessible guide to importnat emerging technologies for the 21st century. This is an excellent guide for anyone interested in understanding the future directions of the current state of the art.

 

Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design

Skin is the catalog book for a marvelous museum exhibition of the same name, edited by curatorial genius Ellen Lupton. The book presents products, furniture, fashion, architecture, and media that are expanding the limits of what we understand as surface. Reflecting the convergence of natural and artificial life, this provocative and stimulating book shows how enhanced and simulated skins appear everywhere in our contemporary world.

 

Panarchy: Understanding Transformation in Human and Natural Systems

Gunderson and Holling's work combines economic, environmental and systems theory to help us understand complex change.

 

Cradle to Cradle

McDonough and Braungart's revolutionary treatise on sustainability transcends 'environmentalism' as usually described. A hopeful, illuminating and inspiring book.

 

Tomorrow Now

Bruce Sterling is one of the world's best science fiction writers. Tomorrow Now is his take on envisioning the next fify years. Sterling can be a bit of a downer - he needs to be read in the right mood - but he's wickedly smart and always entertaining.

The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression

Some scholars see globalization as inevitable and irreversible, whereas others point out that even open and highly integrated international communities have dissolved in the past. Princeton history professor Harold James investigates the last great age of globalism, which was destroyed by the Great Depression and political upheaval in the 1930s, to put the debate in historical perspective. He comes to some startling, and compelling conclusions about the present and future of globalization.