Jelle Brandt Corstius fietst naar de Middellandse Zee met een koffiekopje van de as van zijn vader in zijn fietstas.
Onderweg kijkt hij terug op het Opperlands universum van zijn vader, Hugo. Hij leert fietsen. Hellingen beklimmen. Leest ondertussen de gedetailleerde wereld van Knausgård. (Wiens vader ook van alles blijkt te verzinnen.) Maakt zich steeds zorgen over de gevoelloze lul die hij na elke dag fietsen in zijn broek vind. Geeft een lesje klimmen voor beginners.
“Het klimmen kun je beter in een rustig verzet beginnen, om daarna de berg te ‘voelen’. Op een gegeven moment heb je een een ritme waarvan je weet dat je dat een half uur kunt volhouden – langer is zelden nodig. Over het algemeen hebben bergen een redelijk constante hellingsgraad, behalve helemaal aan het eind: daar komen de haarspeldbochten. Daar moet je je laatste energie voor bewaren.”
Jelle vertelt over de continue pesterijen van zijn vader. Dat dit niet alleen in diens columns aan de orde was maar dat dit door ging in zijn dagelijks leven.
Over het plezier dat zijn vader beleefde aan burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid, hoe hij dit zich als doel op zich leek te maken.
Het eigen Malle Hugo universum van zijn vader. Waar waarheid en fictie doel elkaar lopen. Waar wereldvreemdheid en publieke figuur met elkaar in gevecht zijn. Waar onverklaarbare zaken werden afgedaan met de uitleg: “Pirelli”. Waar kinderen kunnen weglopen en naar huis terugkeren zonder dat vader iets in de gaten heeft gehad.
Maar die ook een vader is die zijn kinderen leert te overleven door ze naar spartaanse zomerkampen te sturen.
Opperlandse Taal en Letterkunde stond bij ons thuis in de boekenkast. Ik vond het een heerlijk voorbeeld van zinloze wetenschap. Toch fantastisch dat iemand zoveel tijd besteed om met zoveel precies de meest onwaarschijnlijke taalwereld te scheppen.
Jelle heeft ook zijn universum, en lijkt de denken dat zijn universum de normale wereld is. Het is een universum van een vriendelijke vervreemde reiziger, verdwaald in de echte wereld. Waar hij zich verwonderd over mondaine zaken, maar waar hem net als zijn vader vreemde zaken overkomen omdat hij vreemde zaken onderneemt.
“Waarom trek ik toch altijd dit soort mensen aan? Zijn het de vragen die ik stel? Of is het andersom? Ben ik zelf op zoek naar dit soort mensen?”
Het is een universum dat ik ook vind in Murakami. Maar in Murakami overkomt het de protagonist echt.
Jelle is een zelfverkozen Murakami-karakter met een eigen wil, omringt door gekken. Geen gevaarlijke gekken, maar vriendelijke gekken.
I wrote about the darkness of suppression of a totalitarian regime and how that influences the lives of people, when I discussed The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes and Jonathan Doerr’s All The Light We Can Not See. Purity by Jonathan Franzen is the third book I recently read that is dominated by the totalitarian overcast. In this case, the dictatorship is the DDR, East Germany, during the Iron Curtain era.
In long descriptive sections, we learn how Andreas grew up under the suppression of the DDR. He became a critic of the regime, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he started an organization like WikiLeaks. But his personality was damaged for good, and the organization became an instrument for expressing his grandiosity.
“Well, you say you’re about citizen journalism. You’re supposedly in the business of leaks. But isn’t your real business—” “Cow manure?” “I was going to say fame and adulation. The product is you.”
Andreas is unable to shake off this state of mind. He keeps feeling unsafe, haunted, and unable to be happy. We have also seen this state of mind in The Noise of Time and All the Light We Can Not See. When his girlfriend turns him down and leaves him, his madness takes disastrous forms.
He’d never experienced grief like this. It seemed as if he really loved her after all. Grief passed, however. Before he was even home again, he could see his future. He would never again make the mistake of trying to live with a woman. For whatever reason (probably his childhood), he wasn’t suited for it, and the strong thing to do was to accept this. His computer had made a weakling of him. He also had a vague, shameful memory of climbing onto Annagret’s lap and trying to be her baby. Weak! Weak! But now his mother, with her meddling, had given him the pretext he needed to be free of both her and Annagret. A double deus ex machina—the good luck of a man fated to dominate.
Thus, he reaches a megalomaniac mindset, convinced that the world and everyone revolve around him. This contrasts massively with Pip (Purity), the second protagonist in the story.
Both of them grew up under the burden of a very dominant mother. Purity is betrayed by her parents. She finds out about that but refuses to blame them for anything. Andreas, however, escapes, leaves his mother behind, and is unable to forgive and take responsibility for his own life.
In contrast to Andreas’s self-destructive conclusion, Purity can reconcile with her past. She faces her mother, forgives her parents for what they have done to her, and even arranges to settle her mother’s problems.
All The Light is is V-shaped book. The legs of the V are the lives of the two protagonists. A German boy grows up under the Nazi regime. A French, blind girl lives in Paris. The story develops, we follow there lives and finally they meet. As if their lives we only meant for that one special occasion.
So, I did buy the book for its main topic—a fictionalized biography of Dmitri Shostakovich. Actually, as I had not read any review of the book or its cover, it took me a couple of pages to realize this was about Shostakovich—or, probably more precisely, about his moral struggle with the Soviet government.
The beginning breathes the dark brown stifling atmosphere of Kafka’s The Trial. Desperate, helpless, surrendering to the untouchable power of bureaucratics.
Barnes writes how Shostakovich became famous as a composer but could not enjoy his success. He gets to visit the United States as a puppet of the USSR politics. He holds speeches drenched with political statements but includes nothing of his own vision. The composer seems to half realize what he is doing and seems to justify it for his family. So the story turns to Shostakovich’s courage, or lack thereof, his cowardness, betrayal, and moral shame.
Barnes describes wonderfully how the oppression permeates every hole in Shostakovich’s life. It makes me wonder how he could still write such wonderful music.
Who does art belong to? The people? The state? The ‘big goal’?
Music in the USSR is played ‘as meant by the artist’ or ‘ strategic’—that is, in accordance with the norms of socialist art.
But in music, there is a purity. Something that can not be washed away by norms, politics, ethics, or violence. A purity that stands The Noise of Time. Eternal. Context-free. An undebatable truth.
And this purity in music probably explains how Shostakovich was able to continue to make his wonderful music, while being oppressed by this totalitarian regime.
Of course Tom Peters doesn’t need an introduction. He wrote In Search of Excellence with Bob Waterman, a monumental book from 1982 reporting on the key characteristics of successful companies. I would summarize it as: well-run businesses don’t bullshit around.
In 2010, Tom Peters gathered his thoughts in 163 categorized topics in The Little BIG Things. I recently reread all the Things. It has been a fun read again, and here’s a list of the things I like so much about this book.
It could be a set of laws. If you abide by these laws, you will become a good and happy citizen (I am avoiding the word successful here).
The typography in the book is lovely and innovative.
The book is a set of lists. Items are pretty elaborated, but a list. Love it.
Humor is all over the place.
Great stories to the topics.
Self-mockery.
Funny exclamations and subordinate sentences. (Yes, damn it, subordinate clauses!)
Interesting twists and great ways of putting things
Talk with your matey about the ….. Commercial Effectiveness of Strategic Apology.
Reading ahead or jumping through the book is allowed and recommended. Still a great read.
The book is completely quotable. You can take 10 notes on every page. Peters quotes others as well, so I will only close with Peters’ advice on reading.
Read!
Read Wide!
Surprise Yourself With Your Reading Picks!
Read Deep!
Read Often!
Out-READ the “Competition”!!!!!
Take Notes!
Summarize!
Share with Others What You Read!
(Not to impress them, but selfishly, because there’s no other way to embed what you’ve learned.)
I’m not sure where I dug up the reference to Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing, but I am sure it was from a self-help book.
So, when I began with this book, I was quite confused. It was like taking a sip of coffee, expecting the bitterness of a black coffee but testing the sweet, creamy flavor from the choice of your friend opposite you with your cup and a disgusted frown on his forehead after tasting yours.
So, this is not a self-help book. They are essays about the strangeness in Tim Kreider’s life. Just to mention a few:
He is stabbed in the throat and escapes death.
A year-long friend passes away and is found to have lived in a slum and has suffered from severe mental problems. Tim and his friends continue to love him, not even forgivingly, but rather naturally.
A friend has a sex operation and changes into a woman, but very much remains Tim’s old-school friend.
We learn Tim is adopted and how he later in life finds his biological mother and two sisters.
The book’s theme is friendship and love, and the confusing interrelationship and differences between them.
It came as a belated epiphany to me when I learned that the Greeks had several different words for the disparate phenomena that in English we indiscriminately lump together under the label love. Our inability to distinguish between, say, eros (sexual love) and storgé (the love that grows out of friendship) leads to more than semantic confusion. Careening through this world with such a crude taxonomical guide to human passion is as foolhardy as piloting a plane ignorant of the difference between stratus and cumulonimbus, knowing only the word cloud.
Also, about the laziness and passive character of de-friending, real-life defriending, not Facebook defriending. I found it very recognizable, and I am sure most of my defriending was due to this laziness. I am equally sure most of these friendships would have continued if the other person had reached out.
Defriending isn’t just unrecognized by some social oversight; it’s protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn’t just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire.
An achievement to write about such topics and dramatic events in an undramatic but sensitive style. Humorous and nicely illustrated (though very difficult to read on Kindle).
Annoying: pages 237 through 240 are shuffled in my print of The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul. Though not entirely surprising, the crumbly paper was an indicator of a sloppy edition. Maybe it is a collector’s item now. Mail me and you can have it.
I bought it about ten years ago, and recently reread Rudy Rucker‘s The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul It is a very interesting book, although it smells odd here and there.
Rucker writes about Alan Turing that Turing ‘apparently was given to bringing home sexual partners he met in the streets.’ What does he mean with that phrasing? For historical facts on Turing, I prefer to rely more on Turing’s biographer Andrew Hodges who wrote the respectable biography Alan Turing: The Enigma. Hodges pictures Turing as naive in confessing his homosexuality (for that time), but also describes him to be rather restraint in getting involved in sexual relationships. What I am sure I haven’t read anywhere is that Turing would go skimming the streets looking for ‘sexual partners’ (sexual partners – is that really correct English?).
Also the idolizing references to Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science are unnecessary. Wolfram generously takes care of that himself.
Also, Rucker’s habit of regularly quoting his own Science Fiction stories to illustrate his theories begins to annoy me at some point. I understand his frame of reference, but he is not very scientific in this way of providing ‘proof’.
But, as said, the book offers a number of very interesting ideas and visions. I realize I sound so negative, but I really enjoyed the book.
Rucker confirms that Artificial Intelligence – the discipline in Computer Science – has not achieved a lot. After my personal introduction to scientific AI, I became very suspicious. I found it odd that AI was dealing with decision rules, (fuzzy) logic, and the like. And used this awful programming language Prolog. Wasn’t there anything better to focus on in Artificial Intelligence? Cognitive is hot these days, but is it really Artificial Intelligence? A step forward, probably.
Rucker describes the life box—a device that captures every aspect of your life. I’m not sure if he invented the concept, but it is the first time I saw it described in such a realistic, predictive way.
This book has become history. The lifebox is there. People like Cathal Gurrin are walking around with cameras and devices recording everything they do all day.
It has been staring at me for months, Limit from Frank Schätzing this fat bodied eco thriller. A gift. So thick I had to bring myself to starting it, knowing I could not get let go until I had finished it.
Abundance is the word that comes too mind. Almost too much for me.
The first half is a slow starter and introduces the reader to (semi) science. I was waiting for the action. The second half is a thriller.
An English space company Orley has build a space station attached to earth. Invite billionaires of earth to invest. The Chinese and the US want to join. China and US are in a sort of cold war. They do no seem to have a balancing economic dependency any more, like there is today, where is it gone?
Funny references: a Fernando Botero figure? Had to look that up.
The Truman show. Not named but a reality show of people that do not know they are actually in a reality show.
A scene from Tomorrow Never Dies. Spectre. And a media concern that wants to dominate the world’s media very much like the Carver Media Group Network (CMGN).
A sketch of future living on planets, very much like the ideas of Peter Diamandis? Mankind live in space ships, mine planets for raw materials but do not live on these planets.
Partially a detective. A Chinese dissident girl is on the run for the Chinese government. Being chased by her father’s detective and another unknown entity has hired a hunter. She is Internet specialist, a hacker. Lives in Shanghai.
An unclear relation to the space story.
In the story some interesting forward looking views on what life on earth will look like in 2025. Cities are massive and rural areas empty. Some parts of cities are forgotten and have become worlds in themselves. Virtual reality has become mainstream to a point where people get addicted to living in cyber worlds.
Interspersed with thrillerlike pursuits and shootings. Limbs are lost.
Second Life has developed into a parallel universe. Artificial intelligence is developing it further. Singularity there, at last.
A post-oil era where electricity is now dominant, generated by helium 3 excavated on the moon, name made accessible by the new space station.
Political views of post oil situation.
A race on the moon. I recently watched The Martian and reminded me of this book. Human trying to make a living in space.
In the end the bad guys are the oil industry. The Prize comes to mind.
I am supersaturated. My stomach feels like I have eaten a 3 pound steak. I must lie down.
The Hard Thing: probably the best book for business founders from a practical perspective. Together with Zero To One by Peter Thiel. And Dan Shapiro’s Hot Seat.
Not one of these simple concepts is much blabber la books, but it is very practical and illustrative of many aspects of being the leader in a growing startup.
The CEO is a decision-making machine, making decisions with little information against odds and diverse interests.
About hiring the right team.
Breathes humility—no blasé BS.
Ben Horowitz was the CEO of Netscape, the company that was one of the first to free us from Microsoft’s hold on the computing industry.
Someone writing new functionality for computers no longer wrote for Microsoft’s proprietary platform. Instead, they wrote to the Internet and World Wide Web’s standard interfaces. Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems. Along the way, Netscape invented many of the foundational technologies of the modern Internet, including JavaScript, SSL, and cookies.
Horowitz disagrees with the idea that companies should ask customers what they want. Like Steve Jobs, he disagrees and is convinced companies are responsible. This contrasts strongly with current views in larger companies that define the customer’s input as the most valuable factor in determining the way forward with products.
But as Steve Jobs said, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Horowitz holds a similar opinion.
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
…
The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.
Horowitz provides practical advice, hates poorly run organizations, and has clear views on improving.
In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. It is a true pleasure to work in an organization such as this…. In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not.
He discusses very practical matters, such as how to hire executives and other staff, manage the sales process, and execute performance evaluations.
Often companies defer putting performance management and compensation processes in place. This doesn’t mean that they don’t evaluate employees or give pay raises; it just means they do so in an ad hoc manner that’s highly vulnerable to political machinations.
I would add cynically that in sick organisations, there is no guarantee whatsoever that this will be different when a formal process is in place. In my experience, this can still be turned into bureaucratic BS, fulfilling only the goal of ticking boxes.
Therefore, you must have a formal, visible, defensible promotion process that governs every employee promotion
Promoting people above their competency is not only a danger to watch out for – the famous Peter principle. But also, if f you unjustly promote someone to a title that is crappy person, he will become the reference – the Law of Crappy People.
… the Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent “The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
He quotes Zuckerberg, who wants engineers at the same level as business
Next, he finds that businesspeople often carry inflated titles versus their engineering counterparts. While he recognizes that big titles help them out externally with getting meetings, he still wants to have an organization where the product people and engineers form the cultural core, so he strives to keep this in check as well.
Horowitz warns that short-term thinking may lead management to make too many business decisions too much.
While it may work to have individual employees who optimize for their own careers, counting on senior managers to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons is a dangerous idea.
…
“technical debt” is now a well-understood concept. While you may be able to borrow time by writing quick and dirty code, you will eventually have to pay it back—with interest. Often this trade-off makes sense, but you will run into serious trouble if you fail to keep the trade-off in the front of your mind. There also exists a less understood parallel concept, which I will call management debt. Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence. Like technical debt, the trade-off sometimes makes sense, but often does not. More important, if you incur the management debt without accounting for it, then you will eventually go management bankrupt.
Sydney Padua wrote and drew the graphic novel / graphic documentary book The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (see also here).
I hope these types of wonderful books will never be replaced by ebooks. Sydney Padua wrote a beautiful graphical novel or documentary (it’s actually a new type of book) about Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace Byron, the world’s first inventor respectively programmer of the computer.
Padua is an illustrator and documentalist, and has created a piece of art with this comic style documentary.
The stories in the book come in a rough lively graphical style, and are followed by detailed scientific/comical style notes, even by notes to the notes.
Ada Lovelace (née Byron), daughter of the ‘mad poet’ Byron, was forbidden to be
involved with poetry in her youth, to prevent being influenced by the same dangerous poetic infection her father suffered from. Instead she was raised by a mathematics teacher, De Morgan.
Lovelace and Babbage, working together during Ada’s life (she died young of cancer), were the first to recognize
that such a calculating machine might be generalized into a general computer, which might be used for other application than just calculating numbers.
Babbage is the typical socially inapt scientist, is massively stubborn and has no problem shouting at government officials, including pre minister Peel. Strangely he had very few rows with Ada, and notably one when Lady Lovelace refused to include unpleasant remarks from Babbage aimed at the British government about the way they treat his Difference Engine.
In a way they are the opposite of the other founding father of today’s computer, Alan Turing. Where Lovelace and especially Babbage spent a lot of their time on the engineering challenges of building their computer (and Padua in the appendix elaborates on these challenges) Alan Turing totally disregarded the engineering intricacies of building a computer and created a completely abstract ‘platonic’ computer.
Nevertheless both computer scientists avant la lettre had an intricate relationship with the high society of these days. We mentioned government contacts like pre minister Robert Peel, but the list is much longer and includes Mary Evans aka George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday, and even Queen Victoria.
Padua subtly describes how Ada Lovelace could not escape the spell of her father’s inheritance; she suffers from a bipolar disorder, uses drugs (opium and cannabis) and gambling.
Babbage and Lovelace’s interest are very broad and oftentimes far ahead of their time. They include research into a Universal Language, thoughts about an Automatic Novelist generating books, coding and cryptography theory (see also The Information), mathematics and poetry, 4 dimensional space, imaginary numbers, …
In the Appendix Padua elaborates on the complexity of the Analytical Engine that Babbage and Lovelace had in mind, and especially the mechanical challenges of building such a machine. It simply was not possible. They were too far ahead of their time in their thinking, especially in relation to the state of engineering at that time. It would take a century before their ideas could be realized, and then only by applying the newly developed technology of electronics.
Thus, the Analytical Engine was never built, the programs from Ada were never executed, and in that respect Lovelace and Babbage remain strange footnotes in science history, but definitely very interesting ones.
rr
