Books I've read or I'm reading or want to read
Philosophy of Freedom
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Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation (The Body in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism) |
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Michael Polanyi - Science, Faith, and Society |
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Weizenbaum - Computer power and Human reason. |
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I read this book some 3 years ago, but I'm reading it again. It is being used as the philosophical work for a course I'm currently following: "Solid judging and deciding for innovation". Opposed to most philosophical works, which focus on one aspect of the philosophical field, it handles both knowledge theory (philosophy that studies nature and the scrope of knowledge) and behavioural philosophy or ethics and complements them. He takes the knowledge theory to understand thinking as a universal quality that transcends man and has a possibility to aquire agreement on concepts. He also puts thinking as an activity that follows observations, as opposed to feeling, which just happens. He introduces the (not new concept) of the mental body, or "I", that can observe and through the will can direct thinking and handling. By observing and directing your own thinking, learning to think lively, it is possible to aquire freedom (in ethics). |
Los van de Wereld
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Hella de Jonge writes about her life and the relation with her family. Her parents survive as dutch jewish people the second world war. The trauma of the second world war has great impact on familiy life. Her father, Eli Asser, is a successfull textwriter. However, behind the front door, the war and death is always present. When years later, Hella looses her jong born baby, she notices that in the eyes of her parents, nothing can be worse than the war. On the funeral of her mother (years later), all the tensions of that built up all those years in the Asser family come to an outburst. A sensitive book with very intimate moments that left me deeply touched. |
The lord of elements
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A very interesting book about christian history in context with alchemy and nature. |
Ahriman, Profil einer Weltmacht
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This book interests me a lot, because it contains antroposophic essays on the subject of materialism in the previous -and current century. I enjoyed reading all essays in the book, but, being a computer scientist, I found the essays on automation and computers especially interesting. The essays are largely about the forces of the 'fallen angels' in regard to the spiritual development of the human race, being specifically about Ahriman, whom is associated with materialism. One of the insights in this book that I found most appealing, is the fact that on can come to think about abstraction as being of materialistic nature. One of the essays states that we're abstracted more and more from reality in all facets of our lives, even to the point that it makes us completely isolated. My personal experience with ICT related projects, is that most of them, although in itself already of abstracting nature, strive to bring even more abstraction into real life issues, e.g. by trying to fit our real life situation into abstract models. As time passes, it becomes clear that the reality of life is somehow much more complex than these models are able to cope with. People do not seem to like the software much, that is produced this way; either, using it, or maintaining it. My personal experience on this subject is that when we choose our goal different, i.e. we see the abstraction and the concreteness of our world and try to put this abstraction in service of our real world, we create a tool instead of a problem. People like tools, because they are in control. Although it may seem contradicting, this fact may give some hope for SOA. |
The Semantic Web, a Guide to the future of XML, Web Services and Knowledge Management
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Quite an interesting book that handles a good set of XML dialects and the field of ontology. It is readable for the manager to gain insight in the benefits of using and governing semantic web techniques and be able to apply it for sucessfull business. But it is also a good book for the ICT Architect, designer or software engineer who wants an introduction and overview to the subject of semantic web. I personally found the knowledge in this book to be very useful in my daily practice. Semantic Web as a technique comes naturally in the current Web ori�nted ICT world, and ontology as an integral part of meta data management is very important in the context of SOA and knowledge intensive organisations. One of the spin offs of my theme year "semantic web" is a semantic wiki that I've introduced in my current working environment that supports collaboration and knowledge intensive work. |
Computer in der Schule
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