Category Archives: Books

Das Weltgeheimnis by Thomas De Padova is not quite an international best seller, at least I didn’t find an English version of the book. Nevertheless for those who speak German and who are interested in natural science it is a very enjoyable book.

De Padova tells the story of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, two remarkable figures of history who changed how we saw the world and the universe in which we live.

Kepler lived and worked many years in Prague, back then the centre of the Habsburg Monarchy. With endless patience Kepler analysed Tycho Brahe‘s observations of stars and planets and thus found the Laws of Planetary Motion.

Galileo Galilei is most famous for the heliocentric model. Though he wasn’t the first one proposing a model in which the sun, not the earth, is the centre of our planetary system he and Kepler were two important personalities arguing for the model.

Among many interesting things, there are three things I’d like to point out here.

First, it’s amazing under which conditions and with which persistence scientists and philosophers in the 17th century changed the world. They started a process which would accelerate through the 18th, 19th and 20th century until the present day (and it is still accelerating).

Second, many chapters about Kepler give a little bit of inside into how life must have been in Prague in the 17th century. It was the capital of the Habsburg Monarchy and thus for a huge part of what we call Europe today the centre of the world. Two world wars and 40 years of communism change things a lot…

Third, in the story of Kepler and Galileo you recognize all to well the principle of “the adjacent possible” described in Steven Johnson’s awesome book “Where good ideas come from“. Galileo and Kepler both were able to build on top of Copernicus. Kepler based his analysis and calculations on Brahe’s extensive data collection. One generation later, Isaac Newton referred to Galilei’s and Kepler’s findings…

The history of science is an exciting story to tell and Thomas De Padova tells it well.

If you are interested in science books: I’m currently reading “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. I’m not yet finished with it, but Bryson is a brilliant narrator and I highly recommend to get a copy (of the book, not Bryson…).

Persepolis is an amazing comic book and it offers a view on Iran and life in Iran that you don’t hear about often these days. I read it within a couple of days and it is very worthwhile. It will make you reconsider your own situation and history.

They also made a movie out of it. I haven’t seen it but it got lots of positive reviews on Amazon:

If you ever were curious about how innovation actually works this video is probably what you should start with:

If you found this video interesting, you definitely want to get a copy of Johnson’s awesome book “Where Good Ideas Come From”.

Johnson found, that there are re-occuring patterns which support innovation. He describes these patterns in seven chapters which there are

1. The Adjacent Possible – New innovations more often than not take existing pieces and put them together in a new way. Each new innovation increases the space of the adjacent possible.
2. Liquid Networks – History of innovation shows that networks support good ideas and innovation. People connecting to other people and multiple disciplines are more likely to have an innovative thought.
3. The Slow Hunch – Great new ideas often don’t break through in an Eureka moment. Much more often they linger in the back of someone’s head and need months, sometimes years or decades to develop into something real. Liquid networks at this point can help to bring slow hunches together and then these combined slow hunches lead to a new idea.
4. Serendipity – Sometimes great ideas come to you in unexpected moments. Johnson talks about a whole bunch of good examples in his book. Sometimes it’s just necessary to free your mind, go for a walk, watch a soccer game, go on vacation and eventually a brilliant connection will occur to you which didn’t come to your mind before.
5. Error – Innovation is also a history of error. If you don’t want to make any error you likely will never invent anything. By making errors you learn from every single one and if you’re lucky and interpret the errors correctly you might come up with something wonderful new.
6. Exaptation – Exaptation is a term coming from biology. The feathers of birds for instance were at frist developed by mother nature for means of isolation. Later on however they turned out to be essential for flying. So feathers were exapted for flying. Looking at innovations of the recent centuries from the view point of exaptation, you’ll find that many innovations were possible by using an existing thing in a different way.
7. Platforms – Platforms support innovation. Platforms allow you to _not_ think about certain things and instead concentrate on the solution of the actual problem you’re trying to solve.

This is a very short summary of a great book, so I hope you got appetite and are going to read it. You can get a copy for example at Amazon.de

Neuromancer und die beiden anderen Teile der Trilogie, Count Zero und Mona Lisa Overdrive, haben das Science Fiction Genre beeinflusst wie wahrscheinlich kein anderes Buch. 1984 setzte Gibson mit seinen Vorstellungen vom Cyberspace Maßstäbe und noch heute sind seine Ideen interessant, wenn auch nicht mehr neu, weil vielfach in Literatur und Film wiederverwendet und weiterentwickelt.

Nachdem ich Neuromancer zu Ende gelesen hatte, war ich zunächst etwas enttäuscht. Meiner Meinung nach ist Gibsons Schreibstil gewöhnungsbedürftig. Vielleicht lag es aber auch nur daran, dass ich üblicherweise keine Science Fiction lese und mich daher zunächst an die Art und Weise wie diese Geschichten erzählt werden gewöhnen musste. Count Zero und Mona Lisa Overdrive waren da schon besser. Die Handlung im zweiten und dritten Teil der Trilogie sind außerdem auch handfester und weniger abstrakt.

Allen, die wie ich nur kurze Ausflüge ins Reich der Science Fiction machen, sei neben den Büchern von Philip K. Dick die Neuromancer Trilogie empfohlen!

Ok, so I read The Art Of War and yeah there are some good points about “management” in there but it’s a pain to read and you’re probably much better off by buying some book which takes the “Art Of War” principles and applies them to modern management. E.g.