This came up today as I was thinking about something else I'll send
to the list shortly:
"In Praise of Idleness" - Bertrand Russell
I actually don't particularly recommend the title essay. It's fine,
but not the material I'm thinking of. The rest of the essays all tie
into one another in a very cohesive way and I think Russell's
perspective is a helpful one -- he wrote most of these essays during
the uptick of the industrial revolution, long before women entered
the workplace and quite a while before the American nuclear family
was decided on as the go-to social structure for societies in Level
4 countries.
I don't necessarily agree with Russell's ideas but I think they're
worth considering, piecemeal, when evaluating how we want to build
our homes, feed our families, and raise our kids.
-s
On 2020-03-30 5:21 p.m., preethi g
wrote:
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If I may add another book to this list
Scale:?The
Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities
and Companies - Geoffrey West
The books delves into
the logarithmic?scaling laws that govern everything
around us starting with simpler biological systems (aging and
death, metabolic rates, capillary diameters etc..) to
progressively more complicated systems - cities and
companies (innovation, bus routes, creatively, number
of patents)
It feels like an important book to add to this Canon.?
Regards
preethi?
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 9:25
AM Steven Deobald <
steven@...> wrote:
Obviously any sensible village, town, or city
will have a full-blown public library. But I'm curious what
you folks would put in a curated library specifically
targeting the development and advancement of the Village on
its way to becoming a City (and beyond).
The Canon would obviously be
crossdisciplinary, but I'm guessing Architecture,
Engineering, and the Social Sciences might get a special
focus.
I don't think there is a canonical text on
off-grid and micro-grid architecture yet, which means
there's certainly a gap to be filled. But here are a few
of my picks:
- The Timeless Way of Building
- A Pattern Language
- Hackers
- Palaces for the People [1]
- Factfulness
- Hidden Life of Trees [2]
- Inner Life of Animals [2]
- The Giving Tree
- Sapiens / Homo Deus / 21 Lessons
- Everyware
- The Knowledge (Dartnell)
- The Way to Ultimate Calm
- Not Always So
- Tao Te Ching (Gia Fu Feng)
- The Little Prince
- Winnie the Pooh
What's on your list you wish everyone in
your town would read?
-steven
[1] Not a great book but I'm not sure
there's any better resource on the topic.
[2] The writing is terrible. Are there
better alternatives that cover the same breadth of
material? I'd love to replace these.
Steven Deobald