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Textual Mind Erosion...

It is still a mystery to me how we are able to transfer concepts and thoughts from one mind to another via text on screens and in pages. But, yet it seems to happen everytime I let my eyes and mind connect for a session of blissful, detached yet mindful, reading of glorious texts. Is there really a transmission of new thoughts from the characters or does the text somehow unlock the understanding that already exists within my mind. Is it like the potential energy of a boulder that has always been on the side of a cliff, but takes years of erosion to be uncovered and transition to kinetic?

I tend to read many books at the same time and start new ones before I finish others.
This may not be the most effective way to read texts, but, I am not always in the same mood when I sit to read, so I have many books of many topics and styles so that I can grab whatever seems most interesting at the time. The titles with a splat in front of them are what are currently in progress, the others are fighting to be next in line.

Here is my current reading list in no particular order:

*"Information, the new language of science" by Hans Christian von Baeyer
*"Symmetry, and the beautiful universe" by Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill
*"The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra
"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" Short works by Richard Feynman
"About Time" by Paul Davies
*"Hacking, the art of exploitation" by Jon Erickson
"Counter Hack, A step by step guide to computer attacks and effective defenses" by Ed Skoudis
*"Level Set Methods and Dynamic Implicit Surfaces" by Stanley Osher and Ronald Fedkiw
"Level Set Methods and Fast Marching Methods" by J.A. Sethian
*"Statistical Mechanics, A Set of Lectures" by Richard Feynman
*"On the Shoulders of Giants, Great Works of Physics and Astronomy" by Steven Hawking
"The Bit and the Pendulum, from Quantum Computing to M Theory - The New Physics of Information" by Tom Siegfried
"The Mathematical Experience" by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh
"Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge" by Edward O. Wilson
"The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene (I have the DVD, I know... cheater!)
"The Five Ages of the Universe" by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin
"The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics" by Timothy Ferris

Here are a few titles I finished in the last few months:
"Emergence, The connected lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software" by Steven Johnson
"Warmth Disperses and Time Passes, the History of Heat" by Hans Christian von Baeyer
"Ideas and Opinions" by Albert Einstein
"Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse
"The World as I See It" by Albert Einstein
"Linux Server Hacks" by Rob Flickenger
"The Salmon of Doubt" by Douglas Adams
"The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" by Douglas Adams
"Who Needs God" by Rabbi Harold Kushner
"Origins of existence" by Fred Adams
"The Universe in a Nutshell" by Stephen Hawking

I love books that potentially effect the way I see the reality, hopefully for the better.
I can say that over time, I have begun to see life and the universe and everything as more beautiful, mysterious and "magical" as my understanding of the current human understanding of physics deepens. The more I am confronted by the magnitude of what is going on all the time, the more improbable it seems. So much so, that if in the end I come to find out that this was all a grand illusion, I will not be very surprised.

It sounds to me that the texts have definitely eroded my mind, hopefully leaving behind lots and lots of soft gooey grey folds.

-Ziv

PS. Tomorrow is my 30th birthday.

Comments

  1. Talya12/29/2004 2:17 PM

    O-M-G. You did it! I request permission to intensely post comments here and, BTW, Happy Birthday!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. BK12/29/2004 9:15 PM

    Thank you Talya!
    I am off to play with my Robosapien...

    -Ziv

    ReplyDelete

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