~/irregex | Reading List | 2023.08.02

"The face of a computer operator from the 2134th Communications Squadron is reflected on the screen of his video display terminal". (1988)

Thanks to everyone who has signed up for the newsletter in the past week, especially those who have bought a paid subscription. It means a lot! Since quitting social media, I feel like I actually have space and motivation to think and write again, so watch this space!

Also: I’ve been indexing books again lately, so if you have a book in the pipeline and need an indexer, please reach out! It’s work I enjoy doing and it helps pay the rent.

Selections from the Web

• Ben Tarnoff: ‘A certain danger lurks there’: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI

• Brian VanHooker : An Oral History of ‘Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist’

• Marianna Giusti : Everything I, an Italian, thought I knew about Italian food is wrong

• Mike Jay: In the Alchemist’s Den

• Neil Warner: Constructing “Social Europe”

• Susannah Glickman: Semi-Politics

Books and Journal Articles:

Books

• J. Stephen Lansing: Priests And Programmers: Technologies Of Power In The Engineered Landscape Of Bali. (2007)

  I first read this as an undergraduate, and I thought it was time to return to it. This book is essentially an anthropological and ecological account of the water temple complex in Bali, looking at the functions of ritual practice in coordinating rice production, distributing water, and controlling pest populations. It’s a short book, and consequently a little thin on details. The sections on ecological simulation modeling looks quaint in hindsight, but it’s still well worth a read, especially if you’re familiar with Clifford Geertz’s Negara. The sections on the failures of the “green revolution” in Bali could be read fruitfully alongside Timothy Mitchell’s Rule of Experts.

• John Stuart Mill: Autobiography. (1873)

  This has it all: His strange, experimental upbringing! His nervous breakdown! His intellectual and romantic relationship with Harriet Taylor! The lure of socialism! I’ve linked the Standard Ebooks version. It’s a great project; they put out high-quality epubs of public domain books.

• Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin: The Dialectical Biologist. (1985)

  Essential reading. A broadside attack against genetic reductionism, sloppy statistical thinking, and biology’s static, undialectical view of the natural world, this book doesn’t lend itself to easy summarization. The chapter “The Analysis of Variance and the Analysis of Causes” should be required reading for anyone doing ANOVA analysis. This book is almost 40 years old, but we’re still catching up to it.

Journal Articles and Chapters

• Lawrence K. Frank: Society as the Patient in American Journal of Sociology (1936)