I come across what I think of as gems. Gems of ideas that can be found in books, papers, even perish the thought, in forms of social media.
This list is a work over time. The order does not indicate a rank but only that I had come across it or re-visited it at a time and thought it useful to add. They more or less record the moments when my unconscious nudges my conscious to say "Yesssss! At some stage later, my annoyingly ever alert but mostly silent unconscious nags you with a "but what about intellectual path dependence?".
28th July 2025
Playing with and having fun with texts of any sort is a more than useful framing of LLMs. A playful but important post by Venkatesh Rao.
12th July 2025
Sandi Toksvig giving the Alan Turing lecture. So good.
26th June 2025
Fabulous, insightful interview with Jim Gee: Soyoof, A., Gee, J. P., & Liu, G. L. (2025). From Tools to Discourses: In Conversation with James Paul Gee on Literacy and Artificial Intelligence. RELC Journal. Currently available pre publication here. Common sense writ large.
16th June 2025
An insightful post by Carlos E. Perez: The Beautiful Embarrassment: What AI Cannot See in Human Discovery
17th April 2025
This post by Venkatesh Rao nails too many of silly notions around AI to summarise briefly. A must read. It resonates with my attempts to get at what I have dubbed a human sensibility for AI.
9th Mar 2025
"stuck in old ways of thinking about new problems" a quote from a Farsight essay by Casper Skovgaard Petersen. The point resonates with Edward O/ Wilson's observation that "the real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology."
21st Feb 2025
A long but more than useful account of protocols that connected more than a few dots for me. Askonas, J. (2025). The New Control Society: The gatekeepers are dying. Why is everything so mid? The New Atlantis(Winter). https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-new-control-society
25th Dec 2024
A gem of a post: How AI Really Learns: The Journey from Random Noise to Intelligence. So good. Via Stephen Downs.
21st Dec 24
No not about gravy day. A paper by Andrew Pickering and his notion of islands of stability: Pickering, A. (2017). In Our Place: Performance, Dualism, and Islands of Stability. Common Knowledge, 23(3), 381-395. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754x-3987761
4th Dec 24
The Anarchist and the Hockey Stick OR: "The Inquisition was right" from the fun and fab thinker, Adam Mastroianni. A seriously good gem, all you wanted to know about the scientific method but were afraid to ask!
7th June
There is so much predictable material being written about generative AI. I came across this gem by accident. Well worth a read. Zolezzi, D. (2024, 06/06). Ceci N’Est Pas Une Publication: The Art of AI-Generated Research Papers. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 19(05), pp. 108-116. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v19i05.48261 Clever, detailed and on the money.
19th May
I keep track of what I think of a GAI commentary gems. A recent post by Mark Carrigan captures well and much more succinctly my take on the advantaging GAI chatbots give different users. Sure it helps all users, but the more articulate you are, the better the output bots produce.
13th April
Burkeman, O. (2021). Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Gems everywhere. An open and colourful poke at the nonsense of productivity fixes and so much more.
meaningful productivity often comes not from hurrying things up but from letting them take the time they take, surrendering to what in German has been called Eigenzeit, or the time inherent to a process itself. Perhaps most radically of all, seeing and accepting our limited powers over our time can prompt us to question the very idea that time is something you use in the first place. There is an alternative: the unfashionable but powerful notion of letting time use you, approaching life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success but as a matter of responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history.
20th March
Adam Mastroianni is one of my favourite alt thinkers. This long and fun post poses an interesting challenge for research in education. I think I need to think about it further and will blog a few thoughts.
28th Feb
Following the Housel book, one of the unchanging aspects of human existence is that part of humanity politely referred to as assholes. When you work with good people you can be blind to or ignore the behaviour of assholes. Like bacteria and viruses, you can find them everywhere. There should not be a need for a book like this but sadly there is: Sutton, R. I. (2018). The asshole survival guide : how to deal with people who treat you like dirt. Portfolio Penguin.
24th Feb
Morgan Housel's recent book: Housel, M. (2023). Same as ever : a guide to what never changes. Portfolio/Penguin. A more interesting frame to work with, other than focussing on the ever changing stuff. A useful reminder of the persistence of human traits regardless of the era.
9th Feb 2024
A gem from Kevin Kelly on two modes of learning. Joins a lot of dots.
6th Dec 2023
Probably my favourite book of 2023. Don't let the business context put you off. It's useful for so many idea fields: McAfee, A. (2023). The geek way : the radical mindset transforming the future of business (1st ed.). Little, Brown and Company.
1st Dec 2023
The interstitium. Got to love a useful analogy from biology. Here is an enthusiastic commentary that paints the analogy well. It resonates with my weird curiosity about connecting dots.
19th Nov 2023
It's not a find as such because I have read it more than once but James C. Scott's Seeing Like A State remains one of the most influential books. The notion of making "things" legible, not just by the State but via all the practices humans engage in seems to capture much of what "we" get up to.
I juxtapose that with a gem of Brian Eno's, he of so many gems, that art is everything you don’t have to do.
29th Oct 2023
A fun and insightful book about thinking that does more than a little damage to the huge collection of books and gurus who trade in smart thinking: Blastland, M. (2023). Thinking in Pictures: Adventures in Trying to be Smart. Atlantic Books. A joy to read.
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Charlie Munger's The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment is a gem for too many reasons. Perhaps the closest thing to a manual for working with humans.