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[1]Interconnected
A blog by Matt Webb
• [2]About
• [3]Archive
• [4]Work
Subscribe for $0
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• [6]RSS feed
• [7](What is a feed?)
Unoffice Hours
• [8]Book a call
• [9](What is this?)
a.k.a. genmon
• [10]Bluesky
• [11]X/Twitter
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• [13]Mastodon
• [14]LinkedIn
Building the AI clock
• [15]Check out Poem/1
3 books with Samuel Arbesman
17.16, Friday 14 Nov 2025 [16]Link to this post
I had a look to see when I first mentioned Samuel Arbesman here. It was 2011:
[17]the average size of scientific discoveries is getting smaller.
Anyway I’ve been reading his new book, [18]The Magic of Code (official site).
There’s computing history, magic, the simulation hypothesis, and a friendly
unpacking of everything from procedural generation to Unix.
And through it all, an enthusiastic appeal to look again at computation, as if
to say, look, isn’t it WEIRD! Isn’t it COOL! Because we’ve forgotten that code
and computation deserves our wonder. And although this book isn’t an apology
for technology (`computing is meant to be for the humans', says Arbesman), it
is a reminder - demonstrated chapter by chapter - that wonder, delight and
curiosity are there to be found.
(And if we look at computation afresh then we’ll have new ideas about what to
do with it.)
Now I’m decently well-read in this kind of stuff.
Yet The Magic of Code is bringing me new-to-me computing lore, which I’m
loving.
So, in the spirit of a virtual book tour - an old idea from the internet where
book authors would tour blogs instead of book stores, [19]as previously
mentioned - I asked Samuel Arbesman for a reading list: 3 books from the Magic
of Code bibliography.
(I’ve collected [20]a couple dozen 3 Books reading lists over the years.)
I’ll ask him to introduce himself first…
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Samuel! Tell us about yourself?
I’m a [21]scientist and writer playing in the world of venture capital as
[22]Lux Capital‘s Scientist in Residence, where I help Lux explore the
ever-changing landscape of science and technology, and also host a podcast
called [23]The Orthogonal Bet where I get to speak with some of the most
interesting thinkers and authors I can find. I also write books about
science and tech, most recently [24]The Magic of Code, as well as The
Half-Life of Facts and Overcomplicated. The themes in my work are often
related to radical interdisciplinarity, intellectual humility in the face
of complex technologies and our changing knowledge, and how to use tech to
allow us to be the best version of ourselves.
The best way to follow me and what I’m thinking about is my newsletter:
[25]Cabinet of Wonders.
I asked for three fave books the bibliography…
#1. Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science, edited
by Harry R. Lewis
I love the history of computing. It’s weird and full of strange turns and
dead ends, things worth rediscovering and understanding. But it’s far too
easy to forget the historically contingent reasons why we have the
technologies that we have (or simply know the paths not taken), and
understanding this history-including the history of the ideas that
undergird this world-is vital. More broadly, I want everyone in tech to
have a “historical sense” and this book is a good place to start: it’s a
handbook to seminal ideas and developments in computing, from the ELIZA
chatbot and Licklider’s vision of “man-computer symbiosis” to Dijkstra’s
hatred of the “go to” command. Because the ideas we are currently grappling
with are not necessarily new and they have a deep intellectual pedigree.
Want to know the grand mages of computing history and what they thought
about? Read this book.
Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science: [26]Amazon
#2. In the Beginning… Was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson
I’m pretty sure that I first read this entire book–it’s short–in a single
sitting at the library after stumbling upon it. It’s ornery and opinionated
about so many computing ideas, from Linux and GUIs to open source and even
the Be operating system (it was written in the 1990’s and is very much of
its time). Want to think about these ideas in the context of bizarre
metaphors or a comparison to the Epic of Gilgamesh? Stephenson is your guy.
This expanded my mind as to what computing is and what it can mean (the
image of a demiurge using a command line to generate our universe has long
stuck with me).
In the Beginning… Was the Command Line: [27]Amazon / [28]Wikipedia
#3. Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine, Chaim Gingold
Chaim Gingold worked with Will Wright while at Maxis and has thought a lot
about the history of SimCity. And when I mean history, I don’t just mean
the way that Maxis came about and how SimCity was created and published,
though there’s that too; I mean the winding intellectual origins of
SimCity: cellular automata, system dynamics, and more. SimCity and its
foundation is a window into the smashing-together of so many ideas–analog
computers, toys, the nature of simulation–that is indicative of the proper
way to view computing: computers are weirder and far more interdisciplinary
than we give them credit for and we all need to know that. Computing is a
liberal art and this book takes this idea seriously.
Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine: [29]Amazon
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Amazing.
Hey here’s a deep cut ref for you: in 2010 [30]Arbesman coined the term
mesofact, `facts which we tend to view as fixed, but which shift over the
course of a lifetime,' or too slowly for us to notice. I think we all carry
around a bunch of outdated priors and that means we often don’t see what’s
right in-front of us. I use this term a whole bunch in trying to think about
and identity what I’m not seeing but should be.
Thank you Sam!
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More posts tagged:
• [31]3-books (34 posts)
Auto-calculated kinda related posts:
• [32]Between early computing and modern computing: some cultural histories
(3 Apr 2025)
• [33]Some books I enjoyed in 2023 (28 Dec 2023)
• [34]3 Books Weekly #22: Featuring Nat Hunter from Machines Room (29 Jul
2016)
• [35]3 books from Chris Noessel (23 Jun 2020)
• [36]What I’ve been reading in 2022 (30 Dec 2022)
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social
media. [37]Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.
Most recent posts
• [38]My top posts in 2025 3 Jan 2026
• [39]More scraps from my notes file 26 Dec 2025
• [40]Filtered for conspiracy theories 19 Dec 2025
• [41]My new fave thing to go to is algoraves 11 Dec 2025
• [42]My mental model of the AI race 5 Dec 2025
• [43]Context plumbing 29 Nov 2025
• [44]Spinning up a new thing: Inanimate 19 Nov 2025
• 3 books with Samuel Arbesman 14 Nov 2025 (This post)
• [45]Oedipus is about the act of figuring out what Oedipus is about 7 Nov
2025
• [46]Filtered for wobbly tables and other facts 30 Oct 2025
• [47]Some wholesome media 24 Oct 2025
• [48]I love the smell of autopoiesis in the morning 15 Oct 2025
Continue reading: [49]All in 2025
streak New posts for 301 consecutive weeks (see: [50]blogging tips)
New? Start here: [51]Best of 2025 (also [52]2024, [53]2023, [54]2022, [55]2021,
[56]2020)
Or explore the archives: [57]On this day
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Archive
• [58]2026 1 post
• [59]2025 61 posts
• [60]2024 60 posts
• [61]2023 68 posts
• [62]2022 96 posts
• [63]2021 128 posts
• [64]2020 118 posts
• [65]2019 23 posts
• [66]2018 47 posts
• [67]2017 22 posts
• [68]2016 48 posts
• [69]2015 88 posts
• [70]2014 30 posts
• [71]2013 6 posts
• [72]2012 27 posts
• [73]2011 76 posts
• [74]2010 2 posts
• [75]2009 2 posts
• [76]2008 59 posts
• [77]2007 20 posts
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[78][ ] Search
Since February 2000. Copyright © 2026 Matt Webb.
p.s. here’s [86]my blogroll and the [87]colophon.
References:
[1] https://interconnected.org/home/
[2] https://interconnected.org/
[3] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/14/arbesman#archive
[4] https://www.actsnotfacts.com/
[5] https://buttondown.com/genmon
[6] https://interconnected.org/home/feed
[7] https://aboutfeeds.com/
[8] https://calendly.com/mwie/30min
[9] https://interconnected.org/home/2020/09/24/unoffice_hours
[10] https://bsky.app/profile/genmon.org
[11] https://x.com/genmon
[12] https://www.instagram.com/genmon/
[13] https://mastodon.social/@genmon
[14] https://www.linkedin.com/in/genmon/
[15] https://poem.town/
[16] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/14/arbesman
[17] https://interconnected.org/home/2011/03/17/finding_baby_sciences_and_new_moons
[18] https://themagicofcode.com/
[19] https://interconnected.org/home/2022/10/18/shopping
[20] https://interconnected.org/home/tagged/3-books
[21] https://arbesman.net/
[22] https://www.luxcapital.com/
[23] https://www.theorthogonalbet.com/
[24] https://themagicofcode.com/
[25] https://arbesman.substack.com/
[26] https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-That-Created-Future-Computer/dp/0262045303
[27] https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Was-Command-Line/dp/0380815931
[28] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line
[29] https://www.amazon.com/Building-SimCity-World-Machine-Histories/dp/0262547481/
[30] https://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/28/warning_your_reality_is_out_of_date/
[31] https://interconnected.org/home/tagged/3-books
[32] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/04/03/september
[33] https://interconnected.org/home/2023/12/28/books
[34] https://interconnected.org/home/2016/07/29/3_books
[35] https://interconnected.org/home/2020/06/23/3_books
[36] https://interconnected.org/home/2022/12/30/reading
[37] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/14/arbesman
[38] https://interconnected.org/home/2026/01/03/top-posts
[39] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/12/26/scraps
[40] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/12/19/filtered
[41] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/12/11/live
[42] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/12/05/training
[43] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/28/plumbing
[44] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/19/inanimate
[45] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/07/oedipus
[46] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/10/30/filtered
[47] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/10/23/wholesome
[48] https://interconnected.org/home/2025/10/15/3dp
[49] https://interconnected.org/home/2025
[50] https://interconnected.org/home/2020/09/10/streak
[51] https://interconnected.org/home/2026/01/03/top-posts
[52] https://interconnected.org/home/2024/12/30/top-posts
[53] https://interconnected.org/home/2023/12/22/top-posts
[54] https://interconnected.org/home/2022/12/21/top_posts
[55] https://interconnected.org/home/2021/12/23/top_posts
[56] https://interconnected.org/home/2020/12/17/top_posts
[57] https://interconnected.org/home/on-this-day
[58] https://interconnected.org/home/2026
[59] https://interconnected.org/home/2025
[60] https://interconnected.org/home/2024
[61] https://interconnected.org/home/2023
[62] https://interconnected.org/home/2022
[63] https://interconnected.org/home/2021
[64] https://interconnected.org/home/2020
[65] https://interconnected.org/home/2019
[66] https://interconnected.org/home/2018
[67] https://interconnected.org/home/2017
[68] https://interconnected.org/home/2016
[69] https://interconnected.org/home/2015
[70] https://interconnected.org/home/2014
[71] https://interconnected.org/home/2013
[72] https://interconnected.org/home/2012
[73] https://interconnected.org/home/2011
[74] https://interconnected.org/home/2010
[75] https://interconnected.org/home/2009
[76] https://interconnected.org/home/2008
[77] https://interconnected.org/home/2007
[86] https://interconnected.org/home/blogroll
[87] https://interconnected.org/home/2024/10/28/colophon