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