Book Recommendations

Book (and other!) Recommendations from 2023 Dev Summit

Let others know things that are making positive or useful difference in your days...

Book (and other!) Recommendations from past Dev Summits

Books

• Mutual Aid, by Dean Spade

• Just finished this and thought it was pretty solid --ivan

• https://www.versobooks.com/books/3713-mutual-aid

• https://www.worldcat.org/title/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-the-crisis-and-the-next/oclc/1267952946

• sex, ecology & spirituality by Ken Wilber, talks about hierarchies (-Ajay)

• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity 2021 book by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything 👍

• Zombie Scrum Survival Guide (Verwijs, Schartau, Overeem , 2020) https://www.scrum.org/resources/zombie-scrum-survival-guide-0

• Sociocracy Book Bundle. Ted Rau & Jerry Gonzales. Organize and structure your intentional community with sociocratic governance. All the tools you need to get started are in these two books by Sociocracy for All! https://www.ic.org/community-bookstore/product/sociocracy-bundle/

• A Guide to the I Ching by Carol K. Anthony ~ Find this guide to be sobering about the energy forces around us in Western societies. https://hanna-moog.squarespace.com/books-more-1/a-guide-to-the-i-ching

• Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin ~ Deep state expose' & underpinnings going back to the beginning of SF. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520250086/imperial-san-francisco-with-a-new-preface

• Your Dog Is Your Mirror by Kevin Behan ~ A major development in developing understanding about dog behavior in order for training to work. Software for the hardware. https://naturaldogtraining.com/your-dog-is-your-mirror/

• The Cooperative Culture Handbook. Yana Ludwig and Karen Giming. With 52 transformative group and individual exercises, The Cooperative Culture Handbook is a practical toolkit for groups to solve problems, build community, and change culture towards greater empathy and authenticity. This is an essential resource for leaders, facilitators and changemakers. https://www.ic.org/community-bookstore/product/the-cooperative-culture-handbook/

• Lots of other books about how to find, create and make community work! https://www.ic.org/intentional-community-books/

• Emergent Strategy podcast (with adrienne maree brown and based on their excellent book of the same name) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emergent-strategy-podcast/id1553479340 -- also new toolkit version: https://www.akpress.org/holding-change.html

• Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds by Arturo Escobar. Noting that most design—from consumer goods and digital technologies to built environments—currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an “autonomous design” that eschews commercial and modernizing aims in favor of more collaborative and placed-based approaches. https://www.dukeupress.edu/designs-for-the-pluriverse

• The Machine Stops - by EM Forster
  • https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/the%20machine%20stops.pdf
• Inspires me to go outside

• The Artist's Way - Julia Cameron
  • https://bookshop.org/books/the-artist-s-way-anniversary/9780143129257
  • You might think this will only be applicable to visual artists, but in fact it has huge lessons for anyone doing social justice work (especially in terms of self-care, self-doubt, nurturing creative energies, etc.)

• Measure What Matters! OKRs will change your life
  • https://www.whatmatters.com/the-book/

• Escaping the Build Trap
  • https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42611483-escaping-the-build-trap

• The Broken Earth Series - by N. K. Jemisin
  • The Fifth Season
  • The Obelisk Gate
  • The Stone Sky

• Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal
  • https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-glory-of-achievement

• Blockchain Chicken Farm And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang
  • https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538668

• Cory Doctorow's new book https://craphound.com/attacksurface/2020/11/19/the-attack-surface-lectures-cyberpunk-and-post-cyberpunk/ u/dystopian tech scifi post-scarcity DRM recommended by Edward Snowden (tm) (his book Walkaway is also excellent)

• "Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds," adrienne maree brown https://bookshop.org/books/emergent-strategy-shaping-change-changing-worlds/9781849352604

• The Idealist's Survival Kit: 75 Simple Ways to Avoid Burnout by Alessandra Pigni (https://www.parallax.org/product/idealists-survival-kit-75-simple-ways-to-prevent-burnout/)

• the Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

• Emergent Strategy - https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html
  • Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.
  • The body is not an apology

• The power of ritual : turning everyday activities into soulful practices / Casper ter Kuile.- thanks to Matt Fitzgerald for the recommendation

• How to Be an Antiracist (2019) by Ibram X. Kendi (<https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn%3A9780525509288>, )

• Born Standing Up (2007) by Steve Martin (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Standing_Up>, all about the banjo!)

• Algorithms of Oppression – Safiya Umoja Noble
• Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor – Virginia Eubanks
• Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing – Marie Hicks
• Race After Technology – Ruha Benjamin
• Dark Matters – Simone Browne
• Artificial Unintelligence – Meredith Broussard
• Through Google-Colored Glass(es): Design, Emotion, Class, and Wearables as Commodity and Control – Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah T. Roberts
• The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and Culture Online – Safiya Umoja Noble, Brendesha M. Tynes
• Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media – Sarah T.Roberts
• The Many-Headed Hydra (Atlantic Revolutions) - Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Bediker
• Race After Technology - Ruha Benjamin
• Digital Minimalism
• The Spider and the Starfish: the power of leaderless organizations
• Maphead - Ken Jennings
• Out of the Forest - Gregory P Smith
• High School - Tegan and Sara Quin
• The New Jim Crow
• Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
• Emergent Strategy - adrienne maree brown
• Blindsight - Peter Watts
• Witches, Sluts, Feminists
• Pleasure Activism - adrienne maree brown
• How to Change your Mind
• How We Fight White Supremacy
• Architecture of Open Source Applications, Vol. 2 (2012) by many authors (<https://aosabook.org/>, edited by Amy Brown and Greg Wilson)
• Architecture of Open Source Applications, Vol. 1 (2011) by many authors (<https://aosabook.org/>, edited by Amy Brown and Greg Wilson)
• Ishmael

Musiques

• Check out this really super, super great nonprofit music immersion group: https://innogiven.org/ Bring musicians together from all over the world, creating community, building love amongst people of all different backgrounds through music and art immersions. And supporting livelihoods of musicians through Virtual Immersion Project during the pandemic.

• Very accessible podcast episode on about a critical approach to technology:

• Techno-Skepticism: Seed #2 | Feral Visions Podcast (1 hr)

• Listen on KPFK https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/techno-skepticism-seed-2-fv-ep-21/

• Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xgkqVmU3rI

• Watch on Instagram Live: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CGdE_sXhpVD/

• Support Feral Visions podcast by Anjali Nath Upadhyay at Liberation Spring: https://www.patreon.com/liberationspring

• Arlissa - Every Time I Breathe - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNIHJs4J8h4
• Charles Bradley - Why Is It So Hard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBdTVmSVq14
• Gin Wigmore - Kill of the night - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGju9VaQuyg
• Russian State Chorus - Ah, My Broad Steppe - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C7vm8idn2A
• Daniel Norgren - Howling around my happy home - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ist5OQ9CA4w
• Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mdxim3aNXoW8d2EDR_SoaEU8D9HG4WhRg
• Black Pumas - Colors - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7PnQBn5k_E
• You are not alone - Mavis Staples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=925Z71fT3Yg
• American Anthem - Norah Jones - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdjnAFqapg4
• You & Me (Flume remix) - Meute - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKFbnhcNnjE

Schwag

• A couple folks asked Ivan about the t-shirt he was wearing: ABC DEF UND the police
  • https://www.akpress.org/abcdefund-the-police-shirt.html
  • orders benefit Critical Resistance

Open Hardware Gadgetry

• Anyone got reccos that could work for holiday gifts?

Anything else

• https://www.freedomlayer.org/research/dist-bank/ --The Trusted Supernode and Distributed Banking, cryptographic mesh network overlay alternative to wasteful blockchains, with far more efficient use of WoT-PGP signatures. More similar to Merkle-DAG local-peer-interest ledgers than space-wasting central-consensus-copies of Merkle linked lists (bbros call that bloated nonsense the "core chain" and every wasteful offshoot "alt-chains").

• translation plz+1 WoT: Web of Trust. PGP: Pretty Good Privacy, aka Public-Private Key Pairs and Signatures. DAG: Directed Acyclic Graph, a kind of tree where branches can merge. Merkle: crypto-confirmation linked data structure originator. bbros: shorthand for crypto-coinage alt-right libertarian patriarchs. Link lists: Computer Science 101 linked data, also least useful. "Block-chain" == Merkle linked lists. "Core chain" and "alt chains" -- central prover-of-waste (aka "miner") consensus stored link-list, getting huge and more bloated every new transaction.

• https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License