Memed
Jeremy Weiland at Social Memory Complex has tagged me with another book meme; apparently these viruses mutate and reinfect the same host repeatedly. Ah, well. Here goes:
One book that changed your life. That would have to be Human Scale, by Kirkpatrick Sale. The little factoids in the economics section (like corporate welfare sometimes exceeding total corporate profits, and Ralph Borsodi's findings on the greater efficiency of many forms of home production), and the material on decentralized production technology, got me started on the lines of economic thinking I've followed ever since.
One book that you have read more than once. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Shea and Wilson) and the Fall Revolution trilogy (Ken Macleod).
One book that you would want on a desert island. Way too hard to narrow down. Probably an encyclopedia or some similar reference work. Or some really big canonical tome like the Bible or Shakespeare's collected works or Grimms' Fairy Tales.
One book that made you laugh. Any of the Dilbert management books.
One book that made you cry. Goncharov's Oblomov, believe it or not. I read it for a Russian lit class, and got all misty-eyed when he died. On the other hand, I laughed myself silly watching DiCaprio go under in Titanic.
One book you wish had been written. Probably SEK3's Counter-Economics.
One book you wish had never been written. Right now, for reasons I can't go into, it's Fish! A Remarkable Way to Make Your Employees Happy About Being Treated Like Shit.
One book you are currently reading. A bunch of stuff on industrial sabotage, asymmetric warfare, fourth-generation warfare, netwar, and the like.
One book you have been meaning to read. Capitalism, by George Reisman. No, really.
Now tag five people. Uh, nope, nope, nope--ain't agonna do it.
One book that changed your life. That would have to be Human Scale, by Kirkpatrick Sale. The little factoids in the economics section (like corporate welfare sometimes exceeding total corporate profits, and Ralph Borsodi's findings on the greater efficiency of many forms of home production), and the material on decentralized production technology, got me started on the lines of economic thinking I've followed ever since.
One book that you have read more than once. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Shea and Wilson) and the Fall Revolution trilogy (Ken Macleod).
One book that you would want on a desert island. Way too hard to narrow down. Probably an encyclopedia or some similar reference work. Or some really big canonical tome like the Bible or Shakespeare's collected works or Grimms' Fairy Tales.
One book that made you laugh. Any of the Dilbert management books.
One book that made you cry. Goncharov's Oblomov, believe it or not. I read it for a Russian lit class, and got all misty-eyed when he died. On the other hand, I laughed myself silly watching DiCaprio go under in Titanic.
One book you wish had been written. Probably SEK3's Counter-Economics.
One book you wish had never been written. Right now, for reasons I can't go into, it's Fish! A Remarkable Way to Make Your Employees Happy About Being Treated Like Shit.
One book you are currently reading. A bunch of stuff on industrial sabotage, asymmetric warfare, fourth-generation warfare, netwar, and the like.
One book you have been meaning to read. Capitalism, by George Reisman. No, really.
Now tag five people. Uh, nope, nope, nope--ain't agonna do it.
posted by Kevin Carson | 1:16 AM
4 Comments:
A bunch of stuff on industrial sabotage, asymmetric warfare, fourth-generation warfare, netwar, and the like.
If there is only one blog you have time to follow and dig into within this topic area, you simply must make it Global Guerillas. Regardless of whether he appreciates being called it or not, John Robb is like a one man Anarchist War College.
Which books on sabotage etc. are you reading?
And I second the Global Guerillas recommendation.
The Fall Revolution ain't no trilogy!
Brad,
Coincidentally, I stumbled across that excellent blog just last week, via Jeff Vail's "theory of power" blog. It is, as you say, a great resource. Vail's work on "rhizome" organization is also worth checking out.
Anonymous,
I've been reading the major Wobbly pamphlets on direct action, along with some standard academic texts by Geoff Brown, Pierre Dubois. I just finished a more recent (and sympathetic) academic treatment by Randy Hodson called Dignity at Work, and am currently working on Sabotage: How to Recognize and Manage Employee Defiance, by Farhad Analoui and Andrew Kakabadse. The last, obviously, is aimed at HR types. The interesing point is, they are somewhat sympathetic to the fact that sabotage arises in workplaces where people are treated like shit, and that management largely brings it on itself. They also acknowledge that when clueless management brings things to that point, it's almost impossible to stop it through authoritarianism. Like all other forms of asymmetric warfare, the damage to the big guy is way out of proportion to the cost and risk to the little guy.
Jesse,
I know, but I tend to think of it that way because I've got three of the novels packaged as a trilogy in a Sci Fi book club hardcover edition. And Cassini Division is by far my least favorite of the series.
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