Mgccl's Ivory Towerso tired

The book(The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit) wasn't what I expected.
I don't know what I was expecting.

It's is like GEB's main ideas though study of people.

Sherry Turkle uses people's view to construct the book. The book brought up questions on what is the human mind, what is considered thinking and many more.

There was a chapter devoted to hacker culture. Some hackers can think in Lisp. That's TOTALLY AWESOME. That's the part I enjoyed most of the book. Hmmm, that means I should read a book on hacker culture instead.

This quote from Edward Fredkin is priceless if taken out of context.

"Humans are okay. I'm glad to be one. I like them in general, but they're only human."

I think I would liked this book more if I didn't read GEB.

On a completely non-related note.
I saw a problem on some forum.
are matrices, and , prove that .
I have no idea how to do it. You would think a semester in MAT 211 should give me enough skills to prove results like this.
I should have gone with MAT 310.

So I finished the book The Crowd.
I didn't finish finish the book, I read book one(The mind of crowds), which is the only part I intended to read anyway.

Here are some excerpts I liked.

"Civilizations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction."

"He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will."

"A crowd is at the mercy of all external exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations. It is the slave of the impulses which it recieves."

"A crowd perpetually hovering on the borderland of unconsciousness, readily yielding to all suggestions, having all the violence of feeling peculiar to beings who cannot appeal to the influence of reason, deprived of all critical faculty, cannot be otherwise than excessively credulous."

"Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to rfepetitions, and never attept to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings."

Things I learned from the book.
Characteristic of a crowd:

• The crowd can't be reasoned with logic
• When a intelligent person joins the crowd, he will be assimilated into the crowd mind, and behave emotionally.
• The crowd are guided by images.
• Sentiments are contagious inside the crowd.
• Crowds can have violent/good behaviors that non of the individuals can do if they are not inside a crowd. (Murder people, self-sacrifice)
• Crowds can be controlled and used easily because they cast no doubt in what they feels.
• Crowds can hold ideas that contradict each other, and they don't seem to mind.

Things I thought of:
To protect myself I need to act like the crowd when I'm inside one.

Next one: The Second Self.

This have to be the most controversial book I have ever read.
First, this book is 1200 pages, with 300+ pages of notes.
But, removing all the fluff and personal ego, it should be less than 100 pages. Even if it include all the useful images, having more than 350 pages is an overkill.
I read the book in the library, skim though and only read the part I cared--The math and computer science part.
It is the most thought provoking book I have ever read. I learned so much insight in a couple of hours. It clears a lot of things I know already, but the new insight and connections between them fascinates me.
The text of pure egoism and repetition really wasted my time. The first few chapters are full of examples showing one idea--Simple program create complex results.
I suggest if you are like me who already convinced after the first 5 pages, read the first 2 chapters and skip to the 10th chapter... everything in between is just examples in many scientific areas. And, you don't want to read those 300 page notes.
In fact, since you only have to read a total of 5 chapters(that I think it's useful but still have a lot of fluff can skip though), buying the book would be quite a waste. If you can't get a copy of the book in the library(doubt it, it's a popular book), read it online.
Because of these, it's really hard to rate this book. But I still would rather read this book than a research paper, because after all, this book is for the mass population.
I'm going to delicate a blog post on what I did on 4/10/2008, and it will explain more about my feelings toward this book.

The book can greatly improve problem solving skill. Too bad the soltions are not clear enough. 500 questions should take me around 2 months.

This is the only book about linear algebra form my library, I'm still reading it, so I can not give a exact rating right now. From what I have see, it is not the exact book I would want to use for learning linear algebra. The book forcous on the mechinical side of mathematics, like how to do operations between matrices. The book have a little help with enrich the idea of the matrix. For example, the book never talked about the geometric meaning of a determinant. After one reading the book, he might become masters at finding determinants and solve system of linear equations, but what's the point, even a TI-83 calculator can do it.
Get this book only if you want to learn how to manipulate matrix instead of understanding it. This book can be used as a nice outline of the course.