Books
722 Miles: The Building of Aug 30,2004
722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York, Clifton Hood, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr; ISBN: 0801852447; Reprint edition © 1995.... Also an excellent analysis of the political and technical difficulties of building a complex network.
Animatronics: A guide to Animated Holiday Displays Feb 4,2004
Edwin Wise ©2000 Delmar Learning; ISBN: 0790612194; 1st edition A straightforward guide for the hobbyist interested in animatronics and other simple mechanical systems.
Assorted cyberpunk fiction Feb 4,2004
Reissue edition ©1988 Ace Books; ISBN: 0441533825 Storming the Reality Studio, Larry McCaffery, ed. ©1992 Duke Univ Pr (Trd); ISBN: 0822311682 Leaving the rock & roll stylized language aside, cyberpunk fiction has a major fascination with the relationship between technology and the body.
Basic Electronics Feb 4,2004
Evans, ©1994, Master Publishing, Inc. A more in-depth treatment of the same topics covered in Getting Started in Electronics. Available at finer Radio Shack stores everywhere.
Basic TV Technology, second edition Feb 4,2004
Robert L Hartwig ©1995, Butterworth-Heinermann, ISBN 0.240.80228-4 A clear and short introduction to analog video technology and signals.
Code : the hidden language of computer hardware and software Feb 4,2004
Charles Petzold ©1999 Microsoft Press; SBN 073560505X Somewhat more technical than Danny Hillis' The Pattern on the Stone, but more detailed. Petzold talks a little about electrical circuits, a little about code systems, a little about operating systems, and more.
Computers As Theatre Feb 4,2004
Brenda Laurel ©1993 Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201550601 One of the early books on human-centered computer interface design. Laurel was the first person to suggest (in print) that interaction is the core of computer-human interface design, and that the user is central to design, instead of an element that disrupts the system.
Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects Feb 4,2004
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, ©2001, Princeton Architectural Press; ISBN: 3764365668 Dunne, an architect, and Raby, a furniture designer, discuss their approach to design as a means of critique. They present the idea of "value victions", stories in which the technology is the same, but values are radically different, as opposed to "science fictions", in which the values are the same, but technologies are different.
Experience Design 1 Feb 4,2004
Nathan Shedroff ©2001 New Riders Publishing; ISBN: 0735710783 A manifesto on experience design, using the book's layout itself as a heavily-designed experience. Features numerous examples of good and bac expericence design, mostly screen-based, but a few physical and architectural gems.
Flow : the psychology of optimal experience Feb 4,2004
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ©1991 Harper & Row ISBN 0060920432 Csikszentmihalyi discusses in depth the notion of optimal experience, those situations where the mind and body are engaged in such a balance that "time slips away". A great read for interaction designers.
Getting Started in Electronics Feb 4,2004
Mims III A very basic introduction to electricity and electronics, written in notebook style. Includes descriptions of the basic components and what they do, and how they relate to each other.
Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology Feb 4,2004
Stephen Wilson ©MIT Press; ISBN: 026223209 A fairly comprehensive overview of work bridging art and scientific and technological research in the recent past. Good reference of most of the major art/science collaborations of the last decade, and some interesting opinions on where art, science, technology, and critical theory meet, combine, and clash.
Information Design, 1st edition Feb 4,2004
©MIT Press; ISBN: 0262600358 A series of essays from a number of different fields on information design and interaction design. Some are exellent, some are misguided, but all are worth reading and arguing about.
Interface Culture Feb 4,2004
A great introduction to thinking about interface design and how it's influenced by and influences the way we think. Though most of the book deals exclusively with only screen interfaces, it's still an essential read for interaction designers, physical or not.
Linked: The New Science of Aug 30,2004
Linked: The New Science of Linked: The New Science of Networks, Albert-László Barabási. Perseus Publishing; ISBN: 0738206679; © 2002. - a detailed introduction to network science, perhaps the most technical of the popular books on the subject....
Linked: The New Science of Networks Feb 4,2004
An in-depth introdution to the science of networks as applied to the internet, social clustering, epidemiology, and more. Barabási is one of the leading researchers in this field, and uses his work and that of his students as examples in the book frequently and well.
MIDI For The Professional Feb 4,2004
Paul Lehrman and Tim Tully, ©1993 Amsco Publications, ISBN 0.8256.1374.2 An indespensable introduction to and reference for MIDI programming.
Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks Feb 4,2004
Mark Buchanan.... Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393041530; © 2002 Similar subject matter to Barabási's book, but more generalized, and written from a science journalist's point of view.
Physics: Principles with Applications Feb 4,2004
Giancoli, ©1990-1998, Prentice Hall My high school physics textbook. I still refer back to it for clear, simple explanations of optics, electricity, and mechanics, with relevant formulas and equations.
Practical Electronics for Inventors, 1st Edition. Feb 4,2004
Paul Scherz, ©2000, McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; ISBN: 0070580782 An in-depth treatment of electronics, with many practical examples and illustrations.... The use of plumbing systems as exmples to demonstrate electric principles makes for some very clear illustrations of how different components work.
Robot Builder's Bonanza 2nd edition. Feb 4,2004
Gordon McComb, ©2000, McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; ISBN: 0071362967 For those looking to build robot projects or any form of kinetic sculpture, this is a great reference. The author discusses problems often encountered in making robotic systems and the most common approaches to those problems.
Robots, Androids, and Animatrons Feb 4,2004
John Iovine, ©1998, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-032804-8 A good beginning robot guide, including schematics and recipes for several robotic projects.
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age Aug 30,2004
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, Duncan J.... ISBN: 0393041425 - a nice introduction to the science of networks, with a good bit of focus on the social angle.
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution Feb 4,2004
Perseus Publishing; ISBN 0-7832-0608-3; ©2002 Covers the social uses of mobile networked technologies. Filled with personal stories and anecdotes, this serves as a light introduction to possible futures of mobile networked devices and the effect they are having on the communities who have access to them.
Snap To Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Cultures Feb 4,2004
Peter Lunenfeld ©2000, MIT Press; ISBN: 026212226X A series of smart essays on the nature of digital media and the cultures formed around and influenced by digital media. Introduces the idea of the digital dialectic, "a method to ground the insights of theory in the constraints of practice".
The Art of Electronics, 2nd Edition Feb 4,2004
Paul Horowitz & Winfield Hill ©1989, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-37095-7 For more advanced coverage of electronics, but still accessible to the non-engineeer, this is an invaluable reference.
The Art of Interactive Design Feb 4,2004
Chris Craw ford, ©2002 No Starch Press; ISBN: 1886411840 Written in a very casual style, this book nevertheless is an excellent and concise summary of what interaction design is, why it is important, and what problems it brings with it. Anyone seriously interested in interaction design, physical or not, should read this book.
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World's Slowest Computer Feb 4,2004
Stewart Brand ©Basic Books; ISBN: 0465007805 A series of essays centering around work on the Clock of the Long Now Foundation and Library. Useful for thinking in the extremely long term, and a good contrast to the usual pace of thinking and writing about technology.
The Design of Everyday Things Feb 4,2004
A lucid approach to the psychology of everyday interaction and how the objects we deal with could be better designed to match the strengths and weaknesses of the way we think. His predictions about physical interaction design and information design, some accurate and some not, are interesting history lessons eleven years after the first edition.
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World Feb 4,2004
Lawrence Lessig. Vintage Books: ISBN 0-375-72644-6 ©2001 An excellent examination of the clash between the open-ended architecture of the early internet and the property-centric legal system in the US. Lessig puts forth the idea of the internet as an "innovation commons", and explains how current attempts to extend copyright and tighten intellectual property law threaten that commons.
The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work Feb 4,2004
Daniel Hillis ©1999 Basic Books; ISBN: 046502596X An excellent non-technical description of the ideas behind computing machines, and the assumptions behind binary computing.
The Social Life of Information Feb 4,2004
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid ©2002 Harvard Business School Press; ISBN: 1578517087; 1st edition. This book looks at the effects of the "information revolution", and the blinders caused by seeing every problem as one to be solved by more information, or better access to information.
The Things That Make Us Smart Feb 4,2004
Norman ©1993, Perseus Books, ISBN:0201626950 A continuation of Norman's ideas on human-centered design. In this boo, he explains that the development of information tools shapes the way we view the world, and argues for an approach to designing information technologies starting with the human's needs, limitations, and abilities in mind.
The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size Feb 4,2004
Tor Nørretranders ©1998 Viking Press; ISBN: 0670875791 Makes the case that much of our experience of the world does not come to us through our consciousness; in fact, the majority of it dealt with pre-consciously.
The Victorian Internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century's On-line Pioneers Feb 4,2004
Tom Standage ©1999 Walker and Co.... A well-told story about the beginnings of telecommunications.
Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See Feb 4,2004
Donald Hoffman ©1998 W W Norton & Co; ISBN: 0393046699 Good introduction to the science of visual perception.
Where The Action Is: Foundations of Embodied Interaction Apr 3,2005
Paul Dourish's book Where The Action Is: Foundations of Embodied Interaction is my favorite book of the moment. He does a great job explaining physical interaction design, justifying it as a practice, and detailing the consequences of that practice....