I'm currently on vacation with my family and brought along a few books to read. To minimize the usual at-home distractions (aside from the books), I don't take my laptop with me on family trips, but I do keep my iPhone on me (which ultimately may be more distracting). Without access to Photoshop, I have relied upon my iPhone camera and a handful of iPhone apps to produce some (in my opinion) pretty decent images. Consider this entry a dispatch from the field.
 
Drucker is the management guru's guru, and everyone who's involved in business should spend time reading some of his seminal works. In this book, written over twenty years ago, Drucker dispells the romantic notion of the innovator as a risk-taking maverick with grandiose visions; rather, the most successful innovators are those who humbly listen and purposefully search for changes and innovative opportunities. Through a number of case studies, Drucker also illustrates how our tendency to associate innovation with new technology can be flawed, and how many of the innovations with the greatest impact have been social innovations. After laying out his principles and practices for innovation, Drucker then devotes the latter half of the book to clarifying the meaning of entrepreneurship. This part is also very important because any innovative venture without entrepreneurial management is almost sure to fail. If only Thomas Edison had learned this lesson. . . .

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When people hear the term "interaction design", they tend to associate it with pixels and computer screens. I find this definition to be quite restrictive and prefer to think of interaction design in its broadest (and, perhaps, original) sense. Without a computer, we have daily interactions with other people and with different artifacts (both tangible and intangible). Interactions can include a heated conversation with your spouse, turning a doorknob, or noodling on a math equation. How can design influence these kinds of interactions? I find this question interesting.

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Happy Fourth of July!
 
Tom Friedman's probably my favorite contemporary artist. This man takes everyday materials, like socks, styrofoam, toothpicks, construction paper - you name it - and creates extraordinary art with it. His pieces definitely make me see the material world, and its potential, in new and creative ways. This book is a great introduction to the artist and and his work.

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This is Himpe's follow-up to his previous book, Advertising is Dead, Long Live Advertising! This latest work includes 150 campaigns for 'The New Communication Age', organized around seventeen mantras; a couple are 'be a storyteller' and 'be experimental'. Himpe believes the digital revolution and its tools have dramatically altered the communication landscape. As a result, small brands can now compete head-to-head with the big brands. So, size or scale is no longer the real discriminator; behavior is. Himpe writes, 'It's not so much about being small or being big; it's about acting small or acting big.' Although I liked his previous book better, Advertising Next is still a great source for creative inspiration.

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The full title of this book is pre-specifics: Some comparatistic investigations on research in design and art. This book contains contributions by and conversations with a wide variety of people across many interesting disciplines, from jurisprudence to game design to English literature theory. This is also the first book I've read that includes the word 'rhizomatic' on its cover. The topic is design in its broadest and philosophically most immaterial sense. Contributors include Eric Zimmerman, Greg Lynn, Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne. The conversations can be deep and quite erudite. Not for the intellectually faint of heart, but the insights are worth the effort.

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Although I included a book by Tomasula in an earlier entry, I can't help but mention In & Oz, as well, which would probably be the one novel I would take with me if I was to be stranded on a deserted island. It's hard to describe this book, but I'll try. Like many stories by Gabriel García Márquez, José Saramago, or Hermann Hesse, In & Oz is an extended parable. It has a postmodernist feel while criticizing postmodernist society. The different aspects of this society are embodied by its main characters (Mechanic, Photographer, Composer, Designer, and Poet/Sculptor) and their interactions in the story. But there are other aspects to this book, aside from its narrative form and story content, that I just found - innovative, if I had to grasp for a word - that I can't do justice to with my own inadequate description. And Tomasula does this all in less than 150 pages.

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I picked up my first issue of the arts magazine Esopus a couple of years ago. It is published twice a year by the Esopus Foundation, a non-profit organization that believes in providing a non-commercial space for creative people. I like this magazine for a few reasons: 

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Here is a book that explores the discontents of computer simulations, and how the technology has impacted fields such as science and architecture. I read this book with the intent of getting a different perspective from what Schrage presented in Serious Play. The book consists of essays by Turkle and other contributors; although, it is Turkle's essay that I found most compelling. Simulations can become - in the spirit of the Tyrell Corporation - more real than real. What happens when your simulations start edging out the real? Where no reference points exist in the real world for you to check for their correctness? When one observes a simulation and feels he or she now knows how something actually works? What are the implications? It's easy to be seduced by a beautiful visual simulation, regard it as 'real', when beneath it lies layers upon layers of abstract code. It makes one ponder.

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Although this book was published about ten years ago, I find that its ideas are more relevant than ever when it comes to design and innovation. Both Apple and Walt Disney Imagineering (as well as others) get it and know the importance of prototypes, models, and simulations. If you want to have meaningful interactions with others about your concepts or designs, you need to build them and not just talk about them. When I build prototypes, I'm creating possible futures. When I show them to others and we have conversations around them, it's a form of time travel; we are, in a way, exploring and examining artifacts from the future. What I like most about them is that they help to surface the unknown unknowns of a design concept. You can use simulations in the same way. They're all forms of play - serious play.

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Another book from my reread pile. Searle is a philosopher and a professor at UC Berkeley. One of his most widely known thought experiments is probably the Chinese Room Argument, which argues against A.I.'s claim that a computer, one day, will actually be able to think or will become an actual mind. In this book, Searle describes the structure and interrelations of mind, language, and society. He provides conceptual frameworks that support what he calls 'the Enlightenment vision.' (As a quick reference point: postmodernists see themselves as challenging the Enlightenment vision.) There are many who may think that the real world is incomprehensible or relativistic, or that we live in multiple realities. Searle counters those notions with intellectual rigor, while still explaining things in very understandable and real terms. 

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