hello.

I just had one of those wonderful moments where a bunch of ideas that had been floating around in my head for a number of years came together and made sense, thanks to a section of Alva Noë’s book Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. In Chapter 4, he challenges the common metaphor for the brain as the “Mission Control”  of the body — the place where all stimulation comes in and is noted, processed, and responded to. Instead, he says, our perception, and even our reaction, is distributed throughout our body and even through our environment.  To counter this, he offers the example of a snail’s response to being touched. At first touch, the snail will recoil, but with repeated touches, the snail becomes habituated to the touch, and doesn’t recoil. The sensory neurons in the snail’s nervous system are linked to the motor neurons, and the response to the initial touch is to cue the motor neurons to move the snail away.  As repeated touches occur, the snail’s nervous system learns the pattern as “normal” and the connection between the motor neurons and the sensory stimulus is lessened over time.  There’s no central brain managing this — the change is a result of the connection between the neurons and the patterns of action in the environment in which the snail is embedded, argues Noë. It’s not just about the changing in the coupling between the sensory neurons and the motor neurons, because that change would not occur without the repeated pattern of touch that the snail encounters.  It all happens without a “mission control” brain to process it.

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Make: Electronics, Charles Platt.  © 2009 Make Books, Sebastapol, CA; 1st edition ISBN: 0596153740

Just go buy it. It’s the best introductory book I’ve read on electronics.

To start with, the book is gorgeous.  Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you sure can by browsing its pages.  This book is filled with clear photos and color illustrations (makes it so much easier to read the color-coded wires!) and big, clear circuit drawings and diagrams.  It’s a pleasure to look at, so you want to read more.

Charles Platt writes in a tone, and with a philosophy that I thoroughly agree with:  learn by doing it.  I love the fact that he not only gives exercises, but gives some that he knows are going to fail, and tells you so.  He shows you what can go wrong, and makes you do it, so you’ve already experienced the failure and don’t fear it. Exercises like licking a 9V battery, or measuring the resistance of your tongue seem scary at first, but are safer than they seem, and valuable learning exercises.

Platt doesn’t hide his mistakes, either. He uses them as stories to illustrate his lessons. Reading  – and seeing in pictures — how he blew up a capacitor, for example, is fascinating, and lets you know that when you make mistakes, you’ll survive too.  The stories of his mistakes are very reassuring.

There is plenty of electrical theory in this book, but you don’t feel like it’s being shoved down your throat.  Platt explains conversationally in examples, pictures, and short biographical sketches of some of the big names in electrical history. By the end of each chapter, you’ve absorbed a lot of material, without the feeling of exhaustion that comes from reading most textbooks.

Platt includes shopping lists of all the parts you need, suggests sources, and tells you what acceptable substitutes will do the job.  He makes it as easy as possible for you to get what you need. Even better, he includes directions for cleanup and recycling of your parts too, letting you know what can go in the trash and what needs to be recycled responsibly.  It’s great to see an author treating the whole life cycle of a project as a matter of habit you should learn.  I’ll be taking that away as a lesson for my own writing in the future.

The whole production team on this book deserve praise for this one.  It’s well written, well edited and well designed. It’s a great learning guide, and will be a staple on my shelf.

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things Donald A. Norman. Basic books, ©2005. ISBN: 0465051367.

In this book, Norman counters some of the points he makes in his first book, The Design of Everyday Things, by pointing out that we do make decisions about design based on emotional reasoning, and that design affects us emotionally.  He describes Human reaction to design on three levels: the visceral, or how it appears; the behavioral, or how it acts; and reflective, or how it makes us think and feel about ourselves through our association with it.

Fashioning Technology: a DIY Intro to Smart Crafting Syuzi Pakhchyan. Make books, ©2008. ISBN: 0596514379.

This is a really great book for anyone interested in physical computing. It includes a nice introduction to basic electronics and a number of construction projects for simple electronic crafts. The writing is clear and readable, and the design and layout of the book is beautiful.  The images and diagrams are big and helpful, and there are a number of really great construction techniques contained in the projects themselves. It won’t spend a lot of time on my bookshelf because I’ll be using it as a resource a lot.

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design Bill Buxton. Morgan Kaufmann, ©2007. ISBN: 0-1237-4037-1.

In this book, Bill Buxton talks about the role that sketching plays in the design process. He gives a number of good examples from hand sketches to digital sketches. Then he launches into a discussion of what a sketch of an interactive experience is, and gives a number of good examples of interactive sketches and sketching methods. It’s an excellent read for anyone who makes interactive things.

Technorati Tags: design, interfaces, networked objects, networks, pcomp, philosophy, physical computing, sketching, toys, wearables

Shaping Things Bruce Sterling, Boston, MIT Press, ©2005, ISBN 0-2626-9326-7.
Bruce Sterling’s take on a plausible future in which everything made has a network address, and therefore a documented and documentable history. He takes this vision to its extreme, showing how it changes everything from design to manufacturing to consumption to disposal of material goods. An inspiring read if you’re interested in networks, material or information design, or sustainability.

Technorati Tags: design, environment, law, networked objects, networks, pcomp, philosophy, physical computing, RFID, sociology, sustainability

“Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction (Bradford Books)” (Paul Dourish) 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. He also covers a lot of history of embodied interaction and ubiquitous computing and discusses some philosophical roots of his thinking, all in a very readable style. If you’re involved in physical interaction design at all, you should read this book.

Technorati Tags: design, pcomp, physical computing, philosophy

“722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York” (Clifton Hood) Johns Hopkins Univ Pr; ISBN: 0801852447; Reprint edition © 1995.

A great read about the history of the New York City subway system. Also an excellent analysis of the political and technical difficulties of building a complex network.

Technorati Tags: cities, infrastructures, networks

“The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software” (Chris Crawford)

©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.

Technorati Tags: design, programming

The Art of Electronics

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. Not as accessible as Practical Electronics (above), but more in-depth on some topics

Technorati Tags: electronics