What a wonderful week it was – I met with lots of interesting people, read great stuff and generally felt that all was right with the world of written word. Here are my picks – seven stories you should read this weekend.
- No evidence of disease: This is one of most powerful, moving and shocking stories I read this week. It is about a woman who befriends a cancer patient. The writing is sublime, almost painting-like in nature. You feel the pain and the rage and disappointment.
- BusinessWeek magazine thinks San Francisco is the best city to live in the United States. Long time San Francisco resident David Talbot (of Salon fame) doesn’t think so and laments the growing influence of technology industry on San Francsico politics and real estate markets, which in turn is destroying the unique character of the city by the bay. Weirdly, I agree with him.
- Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocks: Steven Poole of the New Statesman shreds the psychobabble/brain science books coming to the market, labeling them as “self-help books dressed up in a lab coat.” It is a brilliant piece.
- Like many of the 1980s kids, I love Tom Wolfe and Martin Amis. In this freewheeling interview with Esquire, Amis shares what he has learned about life and writing. “The only real measure of merit — prizes certainly aren’t that — is longevity, how long your stuff lasts,” he muses.
- A tablet is not yet a book: there is nothing more to say, except read this thoughtful essay by Dan Turner.
- The supposed decline of green energy: Clean energy and data centers have finally become part of the conversation. Andrew Winston looks at the recent developments and tries to make sense of what is happening in green energy. I know this is not my usual fare, but I am interested and everyone else should be too.
- An American made car. This is the story of Cadillac ATS, a new car from Michigan.
PLUS: I am hosting the second annual GigaOM Roadmap conference in San Franciscoon November 5, 2012 with my colleague Katie Fehrenbacher. We have invited folks like Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, Tumblr’s David Karp, Nest’s Tony Fadell, designers Yves Behar and Scott Wilson and many others to talk about how we design our connected future. Join us.
