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It has been awhile since I caught up with my recommended readings. So, I went through the books I have read in the past few months and selected the most important ones: Eleven of them. At the end of the list, I select three of particular importance to my current work and explain why.  And because it is now in the final days of 2018, these are books for reading in 2019.

Eleven Books

Alter, A. L. (2017). Irresistible : the rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked. New York: Penguin Press.

Easterly, W. (2013). The tyranny of experts : economists, dictators, and the forgotten rights of the poor. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Book Group.

Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: a brief history of humankind. New York: Harper.

Papanek, V. J. (1971, 1984). Design for the real world: human ecology and social change (First edition, 1971: This is the 2nd, completely rev. ed.). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.

Ramalingam, B. (2013). Aid on the edge of chaos : rethinking international cooperation in a complex world (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schüll, N. D. (2012). Addiction by design : machine gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Schwartz, S. I., & Kelly, K. (2018). No one at the wheel : driverless cars and the road of the future (First edition. ed.). New York, NY: PublicAffairs/Hachette Book Group.

Starr, P. (2017). The social transformation of American medicine (Updated edition. ed.). New York: Basic Books.

von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

von Hippel, E. (2017). Free innovation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Wu, T. (2016). The attention merchants : the epic scramble to get inside our heads (First edition. ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Design for the Real World:

Papanek, V. J. (1971, 1984). Design for the real world: human ecology and social change (First edition, 1971: This is the 2nd, completely rev. ed.). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.

The first sentence in this book is “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. I read this book in the 1980s, and it had a huge impact. He advocated designing for real people in real situations. Not the gaudy, expensive, resource-wasteful stuff in the technological countries, but stuff for places that have little resources. I hoped someday to write a book that equaled that in its impact.

Papanek started my move away from engineering into design. He changed my life. But until this past year, I didn’t know how to use his insights.

+ Easterly, W. (2013). The tyranny of experts: economists, dictators, and the forgotten rights of the poor. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Book Group.

Easterly, whose book I only read a few months ago, showed me the way: rely on citizen innovation. Experts generalize, producing expensive solutions to the world’s problems, solutions that invariably fail.   Everyday citizens inker, developing low-cost efficient solutions. Moreover, solutions that they know how to operate and maintain, as opposed to technological solutions that require electricity, water, refrigeration, and air conditioning, etc.

Ramalingam, B. (2013). Aid on the edge of chaos: rethinking international cooperation in a complex world (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ramalingam builds on Easterly’s work, using chaos theory to describe the modern, non-industrialized world and the social ailments they face.

This entire package dominates my current thinking. Democratizing design, or what I now call, Community-driven design. let the design be done by the local inhabitants, those who need the results. After all, there are many clever people all over the world who already understand their needs and have often invented clever solutions. The role of the expert here is to educate, facilitate, and help disseminate the results. It is the focus of much of my recent work, and perhaps of my next book.