Hey Steemians,

One of my post series is sharing with you the books I read in the previous month. I try to make daily reading a habit. Even though our days sometimes become extremely busy and it is getting hectic sometimes, we mostly can find at least a few minutes for something like reading. The goal is to create a platform through these posts where people can share their books and get inspiration for their reading list. So I highly encourage you to also share what you are reading or what your all-time faves are.
July 2017

1. Irresistible by Alan Alter

Have you ever wondered why you are spending countless of hours on your phones on Facebook or any app? Do you actually believe that you are addicted to you phone and the Internet? In his book Alan Alter, professor for psychology at the NYU, describes what the dangers of behavioral addictions are, how apps and games are designed to loop us in and what we can do to actually build better products that are using this for the good.

I loved the book. Alter takes you on a journey that makes you understand how dangerous behavioral addictions are and makes you understand that we are all addicted already. I liked the detailed descriptions on what makes Tetris or Super Mario so addictive. I felt the alternatives to designing apps and games that why were rather shortly described but than I guess this is also a field that is not quite clear yet.
In any case it is a fun, partly scary and serious book that sometimes holds the mirror in your face!

2. The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem

The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem is a 1971 since fiction novel that has a lot of dark humor elements that really cracked me up.

The plot summary is quite complex so I will only link it up here
Somewhere I heard that this novel also is one of the basis for the Matrix movies. Our society grows to 16 billion people and the reality is too bitter to let the people see the truth. Hence, we need to give them drugs to cope with it. It’s an interesting twist. I most certainly enjoyed to read it now in the light of news where Facebook needs to shutdown it’s AI chatbots because they develop their own language.

3. Introduction to Statistical Learning by Gareth James et al.

Th last month was an intense study period for me. A book that brought me through the world of Statistics, Predictive Models, and AI was definitively the work by Gareth James and his colleagues.
For me as a student of the subject I liked the way they also discuss all the chapters with videos. You can find it here. It is a perfect starter into the world of data science and statistical learning with R.

Question: What are the books you enjoyed recently? What should I read next. Let me know in the comments please.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts and ideas.
My series of posts is about making you think a little deeper about every day concepts. I look forward to having you follow along and reading what you throw at me.

Peace!

Twitter: @tkronsbein

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Website: www.tiziankronsbein.com