craig robert martin

Decisions That Carry: How Leaders Build Trust Through Judgement, Data and Story by Fiona McDonnell My rating: 5 of 5 stars I had the privilege of being a beta reader, and then I just read the final version on my Kindle. Fiona is an authentic person and, naturally, an authentic writer - I know that firsthand, having studied with her more than a quarter of a century ago. I like that her writing and books are practical and accessible. Her first book Two Mirrors And A Cheetah: Think Differently, Own Your Career & Succeed By Being Yourself offered honest, open insight into anxiety and debilitating panic attacks. This second and timely book opens with a very personal medical condition that took her and her family by surprise and caused her to think carefully about data, real data, and how we use it to make decisions that will have long-term consequences. But Fiona doesn't dwell on the situation. Instead, she buys a boldly coloured (Yellow) handbag...

Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Grid is a physical manifestation of the values of the Machine on the landscape itself, and it is, I think, replacing the nation, just as it is replacing the culture and antiquated notions of 'tradition' and the like. Paul Kingsnorth writes with passion about his lifelong journey to rail against the progress he sees as a vanguard for dark forces. His book goes beyond the normal P(Doom) of Artificial Intelligence and the dangers of AGI. It captures what Kingsnorth sees as a moral and cultural decline due to technology writ large. The author lives a relatively off-grid life with his family in rain-scoured western Ireland, giving him the time and room to develop his writing. He is well-read and researches similar thinkers from across the centuries, bringing some obscure prophets to light. His conclusions are fairly stark: a force active in the world lies beyond us. It is a supern...

Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare by Edward Fishman My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Welch Labs Illustrated Guide to AI by Stephen Welch My rating: 5 of 5 stars This a beautifully conceived and put together text book. I was blown away with the quality of the videos on YT and hence not surprised that the author has managed to put together such a high quality production in physical form. The book is heavy - in terms of weight - which meant it took some time and cost some dollars to ship to Singapore, but it was a joy to find it waiting outside my house. The book is hefty - in that it covers 70 years of machine learning from Rosenblatt’s perceptron to attention models and diffusion. When I started building neural networks in 1990 there were few accessible textbooks. I had to bribe one computer-scientist author with a bottle of wine to explain how to implement some of self organising algorithms. This has it all. Diagrams, models, beautiful illustrations and code. It also has some exercises, and the author has left wide margins for th...