Intellectual Property Law

Consciousness-raising

By Susan Crawford

I have a favorite book:  The User Illusion.  Yesterday, starting another read of it triggered the realization that it was my first introduction to undecidability, complex systems, the Turner halting problem, information theory, Maxwell’s Demon, and a host of other related concepts, people, and ways of looking at the world and at consciousness.  I remember puzzling through its early chapters the first and second time around, about ten years ago.  It’s still a challenging book for me, but now I’m familiar with the patterns it describes.  I’ve learned something since I started working with this book, by reading many related books.

So I wanted to mark this and remember this day:  this book has become part of my consciousness in a way it really wasn’t at the beginning.  A friend of mine used to call it “My Big Book of Consciousness.”

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on May 02, 2008 (boomark / email).