My reading list for understanding the future:

Every year I compile the books that most influenced how I think about technology, the future, and the intersection of the two. This year’s list is 15 books. Some are new. Some are old books I finally got around to. All of them left a mark.

I’m not reviewing these. I’m sharing why they matter to someone who spends their nights looking at stars and thinking about where we’re headed.

The list

Chip War by Chris Miller If you read one book about technology this year, make it this one. Miller traces the history of semiconductors from the transistor to the TSMC-dominated present. The geopolitics of chips is the geopolitics of the 21st century. I underlined more sentences in this book than any other I’ve read in five years. It made me understand why Taiwan matters at a level that news articles never achieved.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin I’m late to this one. Everyone told me to read it. I resisted because “everyone says to read it” is usually a reason not to. I was wrong. Liu Cixin imagines first contact with the rigor of a physicist and the imagination of a poet. The Dark Forest theory of the universe is the most unsettling idea I’ve encountered in science fiction. I couldn’t sleep for two days after finishing the trilogy.

How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil Kurzweil’s argument that the neocortex operates as a pattern recognition engine, and that AI can replicate this architecture, feels more relevant now than when it was published in 2012. The book is imperfect. His predictions are too confident. But the core model of intelligence-as-pattern-recognition holds up well against what we’re seeing in transformer architectures.

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari Harari’s argument that humanity’s next project, after conquering famine, plague, and war, is to upgrade ourselves into something more than human. I disagree with some of his conclusions but the framing is powerful. What do we optimize for when survival is no longer the challenge?

The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian The most accessible book about AI safety I’ve read. Christian explains alignment not as an abstract research problem but as a practical engineering challenge with real stakes. Essential reading for anyone who uses AI tools daily and wonders whether the systems are pointed in the right direction.

Liftoff by Eric Berger The story of SpaceX’s early years, from nearly going bankrupt to becoming the most important space company on Earth. Berger had extraordinary access. The details about the Falcon 1 launches, the explosions, the near-death of the company, add context to every Starship test I watch.

The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey I re-read the entire series this year. Nine books. The most realistic space opera ever written. Physics matters. Politics matter. The beltalowda dialect is still the best-constructed fictional language I’ve encountered. If you want to think about what human society looks like in space, start here.

Turing’s Cathedral by George Dyson The history of the first computers, built at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dyson tells the story of von Neumann, Oppenheimer, and the team that built the machine that made everything else possible. I read this and thought about how the same building housed the people who built the atomic bomb and the people who built the computer. Both changed the world. The computer’s changes took longer to become visible.

Dune by Frank Herbert Another re-read. The political complexity holds up. Herbert’s vision of a future where computers are banned (the Butlerian Jihad) and replaced by human calculators (Mentats) feels more relevant every year. What happens when a society decides that certain technologies are too dangerous to use? We might find out.

The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Classic for a reason. Christensen’s framework for why successful companies fail when upstart technology arrives explains Intel, Kodak, Nokia, and maybe soon some AI companies. The incumbents are too good at what they do to see that the game is changing.

Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom Dense, academic, and terrifying. Bostrom’s scenarios for what happens when AI exceeds human intelligence are extreme, but the logical structure is rigorous. I don’t agree with his probability estimates. I do agree that thinking carefully about the failure modes of extremely powerful AI is worth doing before we build it.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Pure joy. A scientist wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. The problem-solving is Martian-level good. The emotional arc is better than The Martian. I read it in one sitting. If you need a reminder that human ingenuity is our best feature, read this book.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The dystopia that’s aging better than 1984. Orwell imagined tyranny through pain. Huxley imagined tyranny through pleasure. A society controlled not by surveillance and punishment but by comfort and distraction. Every time I pick up my phone to check notifications, I think about Huxley.

Power and Prediction by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb The economic framework for understanding AI. Their argument: AI is a prediction technology, and cheap prediction changes decision-making the way cheap electricity changed manufacturing. The most useful non-technical framework for thinking about AI’s economic impact.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem I re-read this every few years. It never stops being relevant. An alien intelligence that humans can’t understand, and the realization that the failure of understanding might be ours, not the alien’s. As we build AI systems whose reasoning we can’t fully inspect, Lem’s question gets sharper: are we studying the alien, or is the alien studying us?

The pattern

Looking at this list, there’s a theme. Half the books are about the power of technology. Half are about the limits of understanding. The tension between “we can build incredible things” and “we don’t fully understand what we’ve built” is the tension that keeps me writing this blog.

I’ll update this list next year. The books will be different. The tension will be the same.

Related thinking: