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Ask HN: What book do you hope to write one day?

2 pointsby jd115over 4 years ago

1 comment

lprovenover 4 years ago
I was commissioned to write an admin guide to Ubuntu Server a decade or so back. It didn&#x27;t happen in the end, for various reasons, but it taught me one thing -- books don&#x27;t make a lot of money, unless they&#x27;re bestsellers, or you write very fast and you don&#x27;t need to spend a long time on research.<p>So, my ideas are a low priority. Saying that...<p>I did two well-received talks at FOSDEM in 2018 and 2020. I&#x27;d like to develop those ideas into a biased, directed history of the development of modern computers. There are many works talking about the history of computing, but few are sufficiently analytical. They might dissect why one company or product or technology succeeded or failed, but few look at the entire field analytically. I&#x27;d like to fix that.<p>A friend suggested a great idea: what he described as &quot;a book that does for climate change what _the Selfish Gene_ did for Darwinian evolution.&quot; That needs to be done.<p>I&#x27;d also like to do a fun guide to critical thinking, presented in a jokey way that makes it fun and approachable.<p>All I need is someone to pay for them...