My esteemed colleague Espen Andersen posted today on The Technology Canon - “a list of books that you have to read to consider yourself knowledgeable - or, rather, educated in the classical sense - within a field.” His criteria include, “the book must have stood the test of time, to be relevant even though the technology has changed (and, consequently, a book that I will occasionally re-read)…” and “its lessons apply outside the technology it discusses, which is another way to say that it will be readable by non-technologists.”

Espen is a fascinating character - I have frequent opportunities to interact with him as we collaborate on multi-company research into IT topics, and I’ve learned much from his insights and broad knowledge. I’m quite excited with his ideas for this Technology Canon - as much for the debate and dialog it will create, as for finding books I should have read, but have not (so far!) For example, Hofstadter’s Gdel, Escher, Bach is the first book he mentions. This is a book I pick up every year or so, thumb though, and place back on the bookshelf - intimidated by its girth and depth. Espen, I will try again, I promise!

The second on his list is Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I read when it first appeared in 1975, and now re-read every few years. It was one of the few books that not only changed my thinking on so many things, it changed my behaviors in ways which I believe have been to my great advantage.

Anyway, I repeat Espen’s “brief start, just off the top of my head” list below, then add a couple of my suggestions. I hope you will all chip in with additions, deletions, and perhaps some arguments as to why some belong in the Technology Canon, and why others don’t.

• Gdel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
• Turing’s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age by J. D. Bolter
• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• The Mythical Man-month by Frederic Brooks
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Control Revolution by James Beniger
• Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation by James Utterback
• The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton M. Christensen
• Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
• The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler
• The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig

My “top of head” additions:

• At Home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman
• Enterprise Architecture as Strategy by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill and David C. Robertson
• Structure In Fives: Designing Effective Organizations by Henry Mintzberg

Suggestions?