Monthly Archives: July 2010

book: the complete robot

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i just finished about 30 hours of audio of “the complete robot” by isaac asmiov.

i’ll have a nicer analogy over in the jeromecast, but here are some thoughts:

  • wow. this was long.
  • this was also a trailblazing work, opening up tons of thoughts about robots. i bet literally every sci-fi writer who’s written about robots was influenced at least in some way by a story in this collection.
  • i found the experience of bunches of short stories, featuring consistent themes and some common characters, to be really enjoyable. i also like writing short stories, so maybe that’s why.
  • i didn’t enjoy every story, but i did enjoy that the exploration of the themes was pretty exhaustive. for almost every area you might have wanted to consider, from robot psychology to human/robot relations, there was at least some discussion.
  • i’ve never been a huge asimov fan, but i think this may have changed my mind. i’ll consider trying a few more of his works and see if that changes.

some thoughts about open web asia

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you can also hear my thoughts at the jeromecast (please do subscribe!) but some thoughts here as well:

  • the event was malaysia-heavy, with a lot of presence from msc and mdec
  • the regional and pan-asian content was good. connecting with people from china, korea and japan was good
  • seeing the growth in the startup vibes in malaysia, thailand and vietnam was good as well. singapore is really picking up in this area, and it was really awesome to feel the energy picking up elsewhere, too.
  • i met some really interesting people there, with cool projects and great thoughts and ideas to share
  • and i liked the little bit that i saw of kuala lumpur. i can’t believe i’ve been in southeast asia for two years and hadn’t ever actually been to kl (as it’s known here)