Episode · Big Technology Podcast · 2022-04-13
Alex Kantrowitz & Antonio Garcia Martinez: books mentioned on Big Technology Podcast
God, 'The Current Thing,' And Apple — With Antonio Garcia Martinez
Antonio Garcia Martinez is an early Facebook employee, author of Chaos Monkeys, former Apple engineer, and writes the Pull Request on Substack.
Antonio Garcia Martinez recommended Startup by Jerry Kaplan, and discussed The Talmud by Jacob Neusner and The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Alex Kantrowitz discussed Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Talmud
The Talmud by Jacob Neusner is a foundational and notoriously challenging Jewish legal and philosophical text.
Discussed“I mean, calling Bolshev on something is like the most Jewish thing ever. I mean, literally, if you read the Talmud, I mean, the Jews invented Reddit before Reddit, obviously.”
Where to get it
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The Varieties of Religious Experience
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James is a foundational work of psychology and philosophy based on the author's landmark lectures on human consciousness and spirituality.
Discussed“You know, I think religion, I think Walter Benjamin has a quote in which he said, or no, it's William James, sorry, in the varieties of religious experience that religion is the belief that there's some unseen order to which human society should be converging towards, right?”
Where to get it
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Chaos Monkeys
Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez is an insider account of the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem and modern digital advertising.
Discussed“I mean, I think you've mentioned that, that you wrote the book not expecting to ever have, you wrote Chaos Monkeys which is inevitably what the uprising at Apple was about. You wrote the book not expecting to be able to work in tech again”
Where to get it
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Startup
Startup by Jerry Kaplan is an insider account of the technology industry and the entrepreneurial journey behind early tech ventures.
Recommended“Before Chaos Monkeys came out, I tried thinking of like, what's the last like insider tech book that's not some dumb like LinkedIn thought influencer bullshit like an actual interesting piece of literary nonfiction. The only one I could think of is a book called Startup by Jerry Kaplan”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (4) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Our guest today is Antonio Garcia Martinez. He's the author of Chaos Monkeys, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year, an early Facebook employee, a notoriously former Apple engineer.”
“The book was marketed and framed as like like a Michael Lewis, like an early Michael Lewis Liar's Poker type romp through a field and it was written as such”
“The only one I could think of is a book called Startup by Jerry Kaplan that came out in like 1998 or something which is actually a pretty good book. I went and reread it before I wrote Chaos Monkeys”
“Okay, I have to get to a break. Antonio Garcia Martinez is with us. He is the author of Chaos Monkeys. He's a senior fellow at the Lincoln Network and author of Pull Request on Substack.”