Several years ago, I launched a project for my future learning and reference. I called it T50 which has to do with numbering out fifty thinkers whose works I would follow on my path to wisdom. Driving to work this morning I thought about those I have accumulated. You'll find them often cited here as regulars to Cobb would be familiar with most of their names. So here's the update in no particular order.
- Christopher Hitchens
- Thomas PM Barnett
- Malcolm Gladwell
- David P. Goldman
- Iain M. Banks
- Craig Venter
- Niall Ferguson
- Clay Shirky
- Nicholas Nassim Taleb
- Richard Fernandez
- Steven Berlin Johnson
- Michael Pollan
- John Boyd
All of those are pretty much on the permanent list. I'll pretty much be assured to read every book they put out from now on. Then there is a secondary conditional kind of list of folks who are near, but in whom I may lose interest over time.
- Nouriel Roubini
- Dan Carlin
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Michael Totten
- Gerard Van Der Luen
- Danny Hillis
- Stewart Brand
- Daniel Pink
- Dan Ariely
Then there is a pantheon of dead folks from whom I think I'll find something interesting, although that's harder to tell.
- Spinoza
- Karl Popper
OK well, basically Spinoza is all I can think of at the moment. Oh yeah and Popper. It's also interesting, I imagine to look at some of the folks I've consumed on my way to where I am now.
- Cornel West
- James Baldwin
- bell hooks
- Derrick Bell
- Umberto Eco
- Noam Chomsky
- James Littel
- Eugene ONeill
- JL Borges
- Carlos Fuentes
- Robert Ludlum
- Moliere
- Ishmael Reed
- Chinhua Achebe
- K. Anthony Appiah
- Hugh Hewitt
- Martin Amis
- TC Boyle
- Nicholas Negroponte
The trail behind me is longer than the one in front of me for sure. And it's interesting to look back and speculate on what I thought I needed to know from each of those, what I got and how much it means to me now.
One of the more profound effects of T50 on me is that I have less patience for the interactivity of blogging, but that really started when I got interested in Ferguson and history a few years back. So I expect to continue to get less and less satisfaction from this kind of interaction and more from finding like-minded folks IRL at various meetups. One of these days I'm going to find the right clique - it will save me a lot of time and give me a great deal of comfort in reading away from the screen.
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