If you don’t like too much specialized books, you will like these ones because each one of them will speak about several topics among geology, economy, biology, social sciences, and climate.

Moreover, you will find some element of answers for several popular questions of our days like:

• How does the climate evolve?

• Why are we in the middle of a great economical crisis? (By the way, if you want good new about the crisis)

• Why politicians appear to be “all rotten anyway”?

• Is the key to success luck or hard work (or both)?

• Why species disappear?

• Why can’t we predict the weather nor the stock market?

• Can Chaos Theory be actually useful to something? (Chaos theory is also about knowing what you can’t predict exactly so that you can prepare for the worst)

So, let’s go to the point, here are these absolutely marvellous books. Notice, they are somehow sorted by order of importance.

• The Fractal Geometry of Nature, by Benoît Mandelbrot; W H Freeman & Co, 1982

• Chaos: Making a New Science, by [James Gleick] (http://www.around.com/)

• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (If you have already read it, be sure you have read this post about mediocristan and extremistan)

• Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)

• The (Mis)behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward.

• Fooled by randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension, by Benoît Mandelbrot; W H Freeman and Co, 1977

So, in case it was not clear, now you see why my Twitter name is @Fractalharry ;-)

You can propose other books in the comments.

Enjoy your reading.

PS I have linked to Amazon for your convenience but I don’t touch any commission!

In case I am not clear about why controls can save the world, here is the short version: uncontrolled systems, like natural systems are almost always unstable and chaotical. Chaotical systems (1) are ‘worse’ than unstable because they look like they are stable, like they are converging to a limit but actually at about any time they can diverge. So nothing is worse than “no control”. At worst a bad control leaves us in an uncontrolled situation.
Therefore, the world needs more control at all scales from “personnal self-control” to “World control” going through cities, regions, states, or countries control systems. In case you wonder, I am really not speaking of some kind of a Big Brother, fascist, centralized control system. I am more speaking of a democratic, distributed (decentralized) control system. If you are a computer scientist think about the Git Distributed Version Control System, (intro to git here, graphical explanation here). I will explain more in details what I am thinking about in a later post. Remember my point for today. There is no real choice it is either control or war. War, being the expression of the natural divergence of an uncontrolled human system; WWIII would be a ‘game over’ for the world. However, once you choose control, there are plenty of possibilities, stay tuned.

For French readers, I learnt about that article from the LEAP reading this on yahoo news and that article is itself directly taken from Le Monde.

(1) Climate or Volcanoes are good examples of chaotical systems. For a long time they look quiet, and all of a sudden they explode. So yes, they should be controlled. CO2 control is an attempt for climate. Not sure it will work, not sure it is really useful but it is definitely worth trying it. I have a humoristic post about a volcano control system in preparation.

PS If you are interested in controls questions, please join the control theory group on Facebook.
PPS If you wonder what ThinkoSphere is doing in all that, I will speak about it in a later post. But you are definitely right, it is related.

• You see everything as a control system. (which is called being controlphrenic)

• You have already thought “laws are way too complex, a PID would do the job”.

• You have already said to your lawyer “Don’t tell me about laws, I am designing them all day”.

• Every 10 words you say is either feedback, stable, unstable, transient, control or state.

• Kalman is some god.

• Navigation is for you another word for Kalman filter.

• You know the difference between guidance, navigation and controls.

• For you, airplanes, rockets, cars, finance, politics, trains, teams should be controlled with some good sensors, good actuators and good controls.

• “Everything is under control” means something to you.

• Socrates should have said “control yourself” instead of “know yourself”.

• Every Pilot should be an “Automatic Pilot”.

• But actually, you do not enter an automatic vehicle ,”you know too much” ;-)

• ‘Chaos’ does have not the same meaning as for anybody else.

• Control theory can save the world

Feel free to complete the list in the comments!