This reading map organizes key works of fiction, theory, and design around major themes related to automation, simulation, and ethical design in the built environment. I have been using it to dive deeper into the ideas explored in this blog. Some of it are works that have stuck with me over the years, and others were suggestions by the AIN.

1. Automation & Labor

• Player Piano – Kurt Vonnegut
  The classic dystopian tale of technocratic labor displacement.
• Red Plenty – Francis Spufford
  A fictionalized account of Soviet attempts to optimize the economy via central planning.
• Walkaway – Cory Doctorow
  A post-scarcity rebellion against legacy power and productivity systems.
• Autonomous – Annalee Newitz
  A biotech + AI thriller exploring ownership, labor, and agency.

2. Ethics of Optimization

• To Save Everything, Click Here – Evgeny Morozov
  A sharp critique of "solutionism" in tech culture.
• Seeing Like a State – James C. Scott
  A foundational work on the dangers of top-down planning.

3. Design & Aesthetics

• Designing Design – Kenya Hara
  A minimalist take on how emptiness and texture shape design.
• In Praise of Shadows – Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
  A meditation on tradition, beauty, and sensory nuance in space and material.
• Speculative Everything – Dunne & Raby
  A guide to using design fiction as a method of cultural and ethical exploration.

4. Simulation & Planning

• The Stack – Benjamin Bratton
  A framework for planetary-scale computation and governance layers.
• Red Plenty – Francis Spufford
  Planning-as-simulation in a Cold War-era economy.
• The Machine Stops – E.M. Forster
  Early sci-fi imagining of total machine-dependence in human life.
• AESE / AIC Scenario – This blog's fictional scenario
  A model for ethical infrastructure simulations in AI-governed environments.

5. Resistance & Humanity

• The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
  A deep philosophical novel of anarchism, autonomy, and alternative systems.
• Walkaway – Cory Doctorow
  Civil disobedience in a hyper-automated world.
• How to Do Nothing – Jenny Odell
  A contemporary reflection on attention, place, and choosing slowness over optimization.

6. Post-Human / Cyborg Futures

• A Cyborg Manifesto – Donna Haraway
  Foundational text on hybrid identities and systems.
• Autonomous – Annalee Newitz
  Grapples with identity, freedom, and technological embodiment.
• The Stack – Benjamin Bratton
  A geopolitical philosophy for the age of non-human governance layers.

Looking for a place to start? Try Player Piano for fiction, Seeing Like a State for theory, and Speculative Everything for design practice.