This morning I had a review of the April calendar page. I think it is time to add another color or two to the grid. Two categories that are missing are psychology and science. As soon as I identify the category, I can think of many books to read.

One book I bought a month ago is "Non Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny" by Robert Wright. Like many good books, it is not an easy one to categorize. Possibilities include history, science and psychology. I will use history. A new color (brown).

The labels and categories are largely a function of the graininess of the situation. For example, Ancient Greece is specifically about a certain time and place. Japan is about a specific place but encompasses at least the last two thousand years. Modern literature and internet/technology are modern in time but space is irrelevant. Knowledge is much more like a web than an edifice. Connections, complexity and chaos - the threee C's of cognition.

At the moment I have an enormous sense of freedom - I may select virtually anything for my next venture.

Wright's central thesis of the book is that animate evolution has a direction toward greater complexity, and that this evolution may be viewed through the perspective of game theory.

The book begins with mention of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his concept of the noosphere. Time to hit the online dictionaries and search engines. Here is a good explanation of the noosphere. I recall that Eric Raymond also referred to the noosphere in his book on open source code.

I like the fact that Wright clearly sets himself out as against the perspective of Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper. The two references are definitely worth following up:

• Isaiah Berlin - Historical Inevitability
• Karl Popper - The Poverty of Historicism

Here is a quote that I liked:

• We are deeply cooperative, yet deeply competitive. We instinctively play both non-zero-sum and zero-sum games. ... the tension between them is, in the end, creative. (p. 27)