When I was about 7 years old, I was painted a picture that its “cool” to be studying books and so on. Unfortunately, that idea never worked on me. Frankly, I did try to go to libraries with my awesome 'atthai' (who, has gifted me nothing but books since I was a kid). I did read all of them, but I never sought books even though its said to be cool.
Like I said, I did try very hard to get hooked to books. Once I was at my uncle's place in Secunderabad for summer vacation. My uncle's children were voracious readers - they keep reading a lot of fiction, you know the typical stuff that 7 and 10 year olds tend to read - Nancy drew and the Hardy Boys. It was their habit to visit the nearby lending libraries that they were members of. Given the place I used to live in, I could hardly imagine that life style. Nevertheless, I found it “cool” myself to try and borrow books from libraries and read them.
Further distraction occurred as I first encountered a computer at school. However, the kind of books I ended up buying were soon beginning to revolve around Basic programming. The first book that I purchased out of my willing was the “GWBASIC Pocket Guide”. Soon I entered 11th and saw a new found freedom in the beautiful campus, the 'excuse' called “IIT JEE” coaching classes, I made super use of my computer lab and kept doing some fun things with computers by reading programming books (or the backpages of the note books where I write elaborate BASIC programs at home).
As long as I was in Chennai, my daily life revolved around my computer and doing and/or learning things on a computer. My natural love for books only started with Science Fiction - when I first read 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke when I was staying at a company provided accomodation while my family was still in Chennai. Since I'd just moved to Bangalore for a job with Yahoo! and the new found economic freedom saw my piling up tonnes of books and working towards reading up all of them.
Science fiction stirred up my imagination and drove me towards answering a question I'd earlier been inspired by - Who Am I from a new point of view. I was still mostly Agnostic until, during a debate, someone asked me to go to talkorigins.org - for days I read talkorigins and I bought Selfish Gene, the book that changed me forever. I had to complete all the related books and there was no stopping me, thanks to a disappointing nature of job at Amazon. Dawkins' books helped me finally understand that there be no Creator and further insights into myself led me to conclude that practically its only academic / philosophical to debate about the existence of such a Creator. Having explored a few Raja Yoga books from my dad's cupboard early on, these popular science books allowed me to see the world completely materialistically - intrigued by the brain, I not only tried Marijuana and went through a Near Death Experience on Ketamine, I also bought Phantoms in the Brain.
I was lucky to be able to buy a house with a private garden for cheap. Its an apartment setup, yet, has a private garden since my flat is on the ground floor. My dad loves Gardening and while my dad maintained the garden, I studied spiders and ants. I was about to buy some spider related books but I soon happened to change jobs and get busy with traveling to the US. This time around, my visit to the US was quite different - I wondered why USA managed to become a “Super power” while regions like that of India have remained exploited for generations. The Gene centric view of life allowed me to think of the modern world in terms of evolutionary phenomenon at the farthest reaching end of which is the ability of humans to form Civilizations.
In 2005, a cousin of mine who was then doing a Ph.D. at Stanford University explained Ocean currents while explaining Global Warming. Out of curiosity I was indeed interested in understanding the phenomenon, but never bothered to wonder about the change I am going to go through. I kept blissfully playing the guitar during which time I bought a book called Ragas at a Glance. I wanted to setup a studio and start composing for fun, and maybe write lyrics if I could. But I never got around to doing it.
Naturally, its difficult to miss reading about Fossil fuels while you're learning about Global warming. The last piece of my little puzzle in understanding myself and the world around me was Plan B 3.0.
The Long Emergency was an entertaining read but I was still pretty much in denial of the peak oil problem. Plan B sent me in depression. Kunstler's hysteria is actually expressed as funny statements. It was a bit light hearted and actually painted a picture of humanity's current state of oil dependence resulting in impotence to do anything without oil. Its one thing to say “This is the fate of humanity” but completely another to say “This is likely the fate of myself in a few more years”. “Not in my lifetime” is a classic denial response. But to me, all the evolution books perhaps made it easier to see an outcome that most people won't want to imagine themselves to be in.
However, I wanted to understand this really well. Even from an academic stand point, its worth knowing how this world works. I bought Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes. Deffeyes covers the geological aspects of oil very well - from how its formed, when it was formed to how they go about drilling and how things have gotten only difficult progressively to find more oil. He explains the assumptions made in Hubbert peak theory and supports those assumptions from geological facts and simple logical maths. Its no projections into the future, but an observation of how oil from a given well runs out over a period of time and that the cumulative growth and fall of a given region's oil production also follows a “bell curve like” shape.
Interestingly, I was also reading The Black Swan (Taleb book) and I was already cynical about bell curve based predictions. Taleb has explained phony bell curve failre cases very clearly. There could be black swans, for all we know, that causes peak oil a non issue. Probably a Negative black swan could occur? However, in whichever direction we look, only one thing stares at my face: Business As Usual cannot continue. There will be suffering in the future if we tread along this path. I bought a patch of land recently to get out of this mad crowd. The more I stay with it, the more the system thrives. Another recent book that should be an eye opener for anyone is Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution.
As I see the world, Peak oil was only a consequence of making awesome use of petroleum to turn the ecosystem into Stuff and more people. Another recent read was Eating Fossil fuels that explains the modern day food's dependence on petroleum. Though its US centric data, by looking at Indian Agricultural System it gives us a fairly reasonably idea of how even India will be affected by Peak Oil. Permaculture was my logical conclusion for living life, simply - right here and right now. I think my next biggest project will be in starting a school on my own? I love teaching and I think it would be the most satisfying job of all. And then perhaps, I'll have lots more books to discuss with my and my wife's genetic phenotype. If the interwebz are still around, maybe I'd update this wiki page soon?