📝🔖Lists to bookmark: What to read, watch, play this winter
Here are some books (and films, and shows, and games, and apps) that various a16z crypto team members are reading, watching, playing. The resulting list spans everything from magic shows to code-editing apps that integrate LLMs to many must-watch recommendations for your holiday TV queues.
You can learn a lot about a culture through its perennial passions: For instance, science and science-fiction genres have strong showings on our lists every time. Meanwhile, repeated book recommendations this year include Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries series, and J. Storrs Hall’s investigation of tech stagnation Where Is My Flying Car? Repeats recurring from past lists include Ananyo Bhattacharya’s biography of John von Neumann, The Man from the Future; David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity; Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet; Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem trilogy; Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven; Andy Weir’s space thriller Project Hail Mary; and Gabrielle Zevin’s novel about love in the time of gaming: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. See the list below for more recommendations -- including links to years past with even more recs for you!
➡️ check out the winter 2023 list
In the spirit of sharing what we're reading (a regular tradition around here, as you can see!), we also just published a list of books we curated for the giveaway library at our second annual a16z crypto Founders Summit. (You can find the inaugural list from 2022 here). This year’s list also includes personal “staff picks” notes for some of the books -- which range from biographies to organizational histories to the process of innovation and creativity.
➡️ check out the summit 2023 list
📚🎁Knowledge to gift this season: 2 upcoming new books
Here are two books from a16z crypto authors you can order as last-minute holiday gifts, or to help the curious people in your life plan get smarter in the new year…
The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create is a must-read for anyone -- whether brand marketer, company leader, entrepreneur, or artist -- who wants to understand all things NFTs. The new book, co-authored by a16z crypto research partner and Harvard Business School professor Scott Kominers, comes out next month (Portfolio, January 23), and demystifies the coming digital revolution around NFTs. Because NFTs aren’t just pictures on the internet, or a fad that’s come and gone -- they’re a new technology for creating digital assets, and providing irrefutable proof of ownership. NFTs open up markets that have never before existed, and are already revolutionizing commerce and brand-building for companies, while transforming people’s online and offline interactions.
➡️ order here
Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet is a must-read for anyone -- internet users, business leaders, creators, entrepreneurs, the tech-curious -- who wants to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. It provides a vision for a better internet, a clarion call for anyone looking to navigate or build the future, and a playbook for getting there. Penned by Andreessen Horowitz general partner & a16z crypto founding partner Chris Dixon, the book comes out soon (Random House, January 30 in the U.S.; Cornerstone, February 1 in the U.K.). But if you order now, you can unlock various special offers -- from a unique generative art NFT via special bookmark (plus discount from list price), to a signed copy…
➡️ order here for bookmark-NFT / order here for signed copy
📹🎧Watch/ listen: On the decentralized web, ground truth, and human rights
For over two decades, Jonathan Dotan has navigated the intersections of media, tech, and policy -- as a tech founder and Emmy-nominated producer, including six seasons as a writer on HBO's Silicon Valley. Dotan is also the founding director of The Starling Lab at Stanford University & USC -- which prototypes tools and principles to bring historians, legal experts, and journalists into the new era of web3 -- and where he leads applied research on the decentralized web and human rights.
Dotan is also a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Blockchain Research and a lecturer at Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate School of Business. He recently delivered a short presentation on “hacking authenticity” and the enduring promise of web3 at our second annual a16z crypto Founders Summit, followed by a discussion with a16z crypto’s Robert Hackett on how cryptographic technologies can help establish ground truth in conflict zones; the history of open source regulation; crises in various regions around the world top of mind right now, plus the role of technology, and more. You can watch and listen to both of these talks below:
➡️ watch the presentation (1)
➡️ listen to the podcast (2)
holiday magic
-- Sonal Chokshi and a16z crypto teams
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