Unmachined Words: A Reading List to Keep You Human

Maid Reading in a Library (detail) by Edouard John Menta, 1915

For those of you who prefer to read off paper rather than the screen, I have converted the post into an easily printable pdf file. Remember to come back and share your thoughts and comments! You can access the file here:

A room without books is like a body without soul.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

In our recent interview with

Tessa Carman

, we asked her what books she would include if she were to organize a seminar for high schoolers and adults on the Machine. We shared her list on notes and invited readers to add their book recommendations on the Machine.

Mary Harrington

kindly picked up on this invitation and shared her syllabus for the summer seminar at Harvard’s Abigail Adams Institute, in turn asking her readers to add their suggestions for “readings on the philosophy, history, or demonology of the Machine”. We collected all of the reader’s responses and are now sharing with you the resulting rich collection of modern and classic fiction and non-fiction books.

In an age of machines, books can keep us human. The books on the following list have one thing in common: they point us back to our essential nature as embodied, grounded, relational, and spiritual. We hope you find something in this collection that points you away from technology and back to reality and encourages you to read, think, discuss, and thus spread seeds of sanity.

The books on this list have been curated by ourselves,

Tessa Carman

,

Mary Harrington

, and motivated readers. We recommend these books as consideration, not as endorsements for everything they say. This is not a complete list and is still open to suggestions. The focus however is not just on “great” books, but ones that highlight the negative impact of technology on what it means to be a person, the importance of digital minimalism, or something that metaphorically expresses the dangers of technology as one of its primary themes.

We arranged the lists into four categories:

• Non-fiction - Modern

• Non-fiction - Classic

• Social Media/Tech - Impact and Management

• Fiction - Modern & Classic

The books are alphabetized according to author and we also included the publication dates (which range from 1854 to 2024!).