The Patrician’s library¶

The Patrician maintains a modest personal library in his office, carefully curated over decades of governance. It contains no books about leadership, motivation, or achieving synergy through collaborative paradigms. It does contain histories of previous disasters, technical manuals explaining how things actually work, and several volumes of correspondence from people who were certain about things that turned out to be completely wrong. He finds the last category particularly educational.

When asked about staying informed about technology, The Patrician observes that the challenge is not finding information but rather avoiding the enormous volume of information that is confidently wrong, commercially motivated, or simply noise disguised as insight. The technology industry produces more analysis per day than any reasonable person could read per year, almost all of it either restating the obvious or stating the non-obvious incorrectly. The skill is not consuming more information but consuming the right information while ignoring the rest.

His approach is unfashionable in an era that celebrates being extremely online and maintaining awareness of every development in real-time. He suggests instead reading less but better, favouring depth over breadth, and accepting that most news is either irrelevant or will still be relevant when you eventually learn about it. This produces better understanding with less effort and fewer stress-induced decisions based on incomplete information consumed at three in the morning.

The principle of source hierarchy¶

Not all sources are equally valuable, and treating them as equivalent wastes time and produces confusion. The Patrician suggests a hierarchy based not on prestige but on alignment between what sources claim to do and what they actually provide.

Primary sources that actually built the technology or conducted the research are valuable despite usually being dense, technical, and written for specialists rather than general audiences. Academic papers, technical documentation, and systems analysis from practitioners contain information that cannot be obtained from secondary sources because the secondary sources haven’t read the primary sources either or have misunderstood them creatively. Reading these primary sources is slow but produces actual understanding rather than impressive-sounding opinions.

Technical blogs from engineers working on actual systems provide insights unavailable from journalism or commentary because the authors understand the systems from building them. These blogs are irregular, often incomplete, and assume specialist knowledge, but they’re honest about limitations and trade-offs in ways that polished content cannot afford to be. The Patrician particularly values blogs that discuss failures and limitations rather than just successes.

Financial analysis from people who have money at stake and who will personally suffer if wrong provides reality-checking on hype because their incentives favour accuracy over optimism. This is different from financial analysis from people who profit from promoting particular investments. Distinguishing between these requires knowing who benefits from you believing their analysis. Investment managers writing for their own clients have different incentives than investment managers writing to attract new capital.

Journalism from reporters with technical backgrounds and established track records of accuracy provides context and synthesis that specialists lack perspective to provide. The challenge is distinguishing good technology journalism from warmed-over press releases or think pieces by generalists who learned about the topic yesterday. The Patrician suggests that good technology journalism makes you understand something new while bad technology journalism makes you feel informed without actually informing you.

Commentary and analysis should be consumed sparingly and skeptically because incentives favour confident pronouncements over honest uncertainty. The people who appear most frequently in media are often those willing to provide definitive opinions on anything rather than those with deep knowledge of specific things. The Patrician notes that the most knowledgeable people are often reluctant to opine broadly because expertise makes you aware of how much you don’t know.

What to actually read¶

Given the hierarchy, The Patrician suggests specific types of sources worth regular attention while most of the rest can be safely ignored.

For AI developments, read the actual papers from leading research labs, not the journalism about the papers. arXiv and conference proceedings from NeurIPS, ICML, and similar venues contain the actual work. Most papers are incremental and many are wrong, but the good ones provide understanding impossible to obtain from summaries. The Patrician admits this requires some technical background but suggests that non-technical readers can often extract key insights from introductions and conclusions even when the methods sections are impenetrable.

For business developments, read the financial filings and earnings calls from major technology companies rather than the news coverage. These documents are required to be honest about risks and challenges in ways that press releases are not. The sections discussing risks, competition, and challenges provide more insight than the optimistic statements that get quoted in news articles. The Patrician notes that what companies worry about officially is more informative than what they claim to be excited about.

For infrastructure and operations, read the post-mortems from major outages that companies occasionally publish. These documents explain how complex systems actually fail rather than how people imagine they fail. The honesty is refreshing and the technical details are educational. Site reliability engineering literature more broadly provides understanding of how large systems are actually operated rather than how they’re theoretically designed.

For security, follow the researchers who actually discover vulnerabilities and explain them technically rather than the journalism that translates discoveries into anxiety without understanding. The security community is good about publishing detailed analyses of what went wrong and how. These analyses are technical but valuable for understanding how security actually works rather than how it’s supposed to work.

For regulation, read the actual regulations and regulatory proposals rather than summaries that invariably miss important details or mischaracterize requirements. The documents are long and written in legal language, but they’re authoritative in ways that summaries are not. The Patrician suggests that spending an hour reading a regulation directly produces better understanding than a month of reading commentary about it.

For skeptical perspectives that balance endemic optimism, follow the researchers and engineers who are willing to discuss limitations honestly. They’re less visible than optimists because pessimism is less marketable, but they provide essential reality-checking. The Patrician values people who can explain both what works and what doesn’t work with equal clarity.

What to ignore¶

Equally important is knowing what to ignore, which is most things most of the time.

Ignore hot takes and real-time reactions on social media because these are optimised for engagement rather than accuracy. The most viral takes are the most confident and most extreme, which makes them the least likely to be accurate. The Patrician suggests that if something is important, you’ll hear about it from better sources eventually, and if it’s not important, you’ve saved time by not engaging with noise.

Ignore most conference keynotes and promotional webinars because these are optimised for presenting companies and products in the best possible light rather than honest assessment. The information provided is carefully curated to support conclusions the presenters have already decided. Occasionally conference keynotes contain useful information, but the ratio of promotional content to actual insight is sufficiently poor that skipping them entirely is reasonable default.

Ignore analysis that doesn’t explain its reasoning or that makes confident predictions without acknowledging uncertainty. Analysis that states conclusions without showing work is either oversimplified or designed to persuade rather than inform. The Patrician suggests that good analysis makes you understand why the analyst reached their conclusions even if you disagree, while bad analysis makes you either agree or disagree based on gut feeling rather than reasoning.

Ignore sources that are consistently first with news because being first usually means skipping verification. Being slow and accurate is more valuable than being fast and sometimes wrong. The Patrician notes that technology news is rarely urgent enough that waiting a day for verified information is problematic. If you’re making decisions so quickly that you need unverified information immediately, you’re probably making decisions badly.

Ignore most trend pieces and future predictions because these are notoriously unreliable and are more about generating content than providing insight. Pieces that begin with “The future of X is Y” are almost always wrong about the details even when directionally correct. The Patrician observes that the future is reliably different from both optimistic and pessimistic predictions in ways that neither anticipated.

How to consume information efficiently¶

The Patrician’s approach to information consumption is structured around the observation that reading more is not the same as understanding more and that efficiency comes from focusing attention rather than distributing it broadly.

Read daily for financial news affecting major technology companies because this is where actual developments are announced and where market reactions reveal what informed parties believe. This takes perhaps thirty minutes. The rest of the news cycle is usually noise that can be safely ignored because anything important will persist beyond the daily news cycle.

Read weekly for deeper analysis and technical developments that require more context than daily news provides. This might be longer articles, blog posts from engineers, or research summaries. This takes an hour or two but provides understanding that daily news cannot.

Read monthly for research papers, regulatory developments, and strategic analysis that require sustained attention. This is where actual learning happens rather than just staying current. The Patrician suggests that one well-understood research paper per month produces more insight than hundreds of news articles.

Read yearly for books and comprehensive analyses that provide historical context and deep expertise. Technology books date quickly for specific technologies but less quickly for principles and patterns. The Patrician’s library contains more books about how complex systems fail than about specific technologies because failure patterns are more durable than technology details.

Maintain a reading list rather than reading everything immediately. When something looks interesting, add it to a list and read it later when you have time and attention. Most things on the list will become obviously irrelevant before you read them, which saves substantial time. The items that remain relevant weeks later are more likely to be worth reading than the items that seemed urgent but are now forgotten.

The Patrician notes that this approach means being less current than people who consume information constantly, but being more informed in ways that matter for actual decisions. He suggests that knowing less but knowing it accurately is more valuable than knowing more but knowing it shallowly or incorrectly.

The specific sources worth following¶

If pressed for specific recommendations, which The Patrician is reluctant to provide because reading lists date quickly and because his interests may not match yours, he suggests the following types of sources as examples of the hierarchy applied practically.

For technical depth, follow the engineering blogs of major technology companies describing how they build and operate systems at scale. Google’s SRE blog, AWS architecture blog, and similar resources from companies operating at scale provide insights impossible to obtain elsewhere. These are irregular and technical but valuable.

For security, follow researchers who publish detailed analyses of vulnerabilities rather than security news aggregators. The researchers explain how things actually broke rather than just reporting that they broke. This produces understanding of security rather than just awareness of breaches.

For AI capabilities and limitations, follow researchers who are honest about both rather than either purely optimistic or purely pessimistic. The field contains people who can explain clearly what works, what doesn’t work, and why. They’re less visible than hype merchants but more valuable for understanding.

For business analysis, follow financial journalists with technical backgrounds who can analyse both the business and technology aspects of developments. The intersection of technical understanding and business analysis is rare and valuable. The Patrician suggests that understanding both is necessary for evaluating most technology developments because purely technical or purely business analysis misses essential context.

For regulatory developments, follow lawyers and policy analysts who specialise in technology regulation rather than generalist journalists. The specialists understand nuances that generalists miss and can explain why details matter. This is admittedly niche but valuable for anyone affected by technology regulation.

For historical context, read about previous technology cycles and how they resolved. The patterns are remarkably consistent even though the specific technologies differ. Understanding how the internet bubble, the PC revolution, and earlier technology transitions played out provides context for evaluating current developments. The Patrician’s library contains more technology history than current technology because the patterns recur while the specifics change.

The Patrician’s assessment¶

Looking at how to stay informed without drowning in noise, The Patrician concludes that less is more, that depth beats breadth, and that most information can be safely ignored without consequence. The key is identifying the small fraction of sources that provide actual insight rather than just content, focusing attention there, and accepting that you’ll be less current but better informed than people who consume everything.

The common mistake is believing that being informed requires constant consumption of current information. This produces anxiety and shallow knowledge rather than understanding. The better approach is selective consumption of high-quality sources combined with patience to wait for important developments to become clear rather than reacting to initial reports that are often wrong or incomplete.

The distinction is between being informed and feeling informed. Feeling informed comes from consuming lots of information and having opinions about everything. Being informed comes from understanding deeply a modest number of important things and having opinions about those while acknowledging uncertainty about everything else. The former is more socially impressive but the latter is more useful for actual decision-making.

The Patrician suggests that if you’re reading this guide hoping for a simple reading list that will make you informed about technology through passive consumption, you’ve misunderstood both the problem and the solution. Becoming informed requires active effort to find good sources, critical evaluation of what they claim, and synthesis across multiple sources to form coherent understanding. There are no shortcuts beyond identifying better sources and ignoring worse ones.

His library contains books that are decades old because the principles they explain remain relevant while specific technologies change. It contains technical papers that took days to understand properly because understanding them produced insights that journalism could not provide. It contains analyses that were wrong but educational about why they were wrong, which is more valuable than analyses that were confidently right through luck rather than reasoning.

The advice for staying informed is therefore less about specific sources, which change constantly, and more about approach. Read primary sources when possible, favour depth over breadth, be skeptical of confident predictions, ignore most of what’s published because it’s noise, and remember that being slightly behind current events while actually understanding what’s happening is more valuable than being extremely current while understanding nothing deeply.

The technology industry produces vast amounts of information because producing information is cheap and because people consume it despite its low average quality. Your responsibility is protecting your attention from this onslaught rather than attempting to consume it all. The Patrician’s library is modest not because he’s read everything worth reading but because he’s identified the small fraction worth reading and ignored the rest. This is the only sustainable approach to staying informed in an era that produces more content than anyone could consume and that mistakes volume for value with reliable consistency.