Since I don't watch TV, I love reading. My magazine subscriptions (of which I actually read) include The Economist (my favorite), Foreign Affairs, and BusinessWeek.

Then there's books ...

Most influential

1. Being Digital - Nicholas Negroponte. The basis for "atoms" versus "bits" ideology and an early bible for the coming connected planet.
2. New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World - Kevin Kelly. Executive Editor of Wired magazine, former publisher of the Whole Earth Review, and early WELL member, Kevin Kelly provides insight into the networked economy of communications. This is an absolute must-read by anyone remotely concerned with the Internet, information technology or what the world will be like in the coming years.
3. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man & The Medium is the Massage (OOP) - Marshall McLuhan. The father of "electro-magnetic" media theory.
4. Individualism & Economic Order - Friedrich von Hayek
5. I, Pencil - Leonard Read. Free to read online.
6. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand.

Recent selections:

• Chaos, Management and Economics: The Implications of Non-Linear Thinking - David Parker & Ralph Stacey
• Lean Thinking
- Womack & Jones
• The Goal: The Theory of Constraints - Eliyahu Goldratt
• Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder. A history of philosophy as told through an interesting narrative -- correspondence between a young girl and a mysterious philosophy teacher. This book is a great introduction to philosophers and philosophic thought.
• The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
• Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
• Code (and other Laws of Cyberspace) - Lawrence Lessig.
• Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology - Neil Postman. A poignant summary and subsequent wake-up call that further pronounces Postman's ideas of media ecology and the dangers of contamination by unquestioned technological assimilation.
• Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville.
• Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, Idoru - William Gibson. I recently re-read this series and I'm preparing to dive into All Tomorrow's Parties.
• The Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle.
• The Search For Modern China - Jonathan Spence.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain.
• Watership Down - Richard Adams.
• The Republic - Plato.
• One-Dimensional Man - Herbert Marcuse.
• Zen and the Art of Making a Living - Laurence Boldt.
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum - Alan Cooper.
• Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man - Marshall McLuhan. Explores the contamination of literacy among modern man. Another classic McLuhan.
• Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto - Guy Kawasaki.
• The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (OOP) - Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert.
• Bhagavadgita - A constant companion ...
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business - Neil Postman. In "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman argues that television has become an intoxicating "command center" of American culture that has distracted from and trivialized seemingly important aspects of our lives. (Excerpt from my review on Amazon.com.)
• New Ideas from Dead Economists - Todd Buccholz.
• The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay.
• Megatrends, Megatrends Asia - John Naisbitt.
• True Story of Ah Q - Lu Hsun.
• Hyperspace - Michio Kaku.
• The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley. A great effort to describe the indescribable. Very inviting concept of the brain's defense mechanisms as a "reducing valve", thwarted in Huxley's experience through mescalin.
• Coordinating the Internet - Brian Kahn, James Keller.
• Turtle Island - Gary Snyder. Poetry.
• Information Warfare - Winn Schwartau. Get this book and read it twice. It is the bible for our electronic age. Schwartau is a prophet.
• Post-Capitalist Society, Managing in Turbulent Times, The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker.
• The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels.
• Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact - Ludwik Fleck.
• Essays in Pragmatism - William James.
• Future Shock - Alvin Toffler. Written decades ago, the principles within are more relevant to "here and now" than most current events/forecast books written today.
• The Will of Heaven: The Story of One Vietnamese and the End of His World (OOP) - Ngueyn Ngoc Ngan. An inside look at the Vietnam war from the perspective of a Vietnamese. Wow, what a concept. Do yourself a favor, dispel the hype of Hollywood and read this.
• Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver.
• Yakuza Diary (OOP) - Christopher Seymour. This guy camped out in the Yakuza dens of Japan for three years to write this book. Mutating from an exercise in journalism to an integrated involvement in the Japanese mafia's activities, it provides for a unique story.
• Speed Tribes: Days and Nights with Japan's Next Generation - Karl Taro Greenfeld. A look at Japan's "Generation X".
• Book of the SubGenius: Sacred Teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs - The SubGenius Foundation. The last book you will ever need to read. Study this selection and you can stop reading, forever. (Please Note: this is false religion -- determined to be a hoax!)
• Eastern Standard Time - Staff of A. Magazine. More of a unique reference than a true "read," this interesting coffee table book is a comprehensive guide to Asian influence on the West.