Authors:
Aaron Quigley
On any given day, as a scientist I find myself reading on topics ranging from radar sensing for HCI and crop measurements to generative AI for interface design and software engineering. As a science director at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, I also read about HCI, AI, and data science, as it pertains to research questions that affect progress to net zero, advancing human health, next-generation agriculture, and managing our planet's natural resources. This material addresses questions such as quantum sensing, human-robot teaming, digital trust, and developments in AI to advance scientific discovery.
When I was asked to reflect on what I'm reading, however, I decided not to pick topics in HCI but instead to focus on my after-hours reading. This is where I get to step back and pick books that inform, delight, and often challenge my thinking.
In In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonder of Complex Systems you will discover a delightful book, full of wonder, joy, and curiosity. Written by Giorgio Parisi, who won the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics, it provides a witty and charming window into his thinking and his reflection on scientific discovery. Reading this reminds me of the very best academia offers the world: a place where curious, humble, and ambitious people can connect ideas to find beauty and unlock new ideas and ways of thinking. The book shows that the path to discovery is littered with missteps, mistakes, and oversights, each allowing the author to find connections between ideas. Sometimes these connections are surprising and seem counterintuitive, but they bring to light new insights. Parisi shows us how he uncovered a set of ideas and discovered a golden thread with which he stitched them together, ultimately resulting in the Nobel Prize. Of course, this book is not about the prize but rather what it takes to be brave in the pursuit of scientific truth, even in the face of failure and setback. It reminds us that, while our world is complex, understanding it is a great adventure.
I recently attended Australia's largest Indigenous gathering, the Garma Festival, which celebrates Yolngu life and culture. The amazing colors I saw there—the oceans, the land, and the sky—along with the stories I heard from members of the world's oldest continuous living culture, prompted me to reread Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox. In it, Victoria Finlay examines the history and makeup of the physical materials that create some key colors, including white, black, ochre, and indigo, among others. From lapis mines to insect blood, artists were slowly able to access new colors over the ages and around the world. Each chapter tells a remarkable story of how particular colors came into our palette. As a visualization and interface researcher, thinking about color, light, and how each individual experiences them is part of my work. Have you ever wondered, however, what colors were available to the First Nations people of Australia 60,000 years ago, or what colors were available to the Phoenicians when making flax, or even the extent of the colors Egyptian painters had for burial chambers? By exploring the history and the physical materials, Finlay creates a rich tapestry of many colors and explains how each was introduced to various cultures. Colors we take for granted today were once rich in social and political meaning, fought over, and transported across the globe as trading routes were introduced. This book takes you on a journey, which continues to this day with new color display technologies and new materials, such as Vantablack.
Lastly, The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes, by David Robson, is currently fascinating and annoying me in equal measure. The author is a gifted storyteller who weaves together research with compelling examples to explain why intelligence alone is not enough to avoid catastrophic mistakes. At a time when we are having so many discussions about human intelligence, machine intelligence, and collective intelligence, this book is a refreshing step back to reflect on human intellect and expertise, and their failings. Chapter 6, "A bullshit detection kit," with its helpful table of fallacies (e.g., correlation proves causation) will appeal to everyone in the HCI research community faced with "truthy" but deceptive information. As Robson notes, "a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." We all need better intelligence in this world, and this book helps us celebrate the "humbitious" thinkers who demonstrate humility and ambition in their pursuits.
Author
Aaron Quigley is the science director and deputy director of CSIRO's Data61, the data and digital specialist arm of Australia's national science agency. He is the chair of the ACM CHI Steering Committee, an ACM distinguished member, and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of New South Wales. His research interests lie at the intersection of AI, HCI, ubicomp, and infovis. [email protected]
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The Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2025 ACM, Inc.
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