Jay Walker's Library | Hacker News Reader

Jay Walker's Library

wired.com

70 pointsaresant20 comments

Full article without pagination:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker...

My library has a Darwin bobblehead, a 4-bit relais computer, a rock from the top of Vesuvius, a small meteor, a 1kg pure tungsten cylinder and a magnesium one of the same size, some robot arms, a variety of Game&Watches, a Sterling engine and a steam engine, and a 1 cm scale cube. It all feels kind of inadequate now (on the other hand, that's enough crap already!).

Mine has books.

Yeah, but then those are implied. > 2500 last time I counted.

A bookworm pissing contest? Really?

Impressive. Have you read all of them (that would be even more impressive)? I know a lot of people with incredible libraries in their homes but they don't read any of the books the have...

It's quite an unordered mess, so it looks less impressive than it sounds! I'm just getting old and have been buying for a while.

I think it is compensation for my _awful_ memory - I read books with pencil in hand, underlining and making notes in the margins, so I like to keep the books around after I have read them. Also libraries here often don't carry the books I want to read (or they're translated), so buying makes sense for me. I don't do this with novels of course.

Lately I have been thinking I should make notes on the computer instead, like Derek Sivers does, e.g. http://sivers.org/book/ArtOfProfitability

To finally answer your question, I have a stack of about 250 books I haven't read yet. Some of them I'll probably never read - I once bought the 10 best poker books, but I just can't get interested in the subject anymore.

Where'd you get the cylinders?

Ebay, from a guy in Spain that was selling a lot of element samples. They're great fun for visitors - they pick up one, then go 'What the?!' when they pick up the other one :)

I had the great pleasure of visiting the Walker library last year. Not only is the library packed inch to inch with incredible artifacts as Wired describes, but it is truly his own as well, with items that have been great personal inspirations to him as well.

What surprised me the most, however, is how down to earth the entire family is. They are all energetic yet realistic, and some of the friendliest people I have ever met.

That is a pretty sweet library. I could totally see myself doing something like that someday - mostly because I love to hoard things I find interesting.

Some of those items are extremely unique or rare though and it does make me wonder how much of those kinds of things should end up in private collections versus being more available to the public to some degree. It seems like the risks of losing some of these artifacts would increase over time if they are held privately.

That's not to say that people shouldn't be allowed to own them privately... just something to think about.

In case you were wondering, Jay Walker is the founder of Princeline:

http://www.ted.com/speakers/jay_walker.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_S._Walker

http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/54/2000/LIR.jhtml?passLi...

    s/library/museum

If Wikipedia were to become a physical library, that would be it.

I'm a big Wikipedia fan, but I think its corporeal form would be more likely to resemble the U.S. Government Housing and Urban Development building rather than this.

Wouldn't things get kicked out for lacking notability?

How do you dust all that stuff???

This is very cool, it would be more cool if he made it a public museum. It would obviously cost money to move the stuff into a proper building with security and staffing but would be great for so many people...

Being a patent troll and all, I'm sure Jay Walker could care less about sharing anything with the public.

Ask HN: I need some motivation. Have anything for that? ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com