Systems engineer at IBM, VP at Tandem, CTO EMEA at Microsoft. Lifelong reader. Builder of tools for thinking clearly about the world we share.
Annotary began as a personal reading list that became a knowledge graph. After five decades and 5,000+ books, the question was no longer what to read but how to make that reading useful to others. Every Tier 1 entry has been personally read and vouched for. The curation philosophy is simple: at least two views on anything important, honesty about what has been read and what hasn't, and no advertising, ever.
Forty years in technology leadership across IBM, Tandem Computers, and Microsoft gave a systems-thinker's lens to a humanist's reading habit. The intersection is this library.
Tier 1 means personally read and vouched — not just important, but genuinely absorbed. Tier 2 means attested by multiple serious sources, cross-referenced, and included on scholarly merit. Every tradition and culture has been sought out, not just the Anglophone canon. The blindspot analysis runs continuously.
The curation stances — endorsed, essential context, consciously excluded — are as deliberate as each other. Ayn Rand is consciously excluded. Marx is essential context. The Bible is essential context. Adler is T1.
Annotary is part of a larger nine-site ecosystem built around the belief that democracy only works when people can think clearly together. The other sites include Locke Project (founding documents in plain English), Rigwatch (democratic pathologies), and Sumarium (systems concepts). The cross-linking between them is the product, not incidental.
Dedicated to the memory of Gregory James Ball, 1990–2022.