In what way? I'm a human being full of intertwined contradictions and personal mythologies. I have many ways in which to be influenced. I've read so many books

In what way? I'm a human being full of intertwined contradictions and personal mythologies. I have many ways in which to be influenced. I've read so many books and they've all left their impression on me one way or another; even the most boring drivel! If by influenced you mean to imply, as a programmer, then I would say perhaps Programming in the 1990s if that counts as "non-technology." It's a book about maths and using logical proofs as a tool for creating specifications of computer systems. Prior to reading that book I had treated "software specifications," with the same reverence as a sketch on the back of a napkin. As far as I was concerned the only specification that mattered was the source code and the tests that exercise it. I feel as though that book has greatly changed the way I approach problems and how I think when I'm thinking about software.