You have a wayyy too skewed perception of the general tech person.

I normally get way better and varied recommendations from my philosophy friends, for example. Here it's generally just the usual mainstream sci-fi stuff about tech, space, ai/robots and such.

And forefront of culture is by definition going to be full of known stuff, else it wouldn't be culture-defining if almost nobody knows it.

What would you put in your top 5 "I'm very smart" 30+ yo book list?