Dale
It was ok. Some very poetic observations about how our classifications divide us from the world when we are truly a part of it. Most of the book is about how the entire universe is indivisible, all one single thing, and events are an illusion, cause and effect are not separate, the entire universe is a single event. It's an interesting perspective, but ultimately it just feels like semantics. Sure, I can see how it's all one, but that's really just expanding what you choose to classify.
The only practical claims made by the book are that we are all connected. You and I are ultimately the same being, the universal consciousness, which is to say the self-aware portion of the universe. I've flirted with this idea myself in the past. It is, of course, unprovable and unfalsifiable, so it's that fun kind of philosophy where you can choose to believe in it or not, but it has no practical implications on the world. That's not entirely true though, it is a philosophy that encouraged empathy, since we are all one.
It was an ok read, but it didn't present me with any new ideas.
A bit hit or miss for me. Some stories really hooked me, with some great ideas executed in clever ways. A few of the stories didn't grab me, and unfortunately the longest story in the book by far was one of them. I was close to giving this book 3 stars, but the last story ended up being one of my favorite, and managed to earn it that fourth star. All things considered, if you like short stories based on creative ideas, give this book a go. Just know you might not like each story.
This book was hard to put down. The author spent years embedding himself in two groups, the “Techno-Utopians” that created social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Reddit with an idealistic commitment to free speech and the democratization of information, and the alt-right, a political movement that would have been considered too extreme to take seriously merely a decade ago. It becomes apparent very quickly that the latter could not have come to prominence without the former.
The author, a writer for the New Yorker, is painfully aware that he is part of the old guard. The old media which acted as the gatekeepers of information. They were the target of the social-media revolution, as well as their ability to decide what information was given legitimacy and what was ignored. They have clearly lost the battle. Print is all but dead, and trust in news organizations is at an all-time low.
These days information doesn't come down from the gatekeepers above, information is spread horizontally. You get your news from your friends or family, whoever makes up your immediate social circle. They are the fact checkers now. This can lead to information bubbles, and the ever-maturing algorithms these sites use to drive up engagement have only made this issue exponentially worse.
The contrarians and extremists figured out early how to excel in this new media landscape by exploiting the algorithms and appealing to the virtue of free speech, something the young CEOs of the social media revolution couldn't help but allow, if not encourage. Fringe groups used this new media to expand their reach, connect with each other and organize, and give their extreme views a new sense of legitimacy.
I found this book extremely enlightening. It's a book that preaches to the choir, mind you. The author takes it for granted the reader is left-leaning and not a Trump supporter. He won't be changing any minds. But for someone like me, left leaning and definitely not a Trump supporter, if was extremely informative, and downright terrifying. It really helped me see the big picture of how things got so crazy so fast, and makes a compelling argument that society needs information gatekeepers, not a blind commitment to a sweeping ideal like free speech.
The argument is so compelling we're starting to see those (aging) idealistic techno-utopians come around. Reddit has gotten comfortable banning sub-reddits that promote violence and hatred, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube have all stopped allowing blatant misinformation to be hosted and/or monetized on their sites, forcing people like Alex Jones to retreat to fringe sites, where they belong.
It will be interesting to see what comes next.
My family likes to playfully tease me about an incident from my childhood. When I was a young kid, my Mom was taking groceries out of the shopping cart and putting them into the car, while also keeping my younger brother and I in line. In the middle of the chaos I suddenly went dead serious and asked my Mom a question I just had to know the answer to: if humanity painted the entire earth yellow, would it look yellow from space? I was curious if the green and blue image of the globe was actually the grass and water we were seeing, or if there was some other unknown process at work. Understandably my Mom didn't have time to entertain such an absurd question. I'm happy to find, 25 years later, that I'm not the only person who comes up with these absurd questions, and especially happy to find that someone qualified is willing to answer them!
I very nearly gave this 3 stars, but the last few chapters pushed it just over the line. The majority of this book felt like a lot of revisiting the stuff he went over in his previous book Homo Sapiens. When he finally does really start to push into new territory, thankfully it is quite interesting. Looking at everything as algorithms, and applying Darwinism to it is not something I'd considered before. Honestly though, this whole book could have condensed into a handful of chapters and added to the end of the previous book.
You can't go home again. Anyone who's moved away from home and grown as a person knows returning home is an increasingly bittersweet ordeal. Your returns home never quite live up to your memories. You don't quite fit anymore. It has changed and you have changed. At times it almost makes you wish you could forget all you've learned, just to return to a simpler time.
These are the thoughts this book brought up in me. To say any more would venture into spoiler territory. Not quite as singular in vision as its predecessor, I still really enjoyed the second book in this trilogy.
A few fun stories, but ultimately it felt like a poor-man's version of Console Wars, a book I'd easily recommend reading instead.
There were several errors stated as fact, which any gamer or industry veteran will immediately recognize as false (the author claims Bowser is the villain in Mario 2...)
The final chapter, written at the height of Wii mania and before the embarrassment of the Wii-U, has the author claiming movement controls are here to stay and are the future of gaming with Nintendo as the king. An understandable prediction at the time, but clearly not how things ended up playing out, no pun intended.
Maybe I'm just not in enough of a hurry, but this book felt a bit too shallow, a bit too quick to summarize or gloss over. There were a few aspects expressed in interesting ways, but ultimately it felt like most chapters were perfunctory. I'm probably just the wrong target audience. People with only a passing interest who want a quick summary will get exactly what they're looking for here.
2 for 2 with this author. I absolutely love his writing style; he's unafraid to get lost in beauty and has an almost defiantly romantic view on life. I love his books for the style and prose more than the narratives, which is less an indictment of his stories and more just a great appreciation for his words.
Awesome. Recapping humanity's journey from chimpanzee to modern man and getting a sense of the daily life of the individuals of each time period along the way really dwarfs your perspective of your own life. It makes you realize you are but one story in one chapter of a book that's been in progress for hundreds of thousands of years, a book that will continue to be written long after your small contribution is over.
Seeing how several times all it took was a single idea to catch hold, spread through the world, and change everything makes you wonder what the next major revolution will be, and what seemingly simple idea will spark it. Reading about how the ideological conventions have changed over time to facilitate the conditions the society exists in makes you truly grasp how morality is malleable, and will continue to change as society does. This is a book that looks at the big picture, and makes you see all the small parts of your daily life in a new, grander context. Loved this book.
I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I can't say I'd recommend it, but I also can't say I regret reading it. I'll probably even read the remainder of the trilogy. It's a book that gets by on its atmosphere, and its sense of exploring something bigger than you, which ultimately means you shouldn't go in expecting a neat ending with answers for all your questions.
Started very strong, presenting some new and exciting ideas. I was quite excited to get into it, but after a while it got extremely dry and frustratingly repetitive. Chapter after chapter listing how much barley a woman was worth in every different culture got tedious and depressing. I suspect this book is potentially revolutionary for the field, but as a bit of a layman looking for something a bit more accessible, I was ultimately rather disappointed.
I first heard about Martin and his experience when I watched his TED Talk a few years ago. I added his book to my To-Read list and I'm glad I did. While his experience was unfathomably bleak at times, it was ultimately extremely inspiring. A Coming-Of-Age story of sorts, Martin wakes up in a body he can't control after years in a coma, with no memory of who he was before this. Those around him don't realize he's awakened inside until, years later, one especially empathetic and kind nurse takes a chance on him. This chance leads to a second awakening, as Martin now must learn how to interact with a world he was convinced would never see him. While overcoming incredible obstacles, and with an unshakable bravery, he makes the most of his situation, and builds a great life for himself, a life many would be envious of.
A collection of essays on feminism and gender dynamics. Had some pretty eye opening statistics and was great at exposing how the status quo was established and how it hurts us all. The essays were mostly chronological, going up to as recent as 2014. The author predicted the #MeToo reckoning that was right around the corner, and I'd be very interested in reading a new essay by her based on recent events.
Wow, what an awesome ending to one of my fave sci-fi trilogies ever. The author truly pulled out all the stops with this one. The series always excelled at taking established science and using it as a foundation to branch off into some truly speculative science fiction, but this one untethers itself from the familiar altogether, speeding off in some creative new directions. The last 100 pages were especially mind-blowing! This is science fiction at the grandest level, with ideas, technology, and creative physics as the driving force, with characters and narrative as secondary justifications, and I absolutely loved it!
For such a short book, I found this a slog. I was ready to engage with the subject matter, but could not find a way to connect to the writing at all. The author's writing style veered between honest opinion and sarcastic straw-manning, and it was legitimately difficult to tell which side of the line she was on from paragraph to paragraph.
Combine that with the fact that I couldn't identify with any of the cultural reference points she used (examples include a subsection of the “blogosphere” dedicated to survivors of relationships with a narcissist, a star of the reality tv show My Super Sweet 16, professional asshole Tucker Max, etc), and the constant academic name-dropping, and I was left feeling completely disconnected from the book in my hands.
There were one or two interesting observations or ideas to take away from the book, but overall I can't say I recommend it.
Hard sci-fi over a fun techno-thriller. Written in China and translated for the Western audience, I found having a different backdrop for sci-fi very refreshing. Drawing themes from the Cultural Revolution and applying them to a first-contact scenario was very interesting, and the hard sci-fi was HARD, which I loved. Some pretty crazy scenarios come to pass that stretched my ability to suspend disbelief, but the fact that it often spends pages explaining the theoretical physics behind it, and the ideas are novel and often at least hypothetically possible (if insanely improbable) there's enough cool ideas and fun theorizing to let it slide. A real page turner as well, read most of the book over a single weekend. Already have the remainder of the trilogy on its way from Amazon!