Osvaldo Santana Neto

Short book that presents the main topics about the problems that we need to solve with the technology on our capitalist society.

It's a book to start the understanding of these topics but not enough to create a deep awareness of each challenge that we need to face.

I read this book a long time ago and really loved it. It was my first Asimov book.

Reading it for the second time after a long time was not so impactful as it was in the past.

It's a simple book with simple premisses and not so profound discussions about the impact of AI and robots could have on our capitalist society.

Recently, I started a treatment for anxiety. Some therapy, some medicine... no results. Then I accidentally found this book at the bookstore and it completely blew my mind.

Anna Lembke explains about the dopamine addiction that modern society is facing and gives some recommendations about how to manage this.

She tries to go further on the causes of the society's addictiveness to Dopamine but, unfortunately, she does not go far enough on the root cause: capitalism. It is impossible to survive in a society under capitalism where everything is created to be sold, even the promise of happiness and well-being.

The book started really well, in the beginning, explaining ideas and concepts of the capitalism.

After that I become really frustrated with the “hacking” part of the book.

I expected that she would explain how to “hack” the capitalism in a way to overcome it but she gave hints and tips to “surf” the capitalism and grow/survive inside of it.

IMHO, the objective of hacking something is to exploit it (break it, destroy it, expose it, ...) not “live it”.

We need more than just coding skills to become an amazing developer. It is easy to find books to learn how to use some technology or tool but not so easy to find good books that helps to improve our so called “soft skills”. This book is a good starting point to become a better developer.

(I read the book on preprint)