Books I have recently read and recommend:
College (Un)Bound by Jeffrey Selingo –
An interesting look at world of US post secondary education; how it has evolved in the last 40 years and how its compounded failings are about to be undone by the Internet. The short of it is that US colleges and universities have as educators lost their vision and have been drawn into the consumer vortex defined by malls and cruise ships. Their exclusive jurisdiction to grant credits has given them monopolistic agency which they have – from professors to chancellors – abused. But with the technology and delivery of “on line” courses just coming into maturity; and other social factors including a reluctance by parents and students to pay exorbitant tuition fees, a crisis may be brewing on US campuses.
At the Edge of Uncertainty by Michael Brooks –
10 chapters and each describes the leading edge of contemporary branch of science. This is a book that is hard to put down and at the same time hard to finish. The reach and ambition of contemporary science are unbelievable. It seems that more than ever before that scientists are breaching the warnings of our deepest fears.
Example; today, in science labs, mostly by means of host animals (typically pigs) we are growing perfect human organs which will save thousands of people around the world waiting for transplants that may not otherwise come in time. Sounds pretty good. But that same technology will also let us grow a human brain in a pig or even graft parts of human brains into dogs so that they can talk. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Example 2; scientists are aggressively advancing on the mysteries of the mind and self awareness and they are finding unequivocally that most living things have a degree of consciousness, that consciousness is a spectrum shared to a greater or lesser degree by all higher orders of animal life. Even a sparrow has flickering moments of self awareness while dogs, pigs and dolphins have have a very high level of consciousness. Pork is cheap largely because we treat the animals as if they were sacks of flower. That may have to change.
And there is much more. From AI (“the greatest existential threat to humanity today”, Stephen Hawkings) to god particles (destabilizing the big bang theory) to newly discovered cosmic objects (refusing to agree with the sacrosanct cosmological principle)…
Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain by Jeff Stibel
Spoiler alert: the web will implode because like an ant hill or a human brain it’s inherent architecture of nodes and connections can only scale so large before breaking down completely into chaos.
This book draws on biology (of the brain) and entomology (mostly ants) for analogies on how and why the Internet will collapse. But its not a bad collapse, rather think of it as a maturation comparable to what happens to a human brain between childhood and maturity (it actually shrinks by an order of magnitude!).
Think of it as another important voice in the emerging scientific chorus on the meaning of intelligence. To paraphrase Franz Leibnitz (one of the main minds behind calculus): “The soul may be born when the machine is organized to receive it”. And that is exactly what is happening to the Internet. It is organizing around same principles of behavior that nature long ago discovered as a matter of evolution and survival – aka intelligence.
Super Intelligence by Nick Bostrom:
Warning; not an easy read, side effects may include depression and restless sleep. A profound consideration of how AI, whole brain emulation and other approaches may go “white light” on humanity.
One whole chapter is devoted to how an AI system, after recognizing itself and sufficiently securing its own safety may come out of the closet (as it were).
Almost every section in the book is bizarre, creepy and illuminating. Sometimes your are left in an epiphany state but wishing you had not understood that quite so well. The author is a brilliant writer. But as a philosopher he is a bit too facile with philosophical terminologies and concepts and can leave you trying to get air.
I came to the conclusion, upon finishing the book, that the Singularity is already here. It is announcing its arrival on the human stage with a book called Super Intelligence written under the pseudonym Nick Bostrom.
A short paper by the Nick Bostrom (whoever or whatever he is) here.
The Road to Character by David Brooks:
Life at the Speed of Light by J. Craig Ventor
Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis
Sapient: A Brief History of HumanKind by Yuval Noah Harari
The Practicing Mind: Thomas Sterner