Category Archives: Science and technology
The Coming Wave
AI and biotechnology could solve humanity’s toughest problems — or trigger chaos, collapse, and dystopia. Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave warns we’re not ready. Can we contain what we’ve unleashed? This thoughtful book explores the risks, contradictions, and urgent questions posed by tomorrow’s most powerful technologies. Continue reading
Nexus
Why are humans so good at acquiring information and power but not wisdom? In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari explores how human information networks enable large numbers of people to cooperate over great distances and how those networks often prioritize order over truth and wisdom. AI could make matters even worse. Continue reading
Jesse Jenkins’s Course on the Electricity Sector
Prof. Jesse Jenkins of Princeton University teaches a course called Introduction to The Electricity Sector. He’s made the presentations from his course lectures available to the public at no charge. Continue reading
Our Moon
Our Moon is a fascinating book that explores how the Moon has inspired culture, religion and science for thousands of years. More than that, in this wide-ranging book, author Rebecca Boyle shows how the Moon also affected the formation of the Earth, and guided the evolution of life itself. Continue reading
Our Fragile Moment
What can we learn from ancient episodes of climate change to help us deal with today’s climate crisis, to help us take the earliest possible off ramp from the global warming highway we’re speeding along? Renown environmental scientist Michael Mann sets out to answer that question in this book. Continue reading
The Worlds I See
Dr. Fei-Fei Li may not be a household name, but for over twenty years she’s been a driving force behind the advancement of artificial intelligence, particularly computer vision and deep learning. Her book, The Worlds I See, is both a personal memoir and a history of AI. Continue reading
Some Assembly Required
Last month, I reviewed The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen. It’s all about the destruction of life through mass extinctions. Fascinating but grim. The book left me with a nagging question, though: after each mass extinction how could … Continue reading
Podcast: What’s next for clean energy and climate mitigation?
Back on the 28th of June, I had the pleasure of attending a live recording of the Volts podcast hosted by David Roberts here in Seattle at an event sponsored by Canary Media. Roberts interviewed energy analyst and author Ramez … Continue reading
God, Human, Animal, Machine
A chatbot called ChatGPT, released last year by OpenAI, has brought new intensity to the controversy about artificial intelligence. If you haven’t used ChatGPT yet, I encourage you to try it. I’ve included some helpful links at the end of … Continue reading
Hidden Figures
I heard about the movie Hidden Figures a few years ago but never saw it. Recently, the inscrutable algorithms at Instagram started dropping clips from the movie in my feed. I’ve no idea why but I’m grateful. They got me … Continue reading
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