I Am a Strange Loop
May 4, 2011
- Author:
- Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Published:
- Basic Books, 2008
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Atlas Shrugged
April 21, 2011
- Author:
- Ayn Rand
- Published:
- Plume, 1999
Amazon | Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand’s greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex.
Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result…
Prey
March 16, 2011
- Author:
- Michael Crichton
- Published:
- Harper, 2008
Amazon | In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles — micro-robots — has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.
The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans
December 15, 2010
- Author:
- Hugo de Garis
- Published:
- ETC Publications, 2005
Amazon | This book’s main idea is that this century’s global politics will be dominated by the “species dominance” issue. 21st century technologies will enable the building of artilects (artificial intellects, artificial intelligences, massively intelligent machines) with 1040 components, using reversible, heatless, 3D, molecular scale, self assembling, one bit per atom, nano-teched,…
The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
July 16, 2010
- Author:
- David Brin
- Published:
- Basic Books, 1999
Amazon | Science fiction writer Brin (The Uplift War) departs from technological fantasy to focus on the social and political ramifications of our information age.
While addressing the technology-vs.-privacy debate, he offers an informed overview of the issues and a useful historical account of how current policies evolved. Also beneficial are…
- Author:
- Hans Moravec
- Published:
- Harvard University Press, 1990
Erin Rhodes | What happens to memory and experience when it becomes a commodity? Can the mind really be freed from the physicality of the brain – and of the body? Wouldn’t multiple versions or copies of ourselves, and the prospect of immortality, cheapen the uniqueness of being human? Are consciousness, emotion, and intelligence…
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
July 16, 2010
- Author:
- Bill McKibben
- Published:
- St. Martin's Griffin, 2004
Amazon | In 1989, McKibben published The End of Nature, a gorgeously written and galvanizing book about the true cost of global warming, the destruction of the ozone layer and other man-made ills-the loss of wild nature and with it the priceless aspect of our humanity that evolved to listen to and heed it.…
Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life
July 16, 2010
- Author:
- Richard A. L. Jones
- Published:
- Oxford University Press, USA, 2008
Amazon | Enthusiasts look forward to a time when tiny machines reassemble matter and process information with unparalleled power and precision. But is their vision realistic? Where is the science heading? As nanotechnology (a new technology that many believe will transform society in the next on hundred years) rises higher in the news agenda…
Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future
July 16, 2010
- Author:
- James Hughes
- Published:
- Unknown, 2004
Amazon | In the next fifty years, life spans will extend well beyond a century. Our senses and cognition will be enhanced. We will have greater control over our emotions and memory. Our bodies and brains will be surrounded by and merged with computer power. The limits of the human body will be transcended…
- Author:
- Francis Fukuyama
- Published:
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
Amazon | Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man; Trust) is no stranger to controversial theses, and here he advances two: that there are sound nonreligious reasons to put limits on biotechnology, and that such limits can be enforced. Fukuyama argues that “the most significant threat” from biotechnology is “the possibility that…
Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind
July 16, 2010
- Author:
- Hans Moravec
- Published:
- Oxford University Press, 2000
Amazon | Here come the free-roaming robot vacuum cleaners, self-driving cars, robot chess champions, robots that fly and swim. If these machine intelligences already tooling around or on the drawing boards leave you blasé, consider this: Robotics pioneer Moravec predicts that if the present exponential growth rate of computing power continues, super-robots that perceive,…
- Author:
- Damien Broderick
- Published:
- Tor Books, 2001
Amazon | Is technological change advancing so rapidly that we can no longer chart its progress? Are we careening ever closer to the point that scientists have dubbed “the singularity,” the moment when the pace of innovation will lead to changes so profound that attempting to envision the future becomes an impossible dream? According…
Breakpoint
February 12, 2010
- Author:
- Richard A. Clarke
- Published:
- G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007
Penguin Group | In his fiction debut, The Scorpion’s Gate, Richard A. Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, projected a world in 2010 in which the United States and China were competing politically and economically for a dwindling supply of increasingly expensive oil and gas. That competition naturally took…
- Author:
- Howard Bloom
- Published:
- Wiley, 2001
Publishers Weekly | Bloom’s debut, The Lucifer Principle (1997), sought the biological basis for human evil. Now Bloom is after even bigger game. While cyber-thinkers claim the Internet is bringing us toward some sort of worldwide mind, Bloom believes we’ve had one all along. Drawing on information theory, debates within evolutionary biology, and research…
- Author:
- Ray Kurzweil
- Published:
- Penguin Books, 1999