Recent reading
Apr. 20th, 2016 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaFalling From Horses by Molly Gloss
Molly Gloss is one of those authors where I will read anything she writes, because I always enjoy it--she's just really good at both character and setting, and the writing is unobtrusively good. This one's about a guy doing stunt riding in Hollywood in the 1930's; also it turned out that the main character's mother is the woman who was the main character in the author's last book, which was a nice bonus. I do wish Gloss would write some SF/F again, though, because she was so good at it.
Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity by Olle Häggström
A present from the author, who is a colleague of mine. Basically this book is about dangers to humanity from emerging technologies and argues for caution, debate, and possibly restriction of research into things like artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology. I thought it was interesting. I am struck, though, by the different things that people worry about when it comes to the future. I do not spend my time worrying about the Singularity. Possibly I should, and the reason I'm not is that I don't know enough about it. What I worry about, measured by the time and work I'm putting into it, is threats to biodiversity and climate, and economic and democratic inequality. The thing my dad worries about is global population growth. I guess it's not an either-or situation; all of these things can be threats, and the future is really hard to predict. I do recommend this book, though--it's a good introduction to the topic and also it's good to think about these things, especially if it's something you don't usually think about.
There was one bit that I really disagreed with, though: "...which would be bad news for humanity, because it suggests that we will most likely not go on to colonize the universe, i.e, we seem to be at a dead end." (Skipping the beginning of the sentence since it contains some mathy bits and would take some time to explain.) But WTF? To me the Earth is NOT a dead end--I mean, it's a pretty nice place and it'll be about a billion years before the sun kills it by going red giant. This is like someone saying to me "You will eventually die, and therefore your life is just a dead end." Which I do NOT agree with. Also, why do all futurologists/AI-researchers/Singularity-promoters/transhumanists seem to be men?
Relatedly, will soon post review of Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, which is intimately concerned with this subject.
Molly Gloss is one of those authors where I will read anything she writes, because I always enjoy it--she's just really good at both character and setting, and the writing is unobtrusively good. This one's about a guy doing stunt riding in Hollywood in the 1930's; also it turned out that the main character's mother is the woman who was the main character in the author's last book, which was a nice bonus. I do wish Gloss would write some SF/F again, though, because she was so good at it.
Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity by Olle Häggström
A present from the author, who is a colleague of mine. Basically this book is about dangers to humanity from emerging technologies and argues for caution, debate, and possibly restriction of research into things like artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology. I thought it was interesting. I am struck, though, by the different things that people worry about when it comes to the future. I do not spend my time worrying about the Singularity. Possibly I should, and the reason I'm not is that I don't know enough about it. What I worry about, measured by the time and work I'm putting into it, is threats to biodiversity and climate, and economic and democratic inequality. The thing my dad worries about is global population growth. I guess it's not an either-or situation; all of these things can be threats, and the future is really hard to predict. I do recommend this book, though--it's a good introduction to the topic and also it's good to think about these things, especially if it's something you don't usually think about.
There was one bit that I really disagreed with, though: "...which would be bad news for humanity, because it suggests that we will most likely not go on to colonize the universe, i.e, we seem to be at a dead end." (Skipping the beginning of the sentence since it contains some mathy bits and would take some time to explain.) But WTF? To me the Earth is NOT a dead end--I mean, it's a pretty nice place and it'll be about a billion years before the sun kills it by going red giant. This is like someone saying to me "You will eventually die, and therefore your life is just a dead end." Which I do NOT agree with. Also, why do all futurologists/AI-researchers/Singularity-promoters/transhumanists seem to be men?
Relatedly, will soon post review of Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, which is intimately concerned with this subject.
