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allison_reader's review against another edition
4.0
Thought-provoking, frightening, at times repetitive, and slightly missing something. It’s speculative and focuses less on the future of humanity and more on a future where humanity is superseded/controlled by all-knowing algorithms. It does seem to ignore the fact that the non-biological algorithms owe their existence to humanity, and if there are no longer humans to gather information about, or if humanity is just so much less advanced than the algorithms (and therefore obsolete) what information are the algorithms going to be gathering & why? I kept waiting for speculation on whether the algorithms would be able to discover the meaning of life/existence but that never came. I guess that would not be a goal unless humans programmed that into early algorithms. Also, today, information gathering is closely tied to capitalism, but the book says capitalism will one day cease to be important, so what again is the end goal of the information gathering? Algorithms are going to ceaselessly analyze and gather information, just for the sake of doing so, and then what? I can’t imagine humans would program themselves into insignificance. This book seemed more an effort to get humans to realize that they won’t be the top of the food chain forever and to contemplate that reality. Still, I think definitely worth a read.
manu51's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
allauthors's review against another edition
2.0
Not a horrible book, but not what I was hoping for. I was expecting a modern philosophical treatise with a logical analysis that would provide unique insights (or at least theories/boondoggles or what-have-you) into human nature and the progression of the human race. What I got was pop-pablum at its most inane. The author makes the same point 52 different ways in every chapter and every one of them is trite and fallacious. He compiles and presents some pre-existing notions and they may be interesting for the reader who has not run into them before (humanism as a religion, dataism, the biological algorithm, etc.), but he presents nothing unique or original at all and his conclusions are only either the most obvious and mediocre or the most ludicrous and unfounded with nothing in between. He takes long and rambling side-tracks (onto animal rights as one example) that never lead back to his main point except in the most tangential ways and eventually seem to just trail off. In short, there are much better books out there for the modern reader with an interest in the future of the species and modern philosophy.
berniesams's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0