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What I've been reading this year. I'm typically a giant slacker when it comes to reading—spending too much time scrolling on crap and too little time reading things of real value. Part of the logic of seting up this page is to build some social obligation to read more. We'll see if that works, fingers crossed 🤞🏼.
2024
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Examines the way big tech companies financialize attention in digital advertising, comparing its potential collapse to the housing crisis of 2008. Hwang argues that the true value of online attention is misrepresented, and if digital advertising collapses, the internet will be put at risk.
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I've seen some people refer to this as The Empire Strikes Back of the Expanse series. Meh, maybe? I loved that movie though—while for me this was the weakest book in the series so far. The crew was mostly split up for the whole thing, and in terms of advancing the overall plot, not much really happeend.
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I first heard this series mentioned on the Ezra Klein Show, where it was discussed with the author for what insight it offers into the rise of Generative AI. While there are some parallels, the story stands on its own as just a really great piece of world building sci-fi. The story spans millennia, using cryo hibernation to center the narrative around a consistent core of human characters. When efforts to enginier new intelligent specicies on other worlds falls apart—things get even crazier from there. It's a fun read.
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The sequel to Children of Time, this book picks up where the last left off, well... a handfull of centuries later, but in the span of this series, that's really no time at all. This one didn't hold up as well for me as the last one did—less of a focus on humans maybe. Or at least the humans that don't live as an aftifical intelligence inside a biological computer made up of super-smart ants. Again though, a fun read.
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I've always been obsessed with the Lewis and Clark expedition. And this book really gets in the weeds of the Lewis journals and leaves no deatil unexamined. I like to have a non-fiction book going while I'm also reading a novel.
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I went to school for history and philosophy, whith a Masters focused on the intersection of history, philosophy, and technology. I'm a sucker for anything about the history of science (James Burke, et al), and it's impact on our culture in particular. So this book is pretty much right in my wheelhouse. It was written in 92 but Neil does such a good job of laying out the fundamental concepts that it's as relevant today as it was then. Highly recommend.
