Analogia: The Entangled Destinies of Nature, Human Beings and Machines

Description

A spellbinding exploration of the emergence of the digital age and an unsettling vision of what comes next In a world where humans coexist with technologies they no longer control or understand, who holds the future? George Dyson plots a thrilling and unexpected course through 300 years of history and science to reveal the hidden connections that underpin the digital transformation of the current age, ending with a premonition of what might follow. From an eighteenth-century Russian expedition to the furthest reaches of North America, to the mirror signals that heralded the age of digital long-range communications and invention of the vacuum tube, Analogia interweaves historical adventure wit scientific insight in a deeply personal story that frame the pursuit - and cost - of the digital revolution in a captivating new light.

George Dyson is a historian of technology and the author of several books including Turing's Cathedral, Project Orion and Darwin Among the Machines. His subjects range from the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak to the evolution of artificial intelligence.

This book pierces through the fog of everyday life. Read and you will become aware of history you need to know, and of how the last few centuries of the human story sit within a much larger, epochal frame. An extra treat is insight into the remarkable Dyson family -- Jaron Lanier * Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now * The most delightfully peculiar book I've ever read. It's grand and intimate, personal and cosmic, and about digital computing and archaic hunter gatherers. Every paragraph is a surprise -- Kevin Kelly * Wired * An odyssey of discovery ... part autobiography, part science manual, part history book -- Izabella Kaminska * Financial Times * Few writers could string together a coherent and compelling tale out of elements as varied as the Bering-Chirikov expedition to Siberia in 1741, the construction of a US heliograph intelligence network, tree houses, kayak designs and the future of artificial intelligence. Dyson is one in this quirky personal history of technology. -- John Tothill * Financial Times * Brilliant ... idiosyncratic ... to read him is to be led on the strangest of adventures, on paths untread, up and down trees, and through rivers of time -- Jason Kehe * WIRED *