bookshelves: art---ideas, currently-reading, non-fiction
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bookshelves: art---ideas, fiction---fun
Being a war veteran added something to my second reading of this book. I felt sort of hopeless like my namesake, Billy, in this book about life, but unlike him I don't travel through time.
This book is easy to read but not easy to understand, alot like playing poker. There is content swimming just under the water in this book, as the reader I found myself putting things together and comparing things to my own life. Which is what a good book does.
This is more than a good story. ]]>
bookshelves: non-fiction
Heartbreaking first person stories from the Sudanese refugee diaspora. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading, non-fiction, science
This book will either upset you or make you fantasize about a science-fictiony future. Turns out these scienctists have projected when they will be able to build a computer that will be smarter than humans, with intuition and emotions, and at that point humans will be evolutionary detrius. (The author, Ray Kurzweil, suggests that the computer will keep us around, as pets?) Once a computer is smarter than humans it will be able to make itself smarter faster than we would be able to, it would never get tired, it would work on its own self-improvement 24 hours a day, it wouldn't have to worry about biological bodies.
What else is unsettling is that this computer will use everything: dirt, rocks, air, trees, as more computers by using their molecules to store and process information. This use of all matter to compute will spread at the speed of light, and eventually humans will have produced a computer that will saturate the entire universe - and therefore "human thought" will take over the universe and make a smart universe.
It is a really long book, and it is not a page turner. I am one third of the way through, normally I read a book in less than a week, but this one is taking a while because it is not really a story - it is more of a long power point presentation format. In the Army they call this type of presentation "Death by Power Point." ]]>
Bill
read and liked
Katherine Parker's
review of The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God:
"Carl Sagan rules the Universe, kind of literally. I wish I were as smart as CS.
Eric got me this book for Christmas, and I read it straight through, even the Q&A transcripts in the back. If you are interested in spirituality but don't beli...more "
"Carl Sagan rules the Universe, kind of literally. I wish I were as smart as CS.
Eric got me this book for Christmas, and I read it straight through, even the Q&A transcripts in the back. If you are interested in spirituality but don't beli...more "
by Ray Kurzweil
Yeah, that is a good point Katherine. I have been looking into the projected techno-future, and some of the scientists believe that the universe is a computer built by another race like ours that figured out how to build a computer smart enough to build a universe. ]]>
bookshelves: fiction---fun
Super uplifting. Every story was very sad + depressing on the surface, but confirmed that there are still humans out in the world that feel and are sensitive. I felt very relieved by these stories. The best McSweeney's since number 25.
I am going to read it again.
The last story: Retreat, written by Wells Tower is a masterpiece of story telling. I was completely drawn into the world of two brothers and their depressing lives, and I felt richer, and like I had some company on Earth for a minute. ]]>
bookshelves: fiction---fun
I found 29 a little hard to get through. Not all the way boring, but a little long winded for my taste. ]]>