Decoding the World Lib/E: A Roadmap for the Questioner

by Po Bronson, Arvind Gupta (Contributor)

A vision of the future where the latest Silicon Valley tech meets cutting-edge genetics.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Business, Futurism, Technology

Audio CD

Published October 6, 2020

About the author

Po Bronson has built a career both as a successful novelist and as a prominent writer of narrative nonfiction. He has published five books, and he has written for television, magazines, and newspapers, including Time, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Currently he is writing regularly for New York magazine in the United States and for The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Po Bronson's book of social documentary, What Should I Do With My Life?, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and remained in the Top 10 for nine months. He has been on Oprah, on every national morning show, and on the cover of five magazines, including Wired and Fast Company. His first novel, Bombardiers, was a #1 bestseller in the United Kingdom. His books have been translated into 18 languages. Po speaks regularly at colleges and community "town hall" events. He is a founder of The San Francisco Writer's Grotto, a cooperative workspace for about 40 writers and filmmakers. From 1992 to 2006 he was on the Board of Directors of Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. He lives in San Francisco with his family.

from pobronson.com

Reviews

[Nuha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Twelve Books and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta's "Decoding the World" is a novel concept in that it is not so much as a science book as it is an opinion book. Interspersed with personal texts and autobiographies of both authors lies some scientific explanation of common themes in modern day news articles such as climate change, longevity and genetic engineering. It is a decidedly tech bro friendly series of discussions as both have been heavily involved in the tech start up industry with their company IndieBro. While I found some of their explanations really interesting and novel, for the most part it felt like I was being lectured on opinions without substantial proof. Overall, an okay read.

[Hugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a collection of essays on tech-related topics from 2 smart authors that operate on the cutting edge of tech in Silicon Valley.
To me, the topics themselves are fascinating, however the format and style of the book made it a rather confusing read. The weirdest example of this format is a chapter that stops halfway, stating that the chapter was a 'failed experiment'. Why put it in the book then? Also, the text-message conversations between Po and Arvind that were added at the end of most chapters felt rather confusing and out of place - not sure what the added value was there.
So overall, not a book I'd recommend.

[Elise Trimmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to older teens interested in STEM. I didn't find the chatty narrative and simplistic journalistic style to be a good fit for me, as an adult, but my daughter enjoyed the Easter eggs I read to her. If you are interested in future science I recommend 'Life on the Edge' or 'Science of the Impossible.'

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decoding the World is a collection of essays going back and forth between authors Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta. Each essay is introduced from a real news headline though how directly or tangentially those headlines relate to the subject varies widely.

Arvind Gupta founded IndioBio and this year, Po Bronson took over as managing director as Gupta went elsewhere. As part of this transition, they co-wrote this book capturing the excitement of the massive changes in how we understand the world through science and looking at the threats to humanity and the planet with some ideas for improvements, even in health care reform.

From saving the bees to creating life, Bronson and Gupta takes us on a wild bioscience ride that is mind-blowing. I often had to stop and read something again not so much to understand it but to accept it. An understanding was fairly easy as both Bronson and Gupta are skilled at communicating complex ideas with effective metaphors and clear prose.

Decoding the World is an excellent introduction to the wild frontier of bioengineering, DNA hacking, and RNA funkiness. It also addresses serious issues such as climate change, inequality and health care reform. Bronson and Gupta are bold thinkers and clear leaders. They write well, explain clearly, and know a lot about a lot.

I did not care for their gimmicky way of introducing ideas with texts or conversations between them. It simply felt like a strategy for two smart men to appear more relatable for those who may be in awe of their intellect. For me, it felt like condescension. I would l like the book better without it.

The danger for people who know a lot is to think they know everything - or at least know how to give their opinion on how to fix everything even when it's completely out of their wheelhouse. The chapter on health care costs was excruciating, a technocrat commenting from the outside and completely missing the point. He had the idea of addressing health the way we would address climate change - but seriously decarbonizing our diet would be good. It won't fix a broken arm for a twelve-year-old child whose parents have no health insurance. Proposing tort reform before universal health care is the sign of someone who really should go back to the drawing board.

But these are small complaints about a book that I like very much. All in all, I like the book and find it an optimistic and ambitious look into the future.

Decoding the World will be published October 6th. I received an ARC from the publisher through Shelf Awareness. 

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...

[Yanal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the summary on Blinkist and thought it was an interesting story on the founder IndieBio.

Decoding the World is a buddy adventure about the quest to live meaningfully in a world with such uncertainty. It starts with Po Bronson coming to IndieBio.

Arvind Gupta created IndieBio as a laboratory for early biotech startups trying to solve major world problems. Glaciers melting. Dying bees. Infertility. Cancer. Ocean plastic. Pandemics.

Arvind is the fearless one, a radical experimentalist. Po is the studious detective, patiently synthesizing clues others have missed. Their styles mix and create a quadratic speedup of creativity. Yin and Yang crystallized.

As they travel around the world, finding scientists to join their cause, the authors bring their firsthand experience to the great mysteries that haunt our future. Natural resource depletion. Job-taking robots. China's global influence.

Arvind feels he needs to leave IndieBio to help startups do more than just get started. But as his departure draws near, he struggles to leave the sanctum he created. While Po has to prove he can keep the "indie" in IndieBio after Arvind is gone.

After looking through their lens, you'll never see the world the same.

[Heather Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This book blew me away. I was a bit anxious before I started it, because "the future of humanity" (from the book's original subtitle) seems so grim and I wasn't sure I could handle the details. The authors don't sugar-coat it -- many of Earth's problems are laid bare in this book. But this book did a lot of assuage my anxiety. It is very readable, not totally over my head, but also not condescending. If you are interested in articles from outlets like Popular Science, Scientific American, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, I think this book would interest you.

So many topics are covered -- medicine, COVID-19, various aspects of climate change, intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, genetics, lab-grown meat, human memory, venture capitalists, AI, cryptocurrency... this list barely scratches the surface. It is exciting to read about all the solutions that people are working on right now, and it made me feel a glimmer of hope that we aren't as doomed as I thought.

If I were teaching a creative writing class, I would have my students read this book to brainstorm ideas for speculative fiction.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a great intro to the hot biotech topics of today, and written in short (for the most part) and separate chapters so it was easy to pick up and put down at will. It also was an interesting look into venture capital at work, which isn't something I usually have insight into.

However the most interesting thing was that this was the first book I read that was finished writing after the covid pandemic began, so it references it in several places. This novelty will soon pass though I expect.

Where I think the book struggled was in the casual interaction of the authors, they were very much from a different world and their chatter and anecdotes didn't endear me to them. They very much fit the stereotypes I expected, which is disappointing. I very much wish they had just stuck to the science. It also isn't a book you'd get much out of reading a second time, and I suspect as it is so 'in the moment' it won't age well.

[Adam Kanter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read overall. Some of the essays make you think, and they’re written in a way that makes it understandable for most.

I think it tries a little too hard to be meta and funny at points that takes me out of the mood to read it. The text conversations and random references to writing the specific chapter they’re on irritate me a bit.

I found it difficult to return to reading this and it dragged on a bit. Again, there are some good essays in here that explain a lot of scientific advances and new technologies. Just got a little sick of them trying to be meta, funny, and talking about how their Silicon Valley startup was different than other companies. I don’t know.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner, by Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta

This is a review of a book supplied by Netgalley.

Arvind Gupta is a venture capitalist and the founder of the IndieBio science accelerator. Po Bronson is a San Francisco technology journalist who for the last few years has also worked for IndieBio. There’s a lot to be impressed with in the IndieBio accelerator. The company funds a number of startup companies using business model similar to the now venerable YCombinator, where teams of young scientists compete for seed funding to develop the first viable products that will hopefully attract subsequent rounds of funding. The wisdom of funding graduate students to come up with the next big idea, rather than buying ideas from professors after they’ve had it, has been demonstrated by the huge success of the accelerator.

IndieBio has aspirations to finding biotech solutions that will make the world a better place, and creative solutions to rhinoceros horn hunting, bee colony collapse, and other societal problems abound in the book. The book portrays IndieBio as a nerd fantasy land.

Each chapter starts with an unrelated headline from the tech press that Gupta and Bronson use as a topic to riff on from their IndieBio experience. This theme is more a cute conceit than an effective architectural element of a book: the headlines tend to be scattershot, making the book feel unnecessarily trivial in a way that it wouldn’t had it focused on, for example, societal problems that are addressed by IndieBio companies. There are hints of vanity publishing, of the “Isn’t what Arvind does amazing?” But the book is redeemed by being about genuinely interesting topics, and being written with humor and enthusiasm.

There are multiple mistakes that hopefully can be corrected by the time the book makes it to print. The authors assert in Chapter 12 that Mars's gravity decreased when its magnetic field died, which would only happen if the mass of the planet also changed. The atomic symbol for calcium is "Ca" and not "CA". The authors also capitalize the Pasadena institution as "Caltech" and "CalTech"; only the former is correct. Obvious mistakes like these are jarring in a science book: one questions what else the authors are sloppy or wrong about, which make it hard to take the subsequent sections of the book as authoritative in any way.

[Joseph Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breezy book about future tech that gets worse as it goes along. It seems like a way to promote a bunch of different things that their company is doing, but in book form! While some of the future tech is interesting and 'game-changing', the style of the book feels very adhd, with no clear-focus, but a singular belief that technology will save the world! Different chapters cover different technology, including topics like artificial meat, crypto, crispr, quantum computing, etc.

It's good that the book does not look heavily into the politics of enacting new technology into government policies, as it would drag, much like governmental change tends to do. The insertion of the authors makes this book more quirky, but less relatable, and made me question their intentions more. Some of the analogies (particularly the MMC quantum computing) seem questionable, and feel more about what the author was into at that point.

They provide mostly interesting entries into each of these technologies, but remain overall positive about them all. It often felt like they were trying to 'boil the ocean', not being able to point to major benefits or causes that these techs should or could work at. It's an alright book, but the style/topic may not be interesting for all.

[Jose Figueroa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part manifesto, part memoir, part thesis, this book is the first volume of a trilogy on convergence, a theme the authors explore leisurely. Each chapter is devoted to a topical news story, and the authors trade off on writing what is essentially essays on how they portend the future of technology will impact human culture and society. They also sprinkle their side conversations between chapters, to punctuate the impact their friendship has on the development of their views. The writing is engaging and because it is mostly epistolary, the book can be put down and picked up easily. The authors raise many thought provoking issues and many readers will come away if not inspired at least curious to learn more about the subjects raised in the book. Fans of magazines like Wired and Fast Company will find this book appealing and worthwhile.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It isn't "about" any one topic, but a story of exploration of biotech, AI, global political economics, wealth inequality, crypto, quantum computing and other forces changing our world. But the authors aren't observing the system from the outside, they're actively investing in those companies. Running experiments, gathering data, and sharing the thought processes that enable them to see inevitabilities.

A book tackling these topics could get dense and unreadable pretty quickly. The authors exemplify their freedom of thought by playing with the art form of writing. Multiple times I was surprised and thrown off balance with an abrupt turn only to realize that my expectation of how the story should progress was part of the mindset they're scuttling. Only when we fully embrace that we don't know with certainty what is, do we have any chance of anticipating what will be.

[Adelyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded down. Very fascinating collection of essays about discoveries at the forefront of science, with the added novelty that this book is written by the founder / managing director of a venture capitalist, so there is that element of new biotechs and how they are forging their way in the world. I only wish there were more of the latter, given that was to me the main appeal of this book. Some of the essays were also a bit oddly written (particularly the one that just essentially stops halfway and written off as a "failed experiment", without any real reason as to why). I did like the generally informal and chat-like format though, I thought it lightened the book just the right amount. More thoughts to follow.

[William Schram · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is okay. I didn’t know what it focused on, so I was often lost. At face value, the book is a series of newspaper headlines that the authors use as a topic to explore. The book is widespread in its material.

The first chapter discusses the Coronavirus outbreak and how we made vaccines for it. I thought the book would focus on biotechnology, and in some ways it does. Subsequent chapters cover various topics like James Bond villains and how evil their plans were, or making cash from illegal sand.

Each topic has the authors making points and discussing the topic with each other. Despite its flaws, the book manages to fit a smorgasbord of ideas on a variety of subjects. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Dax · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book may of taken me quite sometime to get through that is not indicative of the quality or interest in subject matter. I found this to be a book you savor. Read a chapter and spend tons of time mulling it over and imagining all the ways that we are living in the sci-fi future we were promised. The thing that makes this book so memorable and enjoyable is the message of how we can save our planet, save ourselves, and provide a brighter future for those yet to come. Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta are using the pages of this book to paint a future we can believe in while also showing just how far we need to come.

[Jose Liquet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome; feels like reading shows from WNYC's RadioLab: Arvind being Jab and Po being Robert. It's a fun read on many "buzz" topics like A.I., CRISPR, alternative-protein foods, etc. My only negative comment on the book was the few times when they were describing genetic processes and the line between facts and opinions got blurred. Above all, this is a perfect book for the curious, one who wants to know a bit about all the current/future issues society is/will be facing. I really wish Po and Arvind get together again and write about VCs in a similar way they did in this book.

[MAYA QUARTZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will help introduce the reader to some interesting and novel ideas and provides a small snapshot of what is going on in the world of biotech right now. The focus is mainly on opinions regarding the current and potential impact of the technologies mentioned, through the lens of Arvind and Po’s experiences and interests.

However, authors’ seem to be attempting to endear themselves to the reader through their anecdotes, but the tone often comes across as somewhat cheesy or self-aggrandizing instead. This makes reading the essays less enjoyable.

[Linda Bond · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world is full of questions; and hopefully, answers can be found if there is someone to look for them. This is a book about two men – scientists – who began a venture that would help them find those answers. Anyone who loves science, who has questions for which they would also like answers, will enjoy what these authors have to say about themselves, about the people living on this planet, and about all of the problems out there begging to be solved. A thoroughly enjoyable read!

I met this book at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, WA

[Michael Brokaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a review so much as notes to myself about this book.

This book reads like science fiction because the "cutting edge" science of bioengineering is so exploratory as it is described by the authors. I did not understand the scientific details, but I "got" the author's purpose of funding solutions to big problems.
The author's company, IndieBio, funds incubation of ideas using bioengineering to contribute to solving problems like climate change, universal health care, ocean plastic pollution and many other problems.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was sent a copy of Decoding the World; A Roadmap for the Questioner by @pobronson and Arvind Gupta by @twelvebooksdistribution in return for a fair and honest review. I must say, this book really made me think. I only read a chapter or two a day, to better absorb it. This book is about what science is capable of accomplishing, and what the major road blocks are. It’s also about being part of a solution or part of a problem. If you are interested in science, technology, the environment and the world, I highly recommend it.

[Jung]

Through their venture capital firm IndieBio, close friends Arvind Gupta and Po Bronson are helping biotechnology startups expand and accelerate their work. They’re motivated by the desire to tackle the very biggest problems facing the world – from COVID and cancer to climate change. Many of these remarkable and innovative projects might just lead to real progress and a brighter future.

5 sided chess -

Climate
Ai
Genetics
War on truth (media)
China

[Quinns Pheh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Through their venture capital firm IndieBio, close friends Arvind Gupta and Po Bronson help biotechnology startups expand and accelerate their work. They are motivated by the desire to tackle the world's biggest problems- from COVID and cancer to climate change. Many of these remarkable and innovative projects might lead to real progress and a brighter future.

[Renee Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book attempted to make science at an advanced level more understandable to the lay person. It did a fairly good job for me.

One thing that was a glaring error was that it said Bruce/Caitlin Jenner is Kim Kardashian's mother in law. The truth is that he/she is her step mother. Hopefully, this was corrected prior to final printing.

[Mala Ashok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta have taken real-life headlines and looked behind the scenes into the science that they reflect. This makes for a very educational book. What is remarkable though is that the book is eminently readable and understandable. This is a non-fiction book I would recommend unhesitatingly.

[Kalle Wescott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read /Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner/, by Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

I'm a big fan of Po Bronson, but this book, about scientific and biological issues of the present and future, was somewhat random in subject (skipping around) and format (including texts between the authors).

[Bala Kamallakharan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never see biology, technology and human ingenuity the same way again

Arvind and Po have decoded the strange problems in biology, technology and how we will build the future. Just brilliant.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff. I like scifi, and although this is non-fiction, it feels like it's on the edge of science and tech at times. I certainly learned a few interesting things, and it made me think a little. Recommended for those interested in science.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

[Rene Low · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook
Some brilliant ideas explored and complex topics demystified although too often this book is told from an all to American lens. There are parts I didn’t completely understand and parts I absolutely loved.

[Zhivko Kabaivanov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Decoding the World (2020) is a dive into the fascinating world of IndieBio, a biotechnology firm that’s determined to change the world for the better.

The long-term health of both people and the planet are at stake – and not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Ago Lajko · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't recommend, waste of time (note: I read a subset of the chapters, which are independent of each other. So maybe the book is good if I know which pages to read beforehand? :) )