Where the Axe Is Buried

by Ray Nayler

There were a number of books that had a particular influence on Axe. I can provide only a partial list here. I found Jer Thorp’s Living in Data: A Citizen’s Guide to a Better Information Future inspiring, and Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines; The Search for a Planetary Intelligence, by James Bridle, also helped me to think through a number of the ideas behind Axe. For its utility in thinking about the way systems behave, I found Bruce Clarke’s book Neocybernetics and Narrative particularly useful. Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, though I disagreed with it in so many ways, was a fundamental primer to understanding thinking on AI “singularity” problems (this word is in quotes because I have many doubts about the way it is conceived, and the way in which it is manipulated to distract). There are many other books that inspired me, but this is not a bibliography, and I do not have the space to list them here.