What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Age of Spiritual Machines
Ray Kurzweil
The Formula: How Algorithms Solve all our Problems … and Create More
Luke Dormehl · 296 pages
In The Formula, Luke Dormehl takes readers inside the world of numbers, asking how we came to believe in the all-conquering power of algorithms; introducing the mathematicians, artificial intelligence experts and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are shaping this brave new world, and ultimately asking how we survive in an era where numbers can sometimes seem to create as many problems as they solve
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
Steven Johnson · 293 pages
"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepr
Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human
Joel Garreau · 392 pages
Quantum Supremacy
Michio Kaku · 352 pages
Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World
Christopher Steiner · 252 pages
The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills--and maybe an advanced degree or two. These d
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Max Tegmark · 384 pages
"How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology--and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial. How can we grow our prosperity
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
R. Buckminster Fuller · 143 pages
Edited and re-released by Fuller's grandson, Jamie Snyder, this edition is true to the original manuscript but adds helpful footnotes providing a modern context to some of the figures and predictions throughout the book.
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Nick Bostrom · 312 pages
The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Nicholas Carr · 300 pages
Examines the influences computer-delivered information may have on human cognition using Marshall McLuhan as the hook, the history of communication as the trajectory, and brain science as the tool.
The Society of Mind
Marvin Minsky · 339 pages
An authority on artificial intelligence introduces a theory that explores the workings of the human mind and the mysteries of thought.
A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness
Michael Pollan · 320 pages
The Ascent of Man
Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages
Traces the development of science and the discoveries that have made man unique among animal species.
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
Kevin Kelly · 521 pages
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
James Gleick · 526 pages
From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He also provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information, including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Tur
The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
David C. Lindberg · 455 pages
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Walter Isaacson · 560 pages
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into di
The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
Brian Christian · 320 pages
"The Most Human Human" is a provocative exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can "think."
Godwired
Rachel Wagner · 266 pages
A Little History of Science
William F. Bynum · 272 pages
Science is wonderful. It tells us about the infinite reaches of space, the tiniest living organism, the human body and the history of our planet. Science has always been about making sense of the world and harnessing its power. From ancient Greek philosophers through Einstein and Watson and Crick to the computer-assisted scientists of today, men and women have wondered, examined, experimented, cal
Coming of Age in the Milky Way
Timothy Ferris · 495 pages
From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those who study the universe have had to struggle against political and religious preconcepti
Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World
Tom Zoellner · 337 pages
The fascinating story of the most powerful source of energy the earth can yieldUranium is a common element in the earth’s crust and the only naturally occurring mineral with the power to end all life on the planet. After World War II, it reshaped the global order—whoever could master uranium could master the world.Marie Curie gave us hope that uranium would be a miracle panacea, but the Manhattan
The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance
Fritjof Capra · 329 pages
Leonardo da Vinci's pioneering scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime. Now acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals that Leonardo was in many ways the unacknowledged "father of modern science." Drawing on an examination of over 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks, Capra explains that Leonardo approached scientific knowledge with the eyes of an a
The Day the Universe Changed: How Galileo's Telescope Changed the Truth
James Burke · 353 pages