Good story and very solid world building. If you enjoyed Snow Crash but with it was a little darker, you will also enjoy Infinite Detail.
The fascination with Bristol drum’n’bass is a bit much at times, left me feeling like there was a deeper metaphor I was missing. Maybe that’s true.
I worry the shallow, blunt critique of surveillance capitalism (everything is about data) will prevent this from becoming a classic, but it’s a very good read today.
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Hans Gerwitz wants to read Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Hans Gerwitz rated The Vampire Film: 3 stars
Hans Gerwitz rated Ways of Being : Animals, Plants, Machines: 4 stars
Ways of Being : Animals, Plants, Machines by James Bridle
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, …
Hans Gerwitz rated Geopedia: 5 stars
Hans Gerwitz reviewed Ghost Hardware by Tim Maughan
Review of 'Ghost Hardware' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Review of 'Spike' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Very easy to read yet thorough survey of contemporary neuroscience. Not a textbook or really a microhistory, but more correct and intellectually humble than most pop-sci writers like Malcolm Gladwell.
Left me craving cookies.
Hans Gerwitz rated The book of dead philosophers: 3 stars
Hans Gerwitz rated The Practical Guide to Experience Design: 5 stars
Hans Gerwitz rated The Oxford Brotherhood: 4 stars
Hans Gerwitz reviewed Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Review of 'Europe at Midnight' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The first book built an interesting alternate world.
This one used that world for a run-of-the-mill thriller. If that’s your thing, cool, but I felt bait-and-switched.
Hans Gerwitz rated Europe in Autumn: 4 stars
Hans Gerwitz rated Six Months, Three Days: 4 stars
Hans Gerwitz reviewed The Information by James Gleick
From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, …
Review of 'The Information' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The subject matter here is practically designed for me. I love the survey of communications from Baudot through McLuhan. The Hofstadter and Dennett references heighten the sense that this is almost a sequel to [b:Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid|24113|Gödel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1547125681s/24113.jpg|850076], which was very influential for me. Gleick maintains threads (e.g. to "differences" as photo-bits) that help tie the entire work together without relying merely on Shannon.
Yet, somehow, as it progresses towards the end it seems to let go of those threads, and dive into navel gazing about the nature of culture. It could have woven everything together into the modern framing of information as fundamental to the universe, but instead it wandered into concerns about culture. Those might be interesting, but he hadn't done enough research or laid enough conceptual foundation for it to be authentic here.
I can highly …
The subject matter here is practically designed for me. I love the survey of communications from Baudot through McLuhan. The Hofstadter and Dennett references heighten the sense that this is almost a sequel to [b:Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid|24113|Gödel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1547125681s/24113.jpg|850076], which was very influential for me. Gleick maintains threads (e.g. to "differences" as photo-bits) that help tie the entire work together without relying merely on Shannon.
Yet, somehow, as it progresses towards the end it seems to let go of those threads, and dive into navel gazing about the nature of culture. It could have woven everything together into the modern framing of information as fundamental to the universe, but instead it wandered into concerns about culture. Those might be interesting, but he hadn't done enough research or laid enough conceptual foundation for it to be authentic here.
I can highly recommend the first 80% or so, though.