What's Everyone Reading

[Vinylfan]

In “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI,” Yuval Noah Harari examines how governments have historically utilized information networks for public surveillance and control. He traces the evolution of these practices from early bureaucratic record-keeping to contemporary AI-driven monitoring systems.

Harari argues that the development of information networks has significantly enhanced governmental power, enabling more effective surveillance and societal control. He highlights that while these networks can be used to maintain order and security, they also pose risks to individual freedoms and privacy. The advent of AI and advanced data analytics has further amplified these capabilities, allowing for unprecedented levels of monitoring and data collection.

To address the challenges posed by modern surveillance technologies, Harari proposes several principles:
• Benevolence: Ensuring that data collection serves to assist individuals rather than manipulate them.
• Decentralization: Preventing the concentration of information in a single entity, whether governmental or private.
• Mutuality: Balancing surveillance of individuals with equivalent oversight of those in power.
• Flexibility: Designing information systems that allow for adaptation and rest, preventing rigidity and overreach.

These principles aim to create a more balanced approach to surveillance, safeguarding democratic values while acknowledging the realities of technological advancement. 

Harari also delves into the implications of AI as an autonomous agent in surveillance, capable of generating and analyzing information independently. This development challenges traditional notions of human oversight and raises ethical concerns about the potential for AI to create its own “inter-computer realities” that could influence human society. 

Overall, “Nexus” provides a comprehensive analysis of the interplay between information networks, governmental surveillance, and societal implications, urging a reevaluation of how these systems are structured and governed in the age of AI.

 

[morricab]

A truly great sci-fi novel about humanity’s self destructive nature and inability to learn from past mistakes…

 

[jazdoc]

 

[jazdoc]

A modern Appalachian updating of David Copperfield.

 

[thedudeabides]

An amazing book in the dynamics of human nature. Netflix did a TV series. Hilarious, introspective, tragic and everything in between. A light but compelling, captivating read (fiction but I'm confident many will relate with the characters) well worth the effort. If not convinced by this post, read the reviews. An absolute WBF Book of the Month candidate IMHO.

BIG LITTLE LIES​

Author . Liane Moriarty​

 

[Newton John]

Music and Altered States: Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addiction
Edited by David Aldridge and Jörg Fachner

 

[exupgh12]

 

[Gene 15352]

 

[Rumpole]

 

[jazdoc]

 

[Kal Rubinson]

 

[Rensselaer]

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I saw the author interviewed by Bill Maher. The author says Hamas is a death cult because they ( like the early Christians who impressed Constantine so much ) aren’t afraid of death. Whether that makes them a “death cult” is up to each to decide but having spent ten years of my life working in the Middle East I don’t interpret it that way. The author explains this books’ perspective when he then suggested we help them towards achieving their goal (Bill seemed to concur).

 

[Tim Link]

I saw the author interviewed by Bill Maher. The author says Hamas is a death cult because they ( like the early Christians who impressed Constantine so much ) aren’t afraid of death. Whether that makes them a “death cult” is up to each to decide but having spent ten years of my life working in the Middle East I don’t interpret it that way. The author explains this books’ perspective when he then suggested we help them towards achieving their goal (Bill seemed to concur).

The title of that book caught my attention because I just heard a guy this morning explaining why he thinks Christianity is a death cult. It took me a second to see that the author is Murray, assuring me that this book is taking a very different perspective.

 

[MrAudioFederation]

An very uplifting science fiction story and one of the few books in history with no evil characters - just ordinary beings trying to live their lives and accomplish goals that they have set out for themselves which they hope others will appreciate - just like 99% of the real people most of us have known throughout our lives.

 

[Tim Link]

An very uplifting science fiction story and one of the few books in history with no evil characters - just ordinary beings trying to live their lives and accomplish goals that they have set out for themselves which they hope others will appreciate - just like 99% of the real people most of us have known throughout our lives.

Sounds like Star Peace instead of Star Wars.

 

[Tim Link]

I got this for Christmas. As an avid cyclist I'm finding it a lot of fun. Ironically, I read it when I decide not to ride my bike but instead take the bus. I do most of my reading while riding on buses.

Two Wheels Good by Jody Rosen: 9780804141512 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century invention that is transforming the twenty-first-century world “Excellent . . . calls to mind Bill Bryson, John McPhee, Rebecca Solnit.”—The...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

 

[jazdoc]

 

[hopkins]

 

[jazdoc]

 

[italia]

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, published 1965. On Time Magazine's list of 100 Best Novels from 1923-2005. His writing style using post-modern techniques can be a challenging read. Some sentences are so long (half-page+) and so packed with details, metaphors and insight into characters, that I find myself re-reading two-three times to fully absorb it. Example:

"He had believed in cars. Maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bringing the most godawful of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopelessly of children, supermarket booze, two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust—and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 or 10 cents, trading stamps, pink flyers advertising specials at the markets, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a gray dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes—it made him sick to look, but he had to look."