本期内容概览见博客：2024年3/4月刊内容概览

Book Reviews

1. Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet

By Chris Dixon (Random House, 2024)

With the demise of Twitter, many have advocated for a decentralized alternative for social media. Chris Dixon, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, goes even further, arguing that we’re in the midst of the “read-write-own era”, in which blockchain networks have begun to democratize ownership, granting power and economic benefit to users rather than just corporations. “Now is the time to reimagine what networks can be and what they can do,” he writes. “You are here now. These are the good old days.”

2. Do You Remember Being Born?

By Sean Michaels (Astra House, 2023)

A world-renowned poet, 75-year-old Marianne Ffarmer, receives a surprising invitation from a Google-ish corporation——would she like to collaborate on a poem, “an historic partnership between human and machine”? Sequestered in a secure room on its corporate campus, with just a week to deliver a masterpiece, she is at turns suspicious, seduced, and bewildered by “Charlotte”, her AI collaborator, who makes her wonder “how much of what I had published in my life was a deception.”

3. The Little Book of Aliens

By Adam Frank (Harper, 2023)

In this breezy primer, astrophysicist Adam Frank takes on the big question of whether we’re alone in the universe from seemingly every angle, including the history of UFO sightings, the physics of interstellar travel, and the still-unfolding hunt for biosignatures on distant worlds. It’s an especially good time to catch up on the subject, Frank writes: “Everything has changed. The search for aliens is a real thing now, and science has gone all in on it.”

4. The Slow Lane: Why Quick Fixes Fail and How to Achieve Real Change

By Sascha Haselmayer (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023)

Startups have long endeavored to move fast and break things. But, argues social entrepreneur Sascha Haselmayer, we can’t disrupt our way out of tackling complex human problems. We need a new approach——what he calls the “Slow Lane”. What this means is “going all the way to empower users to build and control the technology, not just use it,” he writes, adding that “technologists need to find the humility to see eye to eye with the people they hope to empower.”