Book Stroll - Interesting Science and Technology Books

Want to join some interesting book club?

"The Most Human Human" was my favorite technology book last year. I was hooked when I read the Prologue:

"Claude Shannon, artificial intelligence pioneer and founder of information theory, met his wife, Mary Elizabeth, at work. This was Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the early 1940s. He was an engineer, working on a wartime cryptography and signal transmission.

She was a computer."

Wow, what a beginning!

However, I don't think the Turing test (the book's main topic) makes any sense any more. Now people are talking to their computers (Siri). We adapt, not the other way around.

Gleick's book came out about the same time last year. I only finished the first chapter. He's a bit out of his depth when he tried to explain why everything is information according to some Physics theory. I didn't think he fully grasped it (at least he doesn't sound convincing enough). Soon I stopped reading.

"Moonwalking with Einstein" is another fun ride. I never knew it would require so much discipline to train your memory (that is, if you want to be good). I tried practicing the memory palace technique in the book but now I can't even remember one item on the list.

Why many things in nature have similar designs? Is it pure coincidence? Some may even argue it's the living proof of some higher power. However, the author propose an answer, the construction law. My math is not good enough to see if it does explain those natural phenomena, but the author is convincing enough to make me keep reading. Sometimes I think the author does put a little bit too much his personal belief into his theory, but reading the book is still very rewarding to my curious mind (or whatever is left of it).