Analogia
The Entangled Destinies of Nature, Human Beings and Machines
Published on 18. August 2020
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-84614-744-9 (ISBN)
Description
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
How did we end up in a world where humans coexist with technologies we can no longer fully control or understand?
George Dyson plots an unexpected course through the past 300 years to reveal the hidden connections that underpin our digital age, ending with a premonition of what lies ahead.
From an eighteenth-century Russian voyage across the North Pacific, to the mirror signals that heralded the age of digital telecommunications and the invention of the vacuum tube, Analogia interweaves historical adventure with scientific insight in a deeply personal story that frames the pursuit - and cost - of the digital revolution in a captivating new light.
How did we end up in a world where humans coexist with technologies we can no longer fully control or understand?
George Dyson plots an unexpected course through the past 300 years to reveal the hidden connections that underpin our digital age, ending with a premonition of what lies ahead.
From an eighteenth-century Russian voyage across the North Pacific, to the mirror signals that heralded the age of digital telecommunications and the invention of the vacuum tube, Analogia interweaves historical adventure with scientific insight in a deeply personal story that frames the pursuit - and cost - of the digital revolution in a captivating new light.
Reviews / Votes
This book pierces through the fog of everyday life. Read and you will become aware of history you need to know, and of how the last few centuries of the human story sit within a much larger, epochal frame. An extra treat is insight into the remarkable Dyson family -- Jaron Lanier * Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now * The most delightfully peculiar book I've ever read. It's grand and intimate, personal and cosmic, and about digital computing and archaic hunter gatherers. Every paragraph is a surprise -- Kevin Kelly * Wired * An odyssey of discovery ... part autobiography, part science manual, part history book -- Izabella Kaminska * Financial Times * Few writers could string together a coherent and compelling tale out of elements as varied as the Bering-Chirikov expedition to Siberia in 1741, the construction of a US heliograph intelligence network, tree houses, kayak designs and the future of artificial intelligence. Dyson is one in this quirky personal history of technology. -- John Tothill * Financial Times * Brilliant ... idiosyncratic ... to read him is to be led on the strangest of adventures, on paths untread, up and down trees, and through rivers of time -- Jason Kehe * WIRED *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 31 mm
Weight
595 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84614-744-9 (9781846147449)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2020
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€10.99
Available for download
Person
George Dyson is a historian of technology and the author of several books including Turing's Cathedral, Project Orion and Darwin Among the Machines. His subjects range from the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak to the evolution of artificial intelligence.