My Goodreads Rating: 4 of 5 stars
When reality is only perceived through multiple layers of filters, what is truth?
When memories are readable, writable, and editable, what is an individual?
When superintelligences are capable of predicting the vast majority of our decisions, what is free will?
When biochemistry and emotional states are hackable (and therefore suppressible), what is discipline?
When every human has the option to plug in to their own custom virtual world, what is humanity?
If these questions sound like philosophical mumbo-jumbo, you may want to treat your mind to the whiz-bang, action-packed books of Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and other less thoughtful authors.
If these questions consistently keep you and your geeky friends in heated discussion until 3am, then prepare to be seduced by John Wright and the deepest and most thorough picture of a transhumanist future ever scribbled.
By the way, don’t expect to have any of these questions answered. At best, you’ll come away with a deeper concern (and perhaps excitement) for the future of humanity.
Some of these questions even play with your sense of what is to be human today. For instance, plenty of psychological research is revealing just how fallible and influenceable our memories are. If our sense of personal identity relies on our memories of what we assume is the “true reality” of the past, what does it mean when these memories are so sensitive?
Warning: The first hundred pages or so are tough. Wright drops you in the middle of a world of sensory filters and altered memories and it’s not clear what’s real and what’s not. Treat this confusion as part of the experience of living in a future of hacked realities and keep reading.
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- Book Review: The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard
- Book Review: The Wisdom of the Hive by Thomas Seeley
- Book Review: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
That’s a helpful explanation for the first part of the book. I got stuck but I’ll give it another go.