100 books like God, Human, Animal, Machine

I loved this book because it opened my mind to new ways of thinking about thinking and how we make decisions. We are not the rational beings we think we are. Michael Lewis has the gift of being able to take complex ideas and make them understandable, informative, and very entertaining.

The book is about psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Khaneman and their research into how people make decisions. Their story is riveting, and I couldn’t help but think about how I make decisions and how to frame questions to gain greater insight into that process.

I love books that cause me to view things in ways I never had before. Connections did that over and over again.

Burke views history through the lens of technical innovation. What his book revealed to me was that everything has its antecedents; things that came before that were the building blocks of what was to come. The more I read, the more I noticed that I was looking at things differently, not only seeing links but thinking about what could come next based on where something came from and the direction our culture was moving. This is a transformative book.

But can you fight the future? Isn’t it inevitable? This is often how tech companies try to make us think, and that anyone who opposes “progress” is a Luddite. But, as Patrick Sale makes clear in this excellent and heartbreaking historical study, the original Luddites—a protest movement that swept the industrial heartland of 19th Century England—were not anti-technology; they merely thought technology should serve people, not profit. Faced with the destruction of their livelihoods and their traditional way of life, they destroyed machines and burnt factories because that was the only outlet they had for their rage and desperation. And when the “inevitable march of progress” comes to trample you too, you may see that they had a point.

Technology is always moving on. And so it should be forgiven the author that many of the concrete examples in this book are now somewhat dated. They provide some interesting insight into the history of computing and media technology, but the real value of Roszak’s argument lies in his analysis of how—thanks to computer technology—society has become obsessed with “information”. It’s almost a cult. But information is not knowledge, data does not in itself provide understanding. In fact, in a peculiarly paradoxical way, the more information we have, the less we actually know. Thirty years later, as we swim daily in the disinformation of the murky waters of social media and disappear down Youtube rabbit holes, Roszak’s point seems more pertinent than ever.

The Luddites supposedly got their name from their shadowy founder, a certain Ned Ludd, who was apparently the first to take a hammer to the instruments of industrial progress. As such, his name became a sort of protective disguise for the purposes of anonymous protest: Who smashed the loom? “Ned Ludd did it!” In a similar way, computer hackers such as Anonymous have adopted the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem of disruption, pranking, and activism. In this fascinating study, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman investigates Anonymous, tracing its origins from the message boards of 4chan, through the Occupy movement and the Wikileaks controversy, revealing firsthand through her interaction with the community the diversity and complexity of the hacking world, and the varying motives of its actors.

Do you still have a Facebook account? I do—though I feel increasingly torn about it. I still use it for professional purposes, but part of me would gladly delete it (not, you know, that anything would actually get deleted, I suspect…). Christopher Wylie agrees. This wonderful account traces his role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a mysterious “political consulting firm” used Facebook data to help swing the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s successful presidential run. It’s a very personal story, which I love, and we get an insider’s view not only on the shocking and frankly terrifying practices Wylie became embroiled in, but also his own moral struggle to get out of them. A wonderful book.

I love great storytelling and what makes stories compelling. Suber goes into great detail about story, plot, and characters in a way that I found totally fascinating. It inspired me to think about storytelling differently. I got deeper and deeper into the process of what makes characters and their journey interesting.

There are many films that are successful at the box office, but not memorable. They fade as time passes. Great stories resonate for generations. Ultimately, the book is about what makes a film memorable. 

I loved this book because I remembered loving it. But why did I remember? What do I forget—and why? What is the function of memory? How do we unknowingly change our own narrative—and why?

I have always been fascinated by cognitive neuroscience. Thinking about how we think, what we think about, why we remember what we remember, and why we forget what we forget has always fascinated me. These are all things that we take for granted until something happens that changes our perception. We are constantly creating and editing our own narrative. From fond memories to trauma, memory is affected, as is our life narrative. It’s too early to tell if this book will be memorable to me, but I loved reading it. 

The year is 2095, and human beings must take performance enhancement pills to compete with automated systems. The future in Machinehood could be ours tomorrow.

Welga and Nithya, the novel’s protagonists, are constantly on the verge of burnout while pushing themselves to perform. A mysterious terrorist organization called the Machinehood turns up to demand equal rights for AI, and that humans put an end to pill manufacturing, triggering events around the world. Parts of the novel are set in Chennai, India, and despite all its futuristic advances, the city retains its present day identity. Machinehood also portrays women in technologically-driven spaces, which is something I'm always rooting for.

Part of what I love the most about The Lord of the Rings is the way that J.R.R. Tolkien made Middle Earth feel like it could be real. I have to remind myself it’s not history, but fiction. Reading Recorder gives me the same feeling. Sure, technically, it’s science fiction. It’s set in space. But there is a depth and honesty to the world that Cathy McCrumb has created that is rare and worth exploring. It is both a prescient warning about the future of humanity and a powerful story about found family and finding hope when up against impossible odds. Also, the romantic subplot of this book will absolutely shatter you.