Radical Evolution

As I sit here with my new external hard drive backing up my files, I'm going to try and bang out some thoughts about Radical Evolution.

To start off, it was a pretty good book. It was chock full of incredibly interesting information which will change the way you think about the world. I can not wait to discuss this book in class for I am sure it will spawn some excellent debates about the direction and future of what it means to be human. Technology is rapidly changing our definition of human with the advent of artificial intelligence, gene therapy, and other super technologies, and Mr. Garreau knows this and wants to tell you about it before its too late and your caught by the impending tidal wave of the technological revolution!

What Mr. Garreau does not know is how to stay on topic for more than a page or two. I was very interested in what he was writing, but he moved from one anecdote to another to another with seemingly no connection between them. It was difficult to stay interested for more than ten or fifteen pages at a time unfortunately, which was a shame considering the gravity of his message. I made it though, and I'm glad I persevered.

It actually feels good to do summer reading for a class, but it is now time to move on to something hopefully more entertaining. I've been avoiding reading Pride and Prejudice since I tried reading the first two chapters of it for class in the tenth grade. I still managed a strong B on all the tests and quizzes involving it, but I avoided reading it once I realized what it was about. Well, I'm back to it now. As a favor to Kelsey I am going to buck up and give it another go. I am reserving my impressions, thoughts, critiques, and judgments until it is completed, but I can already tell you I will be passionate one way or another about this book, and I am only ten chapters into it.

I will say one thing though, Mr. Bennett is the hero of the novel. If he does not wind up being the true hero, he will always be my hero.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Summer is a great season to catch up on movies. I really enjoy going the theater with friends for the overall quality of the shared experience. Like any technophile, I love me some gorgeous, widescreen DLP projection and humongous digital surround sound systems, but I also love the joy of the shared experience; the banter, the thrills, the jokes, and being able to look over and have a shared "could you believe how amazing that was!?"

In short, The Bourne Ultimatum was the best of the series. I saw the Identity on DVD over at a friend's house, and really enjoyed it. Afterwards I went to the theaters and saw the Supremacy, and left feelig nauseous from the drunk they pulled off the street to operate the camera for the movie. The plot was as good as the first one, but all of the "pulse-pounding" action sequences were impossible to follow for the camera's out-of-focus jittering. The Ultimatum had the best plotline of the series, and they toned down the swaggering, hand-cam action enough to where the action scenes could be enjoyed without a side order of tylonal for the headache.

The conclusion was tense all the way to the thrilling end, and all loose ends were tied up much better than in other unmentionable movies *cough*Matrix*cough*. I've always liked some FBI/CIA intrigue and Jason Bourne did not disappoint.

I also finally finished Radical Evolution! W00t! With only one week to go until classes, my summer reading is finally done! I'll probably post my impressions of it next. Next on the reading list is Pride & Prejudice.

Prey

First off, I just want to say, Wow. I did not expect that book to end like it did. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending definitely gives a nice feeling of closure while raising some interesting questions about the overall themes of the book.

Oh, yeah, did I mention this book is about a flock of predatory nanites that are smaller several times smaller than a red blood cell? There are trillions of them in a "swarm" and they all act together using a limited but efficient intelligence; a hive mind. It truly makes for a creepy and gripping thriller. I've read Michael Crichton's most famous work, Jurassic Park, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and the ideas it presented on chaos and genetics. I do not think that Prey was darker or more chilling, I just believe it had more of a technological bent to it, a different kind of scariness if you will.

Crichton certainly knows how to write them though. I hope he is one of those writers that gets remembered favorably by academia studying American literature of the late twentieth century. You never know who is going to be remembered by scholars. I'm sure there are several people out there right now who I know nothing about who are going to be incredibly famous in retrospect in the future.

Prey was intelligent and gripping, but it is time for me to move on to Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution. I hope that it has some of the grip that Prey did, because I am going to need it to make it before the big back-to-school rush.

Technopoly

I just finished reading Neil Postman's Technopoly today. It was a very interesting read. It was also required read for Human Situations II with Dr. Garner this fall. Mr. Postman had a unique way of writing circles around what he wanted to say without actually saying it. What his message basically boils down to is that we are living in a society where unchecked technological progress has destroyed the moderating forces of religion and politics, replacing it instead with the worship and proliferation of unfiltered information.

If you combine this book's message with George Orwell's message in 1984, you have a very scary situation on your hands. A situation where information is the god that man worships, and whichever man has the greatest ability to manipulate information has the greatest potential to wield an authoritarian control over people's lives. Postman shares a lot of his ideas over the technical control of language with Orwell, such as its ability to limit the realm of people's thoughts. They both believe that a word like truth becomes warped in its meaning with the progress of society and that information glut has the power to change people's concepts of truth and by consequence, reality.

I still have to read Michael Crichton's Prey and Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution for this class. I have the feeling it will be one of the highlights of my next semester. I begin Prey tonight.