Category: Books

  • Freedom

    Daniel Suarez

    If you’ve read Daemon, I suspect it’d be very difficult to not read its sequel. If you haven’t, you know where to start!
    Freedom picks up right where Daemon left off with the kind of intense action that dominated the last portion of the latter. Even as the Daemon systematically tears apart the corporations and financial systems that rule the world, its enemies prepare to launch a counter attack. What makes it all interesting is that the different players in the game have divergent agendas.

    It is also interesting that the book brings to life at least a few concepts that I have read in non-fiction in the context of how unemployment, extreme capitalism and the wealth divide will cause fundamental shifts in civilised society. Neo-feudalism, trust based community networks, and the irrelevancy of state borders are a few examples. In doing that, it also shows the possibility of how new systems could end up just like old systems because the basic human tendencies remain constant.

    The narrative sets a scorching pace, and one is tempted to just zoom forward a few pages just to know how a plot point is going to end. Excellent read!

    P.S. I somehow felt that it was written with a movie or two in mind. Almost like a screenplay.

  • The Rise of the Robots

    Martin Ford

    The bad news – it would seem that the robocracy is inevitable. The good news – this is a very well written book!
    In most robotics and AI narratives, what gets lost is the nuance as folks very firmly root themselves in polarising camps on the future of our species. The reason why this book worked for me was because its focus was less on the dramatic headline (what) and more on why it would happen. It is a very well researched book and sets about debunking popular schools of thought in a very clinical manner. The author is also wise enough to call out the things he is not sure of and mention alternate points of view, as well as objective enough to not fall for the hype of everything that’s new and supposedly disruptive.

    Though he does begin with the now ascertained fact that the first wave of automation will take away the routine and predictable jobs, he also warns that it won’t stop there. Even what we would call the higher end jobs will be safe only for a while longer. He is clear that this is a wave of disruption different from what we have seen before because the cognitive abilities that get developed will be replicable and scalable. He also demolishes a couple of currently popular coping mechanisms – consistent re-skilling, and man-machine collaboration.

    The second half of the book focuses on the economic and societal implications of the rise of the robots. He predicts the fall of middle class demand as well as economic mobility, as incomes stagnate or disappear completely, and warns that economic growth would not be sustainable since robots cannot be expected to be consumers, and the plutocracy (top 5% of the population) which has the money can only consume so much!

    The solution he believes in is some version of a universal income which would ensure the participation of a larger segment of the population and give some semblance of prosperity to everyone. But he also sees several challenges in execution.

    Beyond the broader narrative, there are some fascinating statistics and anecdotes – the development of Watson, the scarily increasing time it takes for employment to regain its original levels after a recession, the sale price of Internet behemoths (YouTube, Instagram, Whatsapp) framed as a cost/employee, and so on.

    While the outcomes may not really be palatable to anyone who belongs to the species, it doesn’t take away from what a fascinating read this is!

  • The ocean at the end of the lane

    Neil Gaiman

    ‘Tender’ is probably the word I’d use if I had to describe this book in a word. I have to admit that it wasn’t until the last few pages that I started reading it non-literally. And then it hit me, a bit like waves that seem benign from far and then strike you with tremendous force.

    You could read the book like a simple fantasy story or you could make guesses on the possible symbolism at work. In the first case, it is a gripping tale of a little boy caught in the midst of forces far outside the realms of a normal English life. A vulnerable yet determined child, his enigmatic guardians, and a monster of a nanny all make for a very interesting read.
    It gets even more interesting if it’s the latter – possibly a commentary on growing up, feminism, relationships and so on. It also raises a question of what is real and what isn’t. In a way, aren’t the ‘stories’ that we make up to absorb, confront, or just handle the things that happen to us as children as true as the things that really happened? How true are our memories when we remember the past?

    P.S. Loved it for this – “I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.”

  • The Sovereign Individual

    James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg

    One of my favourite books is The Moral Animal. It does a great job of explaining the connection between the mental organs and behaviour, and does justice to the explanatory line on its cover – “why we are the way we are”. I liked it a lot because it did a stellar job of helping me understand the reasons behind my mindset, relationships and interactions with the world at large. While that book helped me understand myself, this one helped me understand the world much better.

    Considering that it was published in 1997, this is as much a prediction machine as it is a brilliant book. It took at least till the middle of the last decade for even the internet to manifest itself in the form we are now familiar with. Therefore, accurately predicting the rise of e-commerce and cryptocurrency (referred to as cyber currency) is a feat in itself. The projections are not just in the field of business but cover social, economical, societal, political and even moral aspects as well. For instance, the rise of nationalism, filter bubbles, the twist in increasing income disparity (from between nations to within nations) because of lack of access are all themes that are being played out now. (more…)

  • The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

    Arundhati Roy

    I didn’t read the reviews of this book, but I did sense disappointment on my various newsfeeds. Irrespective of that, this was a book that I had to read, because Arundhati Roy is one of my favourite writers. Not for The God of Small Things, which I don’t remember having a well formed opinion on, but for The Algebra of Infinite Justice, which she uses as a phrase in this book (pg 310). And I’m glad I did – the fire still burns!

    The clues to this book’s agenda, if it does have one, can be read even before one begins really reading it. It is on the jacket in the form of a seemingly rhetorical question that actually gets answered – “How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.”. It is also documented in the book’s dedication – To, The Unconsoled.
    The shattered story does indeed seem to have everyone and everything. It definitely has those elements which have been a part of all the non-fiction that the author has been writing – the people of Kashmir, Hindu nationalists, adivasis and Maoists. It also has the anti-corruption wave led by Anna Hazare (tubby Gandhian), the rise of Arvind Kejriwal (Mr.Aggarwal, who was an accountant), the omnipotence of Modi (“Gujarat ka Lalla”) and the saffron brigade, Maoist movements, and most definitely the mess that is Kashmir.  (more…)