Book Notes, pt. 4

 Sometimes I don't feel like writing up full posts on books. Sometimes I want to write short notes about things that aren't books. Here are a few things I came across recently:

Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku

So recently I decided I wanted to try reading more pop science books to bolster my sf reading. I have to stick to pop science because my education in any practical science is decades old at this point and I don't know how to read actual science writing. I may wade into reading science journalism if I get the chance. I happened across two books by Michio Kaku in the local used book store near the house where I used to live and thought that these may be a good intro.

This book is basically a prediction of what the next 100ish years might look like. I kinda liked it for what it is except for three things. Kaku keeps using the phrase “the push of a button” throughout the book to show how easy it will be to do or obtain things. It just struck me that this is an odd turn of phrase for a futurist to use because it seems almost archaic already. There may be a more apt metaphor to use.

The second thing should not be so surprising. It is his fixation on science as a means of solving all of the worlds current and upcoming problems. He does point to some serious problems that we will face, but it seems to me that many of them will have social or political solutions rather than scientific ones. He also tends to make broad historical generalizations (he frequently praises innovations of antiquity that originate in the West but not the East. He also credits Newton as the inventor of calculus without mentioning Leibniz), and makes mistakes of periodization.

Finally, he treats all scientific progress as though it is inevitable and irreversible. In fact, he specifically writes that there is no way to stop this progress. This mainly wasn't a problem in the book as he wrote about potential advances and their implications. However, he would editorialize from time to time and it seemed to reduce the importance of nearly everything except technological advancement and it placed us, now, at an historical cusp. It put this generation at the center point of human advancement and history. This seems misguidedly optimistic.

I liked the book in general and found some interesting ideas in it. His speculations on the near, and even mid-range future (the next 50-70 years-ish) seem accurate and introduced me to a lot of existing tech that I did not know about. The author evinces great credibility in scientific areas. I'll reserve further judgment until I read the other book of his that I bought.

Science Magazine podcast

After listening to the great podcast Our Opinions are Correct, I decided to check out the Science Magazine podcast that one of the hosts, Annalee Newitz, recommended. I really like it. The episode that I listened to was about researching Coronavirus vaccines and what might happen in the competition between these different groups of scientists to develop one.

The show is geared toward a general audience and brings in experts in the field. The reporting is done by science writers who are good at moderating the information and presenting it in an informative way. Some of the content is follow up from the magazine such as interviews with authors or other experts covered subject, and other content seems independently driven. It is pretty good.

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

KSR is one of my favorite contemporary authors. His writing is crisp, science is hard, and he always includes the political angles that are left out by so many other authors. This is a great aspect of his writing that I want to come back to later. (I intend to write a series on his Mars trilogy, maybe next year.) This book sorta fell to the background of my reading this month. I enjoyed it and made my way through it but didn't focus on it as much as I would have other work.

I had originally hoped that this book would exist in the Mars timeline based on the title, but it does not. The novel imagines a near-future when the Moon is colonized and a lot of the international tensions that currently exist on Earth are expanded/exported to the Moon. It is a cool idea and, as always, the tech is really great. Recommended read.