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A review by emiann2023
Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson
4.0
Are we searching the search engines, or are the search engines searching us?
I rate books based on two main factors: did it make me think, or did it make me feel?
The degree to which a book achieves one of those two aims (and very, very rarely both) influences a good chunk of my rating.
I knew a tiny amount about Turing. Mostly his work on decoding the Enigma machines and as the father of modern computing. I saw this book and it intrigued me. So I picked it up.
It was not, in many respects, the read I had anticipated. For one thing, Turing is referenced very minimally until near the end of the book, and for another, the book goes into the lives of dozens of people surrounding the creation of the first computers. This is not a bad thing, but it made this a difficult read to keep track of, at points.
This was also technically a challenge for me to understand. I got the basics, like how we've gone from numbers that mean things, to numbers that do things, but much of the technical discussion of the code and mathematical or engineering principles went way over my head.
But, this book had a few truly interesting insights that I found really worthwhile. The quote at the beginning, and the discussions of the future of AI, discussions of how we are essentially building a new lifeform that will soon outlive and outpace us, and of course the connections between DNA, Nuclear bombs, computers, and the weather were interesting.
So. Did this book make me think? Yes, it did. It posed interesting theories of where we're going, and how we're likely to get there. I fear I am not smart enough to understand all the knowledge this book has to offer, but for the most part, I enjoyed what I did understand.
I rate books based on two main factors: did it make me think, or did it make me feel?
The degree to which a book achieves one of those two aims (and very, very rarely both) influences a good chunk of my rating.
I knew a tiny amount about Turing. Mostly his work on decoding the Enigma machines and as the father of modern computing. I saw this book and it intrigued me. So I picked it up.
It was not, in many respects, the read I had anticipated. For one thing, Turing is referenced very minimally until near the end of the book, and for another, the book goes into the lives of dozens of people surrounding the creation of the first computers. This is not a bad thing, but it made this a difficult read to keep track of, at points.
This was also technically a challenge for me to understand. I got the basics, like how we've gone from numbers that mean things, to numbers that do things, but much of the technical discussion of the code and mathematical or engineering principles went way over my head.
But, this book had a few truly interesting insights that I found really worthwhile. The quote at the beginning, and the discussions of the future of AI, discussions of how we are essentially building a new lifeform that will soon outlive and outpace us, and of course the connections between DNA, Nuclear bombs, computers, and the weather were interesting.
So. Did this book make me think? Yes, it did. It posed interesting theories of where we're going, and how we're likely to get there. I fear I am not smart enough to understand all the knowledge this book has to offer, but for the most part, I enjoyed what I did understand.