A review by mimmaz
12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

2.0

"And it was only a few years after the American Declaration of Independence- and its famous opening: WE THE PEOPLE."

I'll admit I sort of gave up on 12 Bytes here. The "essays" vary in quality but largely read like blog posts, with no thought insignificant or disconnected enough to be omitted. The content isn't much to write home about—that's if you can pin down the point Winterson is trying to make at any given moment. I was more annoyed by the writing than anything. It's not just inelegant, but poorly organized, unclear, and often unsupported.
12 Bytes feels like the very disjointed beginning of a book—like Winterson was using text to speech to get all her thoughts on paper, with every intention of coming back to it later. And maybe through a series of slapstick errors, this brainstorm document made it to the publisher without an editor having laid eyes on it. I would feel a lot better if that was the case.
I had really been looking forward to reading this because:
1) I loved [b:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit|15055|Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1267717580l/15055._SY75_.jpg|1411520]. Winterson's writing was so beautiful. I realize that nonfiction (a strong word for what this is) requires a very different style, but this is like... right out.
2) AI development is a hot topic right now, and I know very little about it. I thought that this might be a series of engaging, surface-level essays for the uninitiated, similar to [b:Close Encounters with Humankind: A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species|40180034|Close Encounters with Humankind A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species|Sang-Hee Lee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1550053745l/40180034._SY75_.jpg|56498581].
I guess it's on me for not cracking it open before I bought it. I did like Hot For a Bot, which was a bit more coherent than the other essays, but still not up to snuff.