The Idea Factory by John Gertner

In John Gertner’s wonderful The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, he mentions a comment made by Bill Baker: “…all of human experience can be expressed in binary digital terms”.  As far back as the 1950’s, or so the story goes, there were several scientists, truly brilliant minds, who were working on what we call cell phones. They also worked on and invented many more gadgets that currently shape our world. This book is the story of how all of this happened. The tome is quite fascinating and written at a caffeine injected speed. Many stories or biographies could be written with this book as an original source of inspiration. Gertner tells us that these are the people who invented our present.

But this reader was left with the question: is all of this a good thing? To be sure, all of the technology that we currently live with has certainly made many things in our lives more convenient, but I am not convinced it has made them wholly better. I realize that I am not a young man anymore, and that it could very well be true that I am an old fuddy-duddy. However, it is strange to see groups of people sitting together not conversing but staring at their smartphones. Manners seem to have also disappeared with the ubiquity of these devices. Alas, I am beginning to obscure the lines between observation and judgment.

Read The Idea Factory if you have any nascent interest in science, technology, ingenuity, industry, and people with vision. I left this volume with a little bit of hope. I felt that if people can create and reconstruct reality just out of sheer will and imagination, then surely we can solve the seemingly overwhelming problems of our own time. Maybe people in the future will look back at what we do, the way we look at Bell Laboratories, and become inspired, not discouraged, maybe not.

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Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat—and How to Counter It By Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig

This book is amazing – startling, terrifying, and yet, reassuring.  A unique combination to be sure, but those are the phrases that come to mind when I think back about this book.  One of the authors, Wallace Broecker, may sound familiar as the scientist who developed the “conveyor belt” system that explains the circulation of water throughout the world’s oceans.  He started measuring carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere back in the 1950’s, a time when few people gave any thought to the idea that rising emissions of CO2 could have any effect on us and our world.  This early start and subsequent expertise has made him one of the leading researchers in the field.

The amount of science covered in this book is phenomenal.   One of the things that really caught my attention is that during the last ice age we experienced a short period of about 10 to 12 years where the earth heated up rapidly and came out of the ice age only to plunge right back into the ice age again.  Scientists have no clue as to why this happened and what the implications of this event might be for us today.  Another thing that really stuck with me is that about 40% of our increased CO2 output is being absorbed by the oceans.   The problem is that this absorption is acidifying our oceans and threatening the way water circulates through them, thereby threatening the best climate stabilizer we have.

The authors believe there is no way we will be able to eliminate our addiction to carbon based fuels quickly enough to stop the ensuing climate problems that increasing levels of CO2 cause.  Just as my spirit was sinking in despair at this news, they gave me hope for our future.  Technology now exists to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but questions remain about where to store it once it’s been removed.  The good news is that they are close to having this system worked out and we have reason to believe that we can return to a cooler world.

Science based books are not typically page-turners, but this one truly is.  Give it a try and I think you’ll enjoy it.

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The Hunter by John Lescroart

Wyatt Hunt is trying to  add personnel to his private investigating business when he receives a strange text message: ‘How did your mother die?’ … And so starts John Lescroart’s latest thriller. Wyatt is totally fascinated by the text since he knows little about his birth parents, Kevin & Margaret Carson. He was adopted by the Hunt family when he was 6 and he has buried whatever memories he had before the age of 6.

The texts continue and although Wyatt gets some help from his friend Callie at AT&T, he can’t pinpoint the location of the texter. With the help of his staff, Tamara & Mickey Dade and Ivan Orloff, he hopes to start to fill in some pieces of this mystery. He also can count on Kevin Juhle of the San Francisco homicide division to give him some help. Checking Catholic Children’s welfare of San Francisco leads him to one, Father Bernard. The Father is thrilled to finally meet Wyatt and gives him a letter he has been saving for 40 years! It is a letter from Wyatt’s father, Kevin, in which he tells him how much he loves him and that he had nothing to do with Margaret’s murder.

Wyatt realizes that the texter is scared to be identified because the murderer must still be alive and he also realizes that his father may also be alive. Now it is up to Wyatt & friends to solve a 40 year old murder and maybe meet his birth father. But without identifying the texter, the task will be very difficult. Yet each additional text both provides him with a clue and prods him to not give up. For Wyatt there are so many unanswered questions. And suddenly memories buried for 40 years are struggling to come to the surface.

This may be one of John Lescroart’s finest thrillers. You won’t put this book down until you too get some answers. Wyatt will use all the modern appurtenances of the era we live in to aid in his search. But from the beginning, he realizes that the identity of the ‘texter’ is crucial to his investigation!

And don’t worry about having to catch up with a series, as this one is a stand alone novel.

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Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

Best-selling author Michael Crichton passed away a few years ago, although his newest novel was released at the end of 2011. It was finished posthumously by Richard Preston, best known for his nonfiction books, such as The Hot Zone. Fun fact: Richard Preston is the brother of thriller writer Douglas Preston, whose novels (co-written with Lincoln Child) are often compared to those of Michael Crichton.

For those familiar with Crichton’s novels, do yourself a favor and pick this up. You’ll be glad you did, because it reads like vintage Crichton: it’s fast, fun, and makes the future happen now. I’ll admit that I was a bit disillusioned by State of Fear, in which Crichton seemed to come down against the idea of global climate change, which is quite different than the views expressed of nature’s vanishing beauty in his memoir, Travels. But in Micro, as Richard Preston puts it, “he was writing at the top of his game.” Crichton is known for taking a small scientific or technological fact or discovery and building a whole pulse-pounding, page-turning story around it.

Graduate students in Cambridge, Massachusetts, each studying a different field of science, are being recruited by Vincent Drake, the charismatic founder of NaniGen MicroTechnologies. The students will be flown to Hawaii just for the chance to tour the facility and see some of the technology that will, as Drake says, “define the limits of discovery for the first half of the twenty-first century.” Peter Jansen, one of the students, happens to be the brother of Eric, one of NaniGen’s executives. Just before the students are to depart for Hawaii Peter receives a text from Eric that reads “Don’t come.” Peter and his friends make the journey anyway, and are stunned to learn that Eric is missing and presumed dead after an accident on his boat.  Peter believes that Drake is involved with his brother’s disappearance and when he tries to publicly confront him with some evidence, all seven students are also made to “disappear.” Sort of.

The heart of NaniGen’s breakthroughs is the ability to shrink objects and people to less than an inch in size. The students are then dumped in the rainforest jungle where they must fight to survive against all beetles, wasps and other insects, plus birds and the natural elements as their size works against them at every turn.

Sure, it may sound like Honey I Shrunk the Kids meets Jurassic Park, but for a Science Fiction lover the story and action kept me turning pages and wishing my lunch break were longer. I also couldn’t tell how much, or which parts, of the book were Crichton’s and which were Preston’s.

For a thrilling ride through the micro-verse, find and request this book in our catalog.

The Future of Us by Jay Asher

Did you ever read that Ray Bradbury short story, A Sound of Thunder? It was assigned reading for my 10th or 11th grade English class, and has always stuck with me. The basic premise is that, in a world set in the near future, a time machine allows people to take guided tours of the past. A hunter on a safari to track and kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex accidentally falls from the levitating path that he has been told to stick to, crushing a butterfly beneath his boot. This one small change in the past snowballs, and when the hunter returns to his own time subtle changes can be seen everywhere.

Jay Asher’s young adult novel The Future of Us is like a more modern-day version of Bradbury’s 1952 story. Fast-forward to 1996 when Emma receives a free AOL CD-ROM (doesn’t that sound so dated?) and tries it out on her brand new computer. Once she’s logged in, a strange blue icon appears connecting Emma to a cluttered and confusing website called Facebook where someone with her own name and hometown is posting information about herself. (As you may know, Facebook didn’t debut until 2004, some 8 years later.)

Emma and her friend Josh slowly figure out how to navigate the website, and realize that the Emma and Josh on Facebook are surely their future selves. Or perhaps just versions of them? The two high-schoolers begin to make small changes to their lives based on what they see of their futures, changes that then effect the future being reflected back at them.

While officially a young adult novel, this is an interesting read for adults as well. I zoomed through it in a couple of nights and enjoyed thinking about the possibility of time travel through the web.

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The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Although it has only been around for a decade or so, the World Wide Web has already lived up to its name.  It would appear that we are all caught in it.  It is hard now to imagine what we would do without such things as email, online shopping, Facebook, and Google.

In this short time, author Nicholas Carr argues, our brains have changed to meet the demands of this new kind of thinking, writing, and reading.  Just as people’s minds changed when other pervasive inventions took hold—discoveries such as the clock, the map, the book, and the typewriter—so our minds have changed in the digital age.

He begins his argument with a very thorough and interesting analysis of what scientists now understand about the plasticity of the brain.  Whereas we once thought of the brain as “hardwired,” we now understand that the actual cells and neural pathways of the brain change depending on the type of activities we engage in.

For example, cab drivers have very highly developed regions in the hippocampus of the brain—the area associated with spatial memory.  Once they begin to make use of global positioning systems, they quickly lose their prodigious abilities. “Use it or lose it” is truly the brain’s motto.

So what are we losing (and/or gaining) as we train ourselves to sort through the vast amount of information so easily accessible on the Web?  Using data from many different studies, Carr demonstrates that our knowledge is broadening but growing more shallow.  In fact, our ability to read deeply and think deeply is compromised by the “technology of distraction” offered by the Web.  While some cognitive functions have improved, such as the ability to sort and scan quickly, studies show that the more we use the Internet, the harder it becomes to follow a long, reasoned argument or a complicated story line.

Carr himself admits that he had to essentially sequester himself from the many distractions of his RSS reader, Twitter account, instant messaging, etc., in order to concentrate long enough to write this book.  He says he has noticed that his brain seems much more than before to need constant novelty, and he has trouble concentrating for more than short periods.

What shall we do?  Carr does not suggest that we throw our computers out the window.  However, he says, we should be aware of what is happening and think about ways to mitigate it.  For example, studies show that time spent in nature help calm and focus the mind.  A quiet mind predisposes us not only to the wisdom that comes from deep thinking, but to empathy, compassion, and other states of mind that are distinctly human.  Maybe we should turn off our computers, take a walk in the park, and think about it!

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For the Win by Cory Doctorow

I was first introduced to Cory Doctorow’s books when I picked up the young adult novel Little Brother, which is a kind of counter-culture, grass-roots, cyber-terrorism sort of story, and I loved it. With those descriptive terms, what’s not to love?

Anywho, when I went to the American Library Association national conference in Washington, D.C. this summer I attended a sci-fi panel that Cory Doctorow was on. Besides being cute in a nerdy way, Doctorow was entertaining and interesting in his discussions of all things sci-fi and technology. (Side note: I don’t really think of his writings as SciFi, so don’t let that scare you off.)

I got a grab bag of books of the newest books of all the authors on the panel including Doctorow’s latest, For the Win. The book follows a revolution of youth as they fight back against the companies they work for – online multi-player games owned by the Coca Cola Company — that bring in big money for everyone except the workers; children and teens working mainly in India and China. Led by the mysterious Big Sister Nor, a cyber union called the Webblies forms and begins to bring about change in both the online worlds and the real world sweat shops to which they are so closely linked.

Doctorow weaves the story bringing together the most unlikely of characters; Mala, a born leader growing up on the streets of Dharvi, India, Leonard; a privileged Orange County teen who loves everything Chinese, and a beautiful young woman turned radio personality trying to help mobilize  girls working in the sweat shops.

Because Doctorow is such a lover of all things open-source and a self-proclaimed “technology activist,” his book is actually available for free download, so there’s nothing to stop you from reading it right this second. Or, you know, you can come to your local library. We’d love to see you.

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