Forgetting the Fifth Horseman

Forgetting the Fifth Horseman

A reflection on Dark Age Ahead, by Jane Jacobs (Random House, 2004) By Robert Grant Price “Hindsight may well expose my blind spots,” Jane Jacobs, the famed urbanist, wrote in Dark Age Ahead, the last book she wrote before her death at the age of 89. As a final...
Thoughtless Mechanism

Thoughtless Mechanism

Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust By Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis. Pantheon Books, 2019. Hardcover, 288 pages, $29. Reviewed by Nicholas Meverel Some years ago, without fanfare, the phrase “artificial intelligence” began to refer no longer to...
Why, and How, to Live

Why, and How, to Live

Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times by Leon R. Kass. Encounter Books, [2017] 2020. Hardcover, 407 pages, $21. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Leading a Worthy Life is in large part the intellectual and spiritual autobiography of one of America’s leading...
Our Robotic Future

Our Robotic Future

SAM: One Robot, a Dozen Engineers, and the Race to Revolutionize the Way We Build by Jonathan Waldman. Simon & Schuster, 2020. Hardcover, 267 pages, $28. Reviewed by Faith Bottum If you’re looking for a great tale of entrepreneurial pluck and technological...
Fear Your Toaster

Fear Your Toaster

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World by Bruce Schneier W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $28. Reviewed by Michael J. Ard What happens when everything is a computer, connected to everything else? How then...