The Internet Giveth and the Internet Taketh Away

The Internet Giveth and the Internet Taketh Away

100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet By Pamela Paul. Crown, 2021. Hardcover, 288 pages, $27. Reviewed by Auguste Meyrat Few inventions in recent memory have been more disruptive and influential than the internet. Only a few decades ago, the great whole of humanity...
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...