The Technological Singularity, Murray Shanahan

It seems odd to me that Shanahan says that science fiction doesn’t examine the issues of the singularity deeply, and yet I feel that several spec-fic books have done so much more than this non-fiction book. He does as much work in imagining, glancing at the possibilities for general AI and what they might mean, and though he tries to discuss them intellectually, I feel that other authors writing fiction have made me engage much more with the issues.

It’s informative enough, but I found it relatively simplistic: it stuck as closely as possible to what can be imagined using our modern technology, which I think is kind of not the point of the whole singularity idea, which should be an advance that leaves behind humans as we currently are. I think it might better be explored in fiction; at least then, it can give us an illusion of otherness, which is undermined by the matter of fact discussions of how something could come about.

If you’re interested in AI, but know basically nothing, this is a decent primer. If you’re a science fiction fan, stick to novels: they’re more imaginative and more interesting, and I say that as someone who does enjoy non-fiction a lot. If you’re curious based on the title, why not? But if you’re looking for something in depth and philosophical, no, this holds nothing new.

Rating: 2/5

The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Simon Winchester

It sounds pretty sensational: a known murderer worked on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary — a murder who was known to be insane and who was kept at Broadmoor for the entire time he was assisting. The book isn’t quite so sensational in outlook; it does describe the murder, but it also treats the man who did it — Dr Minor — with sympathy and respect. It’s surprisingly far-ranging, touching on Minor’s involvement in the American Civil War as well as the work of Dr Murray on the Oxford English Dictionary, and the whole context of both endeavours.

In the end, in fact, it seems to deal so sympathetically with Dr Minor — who without a doubt was suffering from some serious delusions for most of his life — that I didn’t find it sensational at all. It seemed to be as much about the dictionary and about the friendship between Dr Minor and Dr Murray as about the sensationalism of it, which I quite liked. Ultimately, it’s rather ambivalent about the actual subject: is it Minor, or is it the dictionary? But nonetheless, I found it pretty interesting.

Rating: 3/5