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Is the Universe a Hologram?: Scientists Answer the Most Provocative Questions
Science today is more a process of collaboration than moments of individual "eurekas." This book recreates that kind of synergy by offering a series of interconnected dialogues with leading scientists who are asked to reflect on key questions and concepts about the physical world, technology, and the mind. These thinkers offer both specific observations and broader comments about the intellectual traditions that inform these questions; doing so, they reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas. The persistent paradox of our era is that in a world of unprecedented access to information, many of the most important questions remain unsolved. These conversations (conducted by a veteran science writer, Adolfo Plasencia) reflect this, with scientists addressing such issues as intelligence, consciousness, global warming, energy, technology, matter, the possibility of another earth, changing the past, and even the philosophical curveball, "is the universe a hologram?"The dialogues discuss such fascinating aspects of the physical world as the function of the quantum bit, the primordial cosmology of the universe, and the wisdom of hewn stones. They offer optimistic but reasoned views of technology, considering convergence culture, algorithms, "Beauty ? Truth," the hacker ethic, AI, and other topics. And they offer perspectives from a range of disciplines on intelligence, discussing subjects that include the neurophysiology of the brain, affective computing, collaborative innovation, and the wisdom of crowds.Conversations with Hal Abelson, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, John Perry Barlow, Javier Benedicto, José Bernabéu, Michail Bletsas, Jose M. Carmena, David Casacuberta, Yung Ho Chang, Ignacio Cirac, Gianluigi Colalucci, Avelino Corma, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Javier Echeverria, José Hernández-Orallo, Hiroshi Ishii, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Henry Jenkins, Anne Margulies, Mario J. Molina, Tim O'Reilly, John Ochsendorf, Paul Osterman, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Rosalind W. Picard, Howard Rheingold, Alejandro W. Rodriguez, Israel Ruiz, Sara Seager, Richard Stallman, Antonio Torralba, Bebo White, José María Yturralde
434 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 4, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 8, 2017
This is a very strange book - it reads like a cross between a collection of totally unrelated science essays and Waiting for Godot. Each essay is in the form of an interview with a scientist (the term is stretched a bit to include architects and human resources experts) and the Beckett-like nature is occasionally emphasised by interviewees who don't have English as a first language who scatter the unedited interviews (complete with painfully polite introductions) with interest terms such as 'teletransportation.' Even the book's subtitle 'Scientists answer the most provocative questions' has a touch of the Google Translate about it.
In his introduction, interviewer Adolfo Plasencia explains the use of dialogue in teaching. He tells us that when Lewis Carroll has Alice think 'what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?' Carroll was criticising the teaching of his day which 'ignored the example of great teachers such as Plato and Rousseau, who considered dialogue to be essential for sound education.' What this misses is that teaching dialogues were carefully written, not a verbatim transcript of a conversation - and that there's a very good reason why we don't find them in popular science books. Because even the best science-teaching-by-dialogue, such as Galileo's three-way version, feel stilted and dull by modern standards. What we understand now (and what Alice had in mind) is the importance of narrative in good science writing. Alice's conversations were those in a well-written fictional narrative, not the real life, stultifying version.
It's not all bad. Each time I came close to giving up, I'd hit on a little nugget of really interesting content, whether it be on Casimir forces or graphene. But I suspect you could edit the good bits out into a single article. It wasn't helped by the quite long interventions for the interviewer, who seemed determined to get across his political message that Europe is better than America, and that scientific cooperation is leading the way to the European unification, which must surely follow from the wonderful EU.
This book must genuinely have seemed a good idea as a proposal, but the heavy-going dialogue combined with the weak format of a collection of unrelated essays from different sources makes it a noble failure.
In his introduction, interviewer Adolfo Plasencia explains the use of dialogue in teaching. He tells us that when Lewis Carroll has Alice think 'what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?' Carroll was criticising the teaching of his day which 'ignored the example of great teachers such as Plato and Rousseau, who considered dialogue to be essential for sound education.' What this misses is that teaching dialogues were carefully written, not a verbatim transcript of a conversation - and that there's a very good reason why we don't find them in popular science books. Because even the best science-teaching-by-dialogue, such as Galileo's three-way version, feel stilted and dull by modern standards. What we understand now (and what Alice had in mind) is the importance of narrative in good science writing. Alice's conversations were those in a well-written fictional narrative, not the real life, stultifying version.
It's not all bad. Each time I came close to giving up, I'd hit on a little nugget of really interesting content, whether it be on Casimir forces or graphene. But I suspect you could edit the good bits out into a single article. It wasn't helped by the quite long interventions for the interviewer, who seemed determined to get across his political message that Europe is better than America, and that scientific cooperation is leading the way to the European unification, which must surely follow from the wonderful EU.
This book must genuinely have seemed a good idea as a proposal, but the heavy-going dialogue combined with the weak format of a collection of unrelated essays from different sources makes it a noble failure.
July 29, 2017
A very thrilling title that promises much to think about. Overall a bit disappointing, however--the author gathers a collection of brilliant people from varied disciplines and instead of turning them loose to cover what they like, he enforces an interview format on them, which sometimes works fine but in many cases obscures the most appealing topics and diverges from where you want the conversation to go. I'm left thinking, "No, don't ask that; that's boring!" and then I skip ahead.
Some conversations did a great job of inspiring thought--but they were not in the majority.
Some conversations did a great job of inspiring thought--but they were not in the majority.
January 16, 2026
The main problem with this book is that the title is misleading. The titular question, regarding the hologram universe, is indeed provocative and interesting. Too bad the question is only posed in passing, and answered not at all. In fact, most of the questions in this book are the opposite of provocative, they are prosaic. What is provocative about the launching of the ESA's GPS system? What is provocative about AI being possibly dangerous or possibly not? If he had named his book after literally any other question posed, especially the interminable 'how are yous?' included in the dialogue, I would have known better than to spend my time on it.
The answers to the questions are perhaps worse. Sometimes the interviewee will misunderstand the question and answer irrelevantly. The editor thought this was fine. Sometimes the interviewer will ask a leading question like "isn't it so that climate change is a conspiracy by non european scientists to destroy europe?" and the answer will be a hedge. "Isn't it so that science is so good and people who don't like science are just stupid?"
Bottom line is, perhaps some of these (oddly chosen) scientists have really important things to say, but they were presented in a haphazard, poorly edited format...and packaged in a disingenuous way.
The answers to the questions are perhaps worse. Sometimes the interviewee will misunderstand the question and answer irrelevantly. The editor thought this was fine. Sometimes the interviewer will ask a leading question like "isn't it so that climate change is a conspiracy by non european scientists to destroy europe?" and the answer will be a hedge. "Isn't it so that science is so good and people who don't like science are just stupid?"
Bottom line is, perhaps some of these (oddly chosen) scientists have really important things to say, but they were presented in a haphazard, poorly edited format...and packaged in a disingenuous way.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews