by George Dyson
First published 2020
Technology historian George Dyson examines the analog world that existed before digital machines took over. His story begins in 1716 when philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz spent eight days with Tsar Peter the Great at Bad Pyrmont. Leibniz tried to convince the Russian ruler to fund an expedition from Russia to America and to embrace digital computing as a tool for remaking civilization. Dyson traces this vision through the Russian American voyage of 1741 and follows the development of machine intelligence up to the present day. He draws on his time at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and his experiences in the Pacific Northwest rain forests. The book features figures from Catherine the Great's era through today's age of artificial intelligence. Dyson argues that humanity now stands at the threshold of a new historical period where machines operate beyond programmable human control. This completes the transformation Leibniz first imagined three centuries ago.
Genres: non-fiction, 21st-century, artificial-intelligence, history-of-science
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, technological-change
Setting: America, Bad Pyrmont, Pacific Northwest, Princeton, Russia
Period: 1716, 1741, 21st Century
304 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux