Ben B. reviewed on 4/3/2007 + 7 more book reviews

The idea is a good one, but this book is missing something - there's a lot of writing about the annoying aspects of the acceleration of modern life, but little about why or what it all means, or what it holds for the future (other than things going Even Faster). Gleick is an excellent writer, and did an exellent job with "Chaos" from way back when, and the Feynman bio "Genius," but somehow missed the boat on this one. It's too bad, I do enjoy his thoughts, and I really wanted this book to "say something" to me.

I found Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines" from the sam time period to be a much better and more in-depth work on where the accelerated pace of life in general and technology in particular came from, as well as where it's going. I have little doubt I'll enjoy Kurzweil's earlier "The Age of Intelligent Machines" and his current "The Singularity Is Near" as well.

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