Book Summaries

The world feels like it’s spinning off its axis lately. Stock markets dive without warning, climates shift unpredictably, and trivial disagreements explode into major conflicts overnight. How can anyone make sense of a world that’s always throwing more at you than you can handle? Enter abstraction. It’s not just a fancy intellectual exercise—it’s your brain’s … Read more

A Day in 2035In a lab near Zurich, a swarm of nanobots meant to clean oil spills escapes containment. Instead, they devour everything carbon-based—plastic, rubber, even concrete. Highways crumble, power grids fail, and desperate governments deploy electromagnetic pulses to stop the chaos. The crisis is eventually contained, but billions in infrastructure are lost. This “Gray … Read more

In the bustling heart of early 20th century New York City, amid a frenzy of rapid progress and unending ambition, existed opportunities not only for honest prosperity but also for remarkable deception. Among the towering tales of con artistry woven through the city’s lore, perhaps none is as charmingly audacious or darkly humorous as George … Read more

Below is a review and summary of Iain M. Banks’s classic, The Player of Games, and how it relates to our times. The Adventure Unfolds Imagine a man named Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a citizen of the Culture—a vast, galaxy-spanning civilization where scarcity is a forgotten myth, and machines called Minds, benevolent and brilliant, orchestrate a … Read more

The history of human progress is a chronicle of tools. From the flint knife to the steam engine, humanity has perpetually redefined its relationship with labor through invention. Yet, with each technological leap, there arises a chorus of voices insisting, This time is different. These claims are often met with skepticism, dismissed as the perennial … Read more

Neil Postman’s concept of “Technopoly” describes far more than just a society saturated with machinery; rather, it names a cultural mindset that grants technology ultimate authority over how we understand knowledge, morality, and human purpose. In earlier eras, people relied on religious or philosophical frameworks to make sense of their triumphs and tragedies. Postman argues … Read more