Name: World Without Mind
ISBN: 9781101981115

World Without Mind

Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection—a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science—from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stewart Brand and the hippie origins of today’s Silicon Valley—Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology.

What Hacker News says

jonahbMar 2019

All I can say is that a lot of people disagree with you. If you're interested in that perspective, a good book is "World Without Mind" by Franklin Foer.

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DyslexicAtheistFeb 2019

  - Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society"
  - N.N.Taleb "The Black Swan"
  - Danny Kahneman "Thinking Fast & Slow" (also his papers with Amos Tversky)
  - Thomas Ligotti "The Conspiracy against the Human Race"
  - Peter Wessel Zapffe "On the Tragic" & "The Last Messiah"
  - Sokal, Alan D "Intellectual Impostures"
  - Simon Herbert "A The Sciences of the Artificial"
  - Herbert Marcuse "One-Dimensional Man"
  - Schopenhauer "Parerga and Paralipomena"
  - Lewis Mumford "The Story of Utopias"
  - Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish"
  - Edward S. Herman "Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
  - Franklin Foer "World Without Mind The Existential Threat of Big Tech"
  - Ben Goldacre "Bad science"
  - Emil Cioran "The Book of Delusions"
  - Gracian "The Art of Worldly Wisdom"
  - Heidegger Martin "The Question Concerning Technology"
  - Jacques Ellul "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes"
  - Mumford Lewis "The Culture of Cities"
  - Orwell "1984", "Down and Out in Paris and London", "Animal Farm"
  - Huxley "Brave New World", "The Doors Of Perception"
  - Michael Pollan "How to change your mind"
  - Jeff Hawkins "On Intelligence"
  - Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "Notes from the Underground", "The Brothers Kasamarov", "The Gambler", "The Idiot", "Crime & Punishment"
  - Peter Smith "Teach Yourself Logic"
  - Thomas More "Utopia"
  - Emil Cioran "The Trouble With Being Born"
  - Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago"
  - Nietzsche "Complete works"
  - Bulgakov "Master and Margarita"
  - Gerald M. Weinberg "The Secrets of Consulting"

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drivativDec 2018

Why Information Grows - Cesar Hidalgo (https://books.google.com/books?id=J88_CQAAQBAJ) Best book I've read in recent memory. Changed my understanding of the world and (maybe) our place in it.

The Information - James Gleick (https://books.google.com/books?id=7ztdygAACAAJ) All developers having anything to do with data should read this or at least be familiar with the concepts it covers.

Chaos - James Gleick (https://books.google.com/books?id=OoLNzl4XpPUC) A good follow-up to "The Information"

Scale - Geoffrey West (https://books.google.com/books?id=bJPZDAAAQBAJ) Covers the kind of fundamentals of science everyone should understand.

Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark (https://books.google.com/books?id=2hIcDgAAQBAJ) The Master Algorithm - Pedro Domingos (https://books.google.com/books?id=CPgqCgAAQBAJ) These two go nicely together

The Death of Expertise - Thomas M. Nichols (https://books.google.com/books?id=x3TYDQAAQBAJ) Maybe the thing that brings about the downfall of society as we know it

Fantasyland - Kurt Andersen (https://books.google.com/books?id=aaX4DAAAQBAJ) A fun, engaging American history - whether the theory behind it is accurate or not, it is still enlightening.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (https://books.google.com/books?id=niDNtZoYsAUC) A painful re-reading but hard not to conclude that Huxley had it way more directionally right than Orwell or any other future fiction authors.

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neil Postman (https://books.google.com/books?id=oup6iagfox8C) Though largely about media in the 80's, it is even more relevant today.

World Without Mind - Franklin Foer (https://books.google.com/books?id=Q8gPDgAAQBAJ) Too easy to pick on big tech this year but that doesn't mean most of this book isn't on the nose.

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DyslexicAtheistFeb 2018

  - Nassim N. Taleb: Black Swan and Antifragile[0]
  - Robert Cialdini: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion[1]
  - Franklin Foer: World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech[2]
  - Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society[3]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Frag...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Rober...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/One-Dimensional-Man-Ideology-Industri...

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hnuser355Dec 2018

Hmm, I read a book a few months ago where the author spent a lot of time discussing the intellectual background for Silicon Valley and why he thought these guys ruined journalism and probably lot of other stuff. It was called “World Without Mind” I believe.

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fraqedOct 2017

CBC radio had an interesting interview with Franklin Foer this past weekend. He makes that argument during the interview and presumably in his book World Without Mind.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-...

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