Analogia

April 20, 2020
History, philosophy, science, and memoir blend in this unique look at how technology has remade the world and will likely command humanity’s future. Historian Dyson (Turing’s Cathedral) divides time into four epochs: preindustrial, industrial, a third where nature temporarily cedes control to human tech, and a final fourth, where artificial intelligence and nature will ally against humans. This touchstone argument launches readers on a chronological journey, from the role of information technology in the European exploration and conquest of North America, to how WWII-era atomic research left postwar scientists with new scientific tools and data and the development of information theory in the transition from analog to digital. Between scenes from history, Dyson weaves in details from the life of his father, the physicist Freeman Dyson, including his involvement with the first nuclear reactor designed to shut down automatically, and his own, including a period he spent living in a tree house he built himself from scavenged driftwood. This unusual book examines its themes with smooth, lyrical writing, but fails to deliver much evidence in support of its predictions, other than briefly sketching out how complex human-made networks—Dyson cites an early computer-run airspace monitoring system—can develop their own internal logic. It works best as a digressive look at how advances in technology have constantly reshaped the world.