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The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm
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58
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
28/100Critics
88/100Scholars
Author:
Caleb Scharf
Publisher:
Riverhead Books
Date:
June 15, 2021
The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.
What The Reviewers Say
With his book, Scharf (astrobiology, Columbia Univ.; The Copernicus Complex) has put together an elaborate view of 'information'.
Scharf’s argument, [...] inspired by Richard Dawkins’ 'selfish gene,' is that data want to ensure their own propagation. While there is clearly an evolutionary advantage to this symbiotic relationship with data, Scharf suggests that information may alternately determine life’s function and trajectory. One is reminded of T. S. Eliot’s prescient line, 'Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?' For readers of James Gleick and George Dyson..
An astute, provocative contribution to information science and futurology..
Scharf’s provocative thesis is sure to shake things up for readers with an interest in humans’ relationship to data..
