12 Books that Changed My Thinking in 2022

FUTURE OF THE WORLD - Edition 10

Dec 22, 2022

2022 has been quite the year! Many of us were transfixed by the massive ups and downs of crypto and the explosion of AI apps and ChatGPT.

In the midst of it all, while the media and social media were awash either with hype or deep cynicism, for me, books were a steady source of clarity and common sense.

Here are the twelve books I spent the most time with this past year:

It’s a mix of publication dates: the earliest is Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines from 1999, and the latest is Virtual Society by Herman Narula, published in October of 2022.

TOKEN ECONOMY How the Web3 Reinvents the Internet by Shermin Voshmgir.

This is the definitive guide to understanding web3. Voshmgir covers all the basics, from the blockchain to smart contracts, decentralized finance, and all the possible use cases for tokens.

If you would like to tokenize your business or community and make it Web3-ready, how do you need to approach your token design? Which questions do you have to ask yourself? What know-how do you need in your team to be able to properly “design” or “engineer” these tokens?

Here’s a sample chapter that answers those questions: How to Design a Token System — Part 1 | by Shermin Voshmgir | Token Kitchen | Medium

Most useful chapter: All

My top quote: “Tokens are for the web3 what websites were for the world wide web in the 1990s.”

THE FUTURE OF YOU Can Your Identity Survive 21st-Century Technology? by Tracey Follows

I found this to be a disconcerting but necessary read. If we are to meet the challenges of this exponential age, we must reckon with technology’s impact on the most fundamental aspects of our humanity.

Most interesting chapter: Enhancing You

My top quote: “With a powerful genetic database, rapid advancements in genetic editing, the development of chemicals to target particular gene carriers, the outcome could be a population that expresses only the characteristics and traits that the state deems acceptable.”

Here’s a review: https://www.apf.org/blogpost/1784113/370153/Book-Review-The-Future-of-You

BUILD An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

Fadell is the builder behind the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Learning Thermostat. He now mentors the next generation of startups at his Paris firm Future Shape.

I read BUILD as a break from my usual dives into emerging technologies. It was an inspiring, uplifting behind-the-scenes look at innovation, leadership, and management.

I especially love how Fadell guides us to find personal balance amid intense work.

Most life-changing chapter: Killing Yourself for Work.

My top quote: "Start to reengineer your day, your week, and your monthly schedule with time dedicated to feeling human."

THE CODE BREAKER Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

Isaacson is undoubtedly one of the truly great biographers of all time. As a lover of real-life human stories, I find myself drawn to his work, again and again. The Code Breaker was no different. The invention of the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 will impact humanity's future more than any other.

Most compelling chapter: I Learn to Edit - where Isaacson himself, learns how to edit DNA using CRISPR.

My top quote: “Two revolutions coincided in the 1950s. Mathematicians, including Claude Shannon and Alan Turing, showed that all information could be encoded by binary digits, known as bits. This led to a digital revolution powered by circuits with on-off switches that processed information. Simultaneously, Watson and Crick discovered how instructions for building every cell in every form of life were encoded by the four-letter sequences of DNA. Thus, was born an information age based on digital coding (0100110111001…) and genetic coding (ACTGGTAGATTACA…). The flow of history is accelerated when two rivers converge.”

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

To understand the future of the internet, you must understand how it evolved. I wrote a fair amount about the internet this year, and this book was one of my most important resources.

The Innovators is a masterly saga of collaborative genius destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution—and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens.
Isaacson begins the adventure with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page.

This is required reading if you want to truly understand how technology happens.

Most enjoyable chapter: Ada, Countess of Lovelace

My top quote: “The next phase of the Digital Revolution will bring even more new methods of marrying technology with the creative industries, such as media, fashion, music, entertainment, education, literature, and the arts. Much of the first round of innovation involved pouring old wine—books, newspapers, opinion pieces, journals, songs, television shows, movies—into new digital bottles. But new platforms, services, and social networks are increasingly enabling fresh opportunities for individual imagination and collaborative creativity. Role-playing games and interactive plays are merging with collaborative forms of storytelling and augmented realities. This interplay between technology and the arts will eventually result in completely new forms of expression and formats of media. This innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. In other words, it will come from the spiritual heirs of Ada Lovelace, creators who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences and who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens them to the beauty of both.”

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark

With all the hoopla around DALLE 2 and ChatGPT, revisiting the top thinkers on artificial intelligence was a requirement. It’s easy to be seduced by the magic of AI, but far more important to understand how it is designed to interact with you. Tegmark’s Life 3.0 gets you behind the technology to the people shaping the AI models and redesigning humanity.

Most intriguing chapter: Our Cosmic Endowment: The Next Billion Years and Beyond

My top quote: “Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half-century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry. Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half-century. I propose that we build Arks as that day nears and adopt a seafaring life!”

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil

Kurzweil thinks and writes in sweeping gestures that embrace all of human existence and well beyond. He is known for his bold and often prophetic takes on technology, and some of his predictions for 2029 seem well on course.

Will computers become conscious beings? Never! But they will be able to convince us that they are.

Most fascinating chapter: 2099

My top quote: “Furthermore, neurons are extremely slow; electronic circuits are at least a million times faster. Once a computer achieves a human level of ability in understanding abstract concepts, recognizing patterns, and other attributes of human intelligence, it will be able to apply this ability to a knowledge base of all human-acquired—and machine-acquired—knowledge.”

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell

My favorite AI read because Russell is more of a humanist than a technologist. He believes that we should be focused on creating provably beneficial machines.

Russell suggests that we should rebuild AI on a new foundation, one where the machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursuing our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.

Most curious chapter: PROBLEM SOLVED?

My top quote: “To get just an inkling of the fire we're playing with, consider how content-selection algorithms function on social media. They aren't particularly intelligent, but they are in a position to affect the entire world because they directly influence billions of people. Typically, such algorithms are designed to maximize click-through, that is, the probability that the user clicks on presented items. The solution is simply to present items that the user likes to click on, right? Wrong. The solution is to change the user's preferences so that they become more predictable. A more predictable user can be fed items that they are likely to click on, thereby generating more revenue. People with more extreme political views tend to be more predictable in which items they will click on. (Possibly there is a category of articles that die-hard centrists are likely to click on, but it’s not easy to imagine what this category consists of.) Like any rational entity, the algorithm learns how to modify its environment —in this case, the user’s mind—in order to maximize its own reward.”

Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology by Azeem Azhar

In the 21st century, the dilemma we must contend with is the inability of the human mind to keep up with the exponential pace of technological advancement. Azhar calls this the exponential gap.

In 2007, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer famously dismissed the iPhone, saying: “It has no chance of gaining significant market share.” Azhar points out: “He fell into the exponential gap.”

He writes with perhaps the clearest understanding of the impact of technology on society and how we need to respond.

Most pivotal chapter: Exponential Citizens

My top quote: “State-sized companies are on the rise – and they are challenging our most basic assumptions about the role of private corporations.”

10.

Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains by Vitalik Buterin

Proof of Stake is a compilation of Vitalik’s writings, from 2014 in Bitcoin Magazine to recent blogposts in 2022. Every chapter is a crystal cut reflection of his remarkable thought process. Every idea is a technological solution for a real human problem.

Most valuable chapter: The Value of Blockchain Technology

My top quote: “Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.”

11.

Virtual Society: The Metaverse and the New Frontiers of Human Experience by Herman Narula

The Metaverse is being developed. By 2040, we will all spend some significant portion of our day-to-day lives there. Narula is building the world/s we will inhabit in the future.

In Virtual Society, he explains what these worlds will be, how they will develop, and most of all the enormous value they will add to our lives.

Most satisfying chapter: Virtual Jobs and the Fulfillment Economy

My top quote: “I would suggest that the extraterrestrials we thought we’d find in outer space will actually be found here on Earth. They’ll be our future selves, living our lives in various different realities, evolving differently as a result of it. I would say: We’re the aliens.”

12.

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly

I wrote about Kevin Kelly and The Inevitable in my last newsletter.

In The Inevitable, Kelly depicts the invisible and intangible forces of our current era, bringing them to life and waking us up to our future world.

I would start with this book before any of the others on this list. It is undeniable.

Most compelling chapter: Interacting

My top quote: “At its core 7 billion humans, soon to be 9 billion, are quickly cloaking themselves with an always-on layer of connectivity that comes close to directly linking their brains to each other. A hundred years ago H.G. Wells imagined this large thing as the world brain… I’m calling this planetary layer the holos. By holos I include the collective intelligence of all humans combined with the collective intelligence of all machines, plus the intelligence of nature plus whatever behavior emerges from this whole.”

That’s all for this week.

Your next newsletter will be Friday, December 30th.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

Cheers :)

Misha

If you enjoyed this edition, please share it with friends and colleagues.

Let’s grow this community.

join the future

Discussion about this post