O joy!
On the joy of finding a book that speaks to you
Sometimes a book is so good that you just want to underline and memorize everything. Bacteria to AI is such a book.
You know about me, but for me, reading takes a real effort these days. Iāve planned an hour of morning reading time each day, but even when I manage to pick up a book in the first place, more often than not, it just doesnāt capture me. I donāt know whether itās my atrophying reading skills or my bad taste in book selectionā¦but Iāve struggled my way through the last 2 books I read. Because you know, sunken cost fallacy, āI just need to get into itā, āit will become betterā. (One of them was The Overstory (Richard Powers), by the way, an award winning, 500 page quest to remember who of the 6 protagonists was who. Itās probably the first book of which I have absolutely no recollection after finishing it.)
But hey, I digressā¦
This week, I finally decided to pick up Bacteria to AI, Human futures with our non-human symbionts, by N. Katherine Hayles. And what a treat it is. Itās one of these books where I literally just want to underline every sentence because it sparks so many ideas. And then re-read the page. The author makes a case for rethinking the default anthropocentric stance that we take in life, to decouple cognition and consciousness, and to consider an integrated framework āin which human conscious cognition can be put in relation to nonconscious cognitions both within humans and within the greater-than-human worldā.
This matters to me because in the first 25 pages, Hayles offers such a richness of vocabulary to be more precise about what weāre encountering now with the rise of AI.
So Iām thinking of a way to keep track of reading and to keep you updated on my thoughts on the book through this website. Not sure whether it will become daily reading notes, but definitely planning to catch those beautiful words and concepts and ātasteā them in my design practise.
Keep you posted!