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Nature and Science February 2022 |
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The ascent of information : books, bits, genes, machines, and life's unending algorithm
by Caleb A. Scharf
"Your information has a life of its own, and it's using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we've failed to ask exactly why we're expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create-all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos-amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it's an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn't just something we produce; it's the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling visionof 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"
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Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
by Mary Roach
What's inside: an investigation into the curious conflicts between humans and wildlife, featuring stories from animal-attack forensics investigators and Vatican workers using lasers to battle birds set on destruction.
The elephant in the room: was not a metaphor when author Mary Roach visited a tea plantation in West Bengal, India. Read the book to find out why!
Read it for: Roach’s signature wit and the practical suggestions of how to ethically deal with wildlife problems in everyday life.
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The Plant Hunter: A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines
by Cassandra Leah Quave
Meet: medical ethnobotanist Dr. Cassandra Leah Quave, who studies plants to discover their medicinal properties.
Read it for: the author's enthusiasm for her chosen career and her reflections on being a disabled woman in a male-dominated discipline that requires conducting field research in the wilderness.
Further listening: Quave also hosts the Foodie Pharmacology podcast.
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| Underwater Wild: My Octopus Teacher's Extraordinary World by Craig Foster and Ross FrylinckWelcome to: the Great African Sea Forest, a vast kelp forest located off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, whose depths filmmaker Craig Foster and diver Ross Frylink spent years exploring and documenting.
Don't miss: the many gorgeous photographs of this mysterious underwater world.
About the authors: Craig Foster is the filmmaker behind the Academy Award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher; Ross Frylinck is a photographer and free-diver who started the Wavescape Ocean Festival. |
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| The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save... by Porter FoxContains: an immersive blend of travel writing, history, and climate science, and sobering reflections on the end of winter as we know it.
Featuring: a sprawling cast of "scientists, ranchers, adventurers, vagabonds, time travelers, hunters, and guides" who live and work in the coldest and most inhospitable places on Earth.
Further reading: Bjorn Vassnes' Kingdom of Frost; Dahr Jamail's The End of Ice. |
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Gory details : adventures from the dark side of science
by Erika Engelhaupt
Blending humor and journalism, and featuring interviews with leading researchers, the author of National Geographic’s popular Gory Details blog investigates the gross, strange and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe. Illustrations.
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Fire in Paradise : an American tragedy
by Alastair Gee
An account of the 2018 Camp Fire that razed the town of Paradise, California draws on hundreds of interviews with residents, firefighters, police and scientific experts to document its horrific impact, including the establishment of an unfolding refugee crisis.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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