As a programmer, I ought to have found this interesting, but unfortunately it was more like doing unpaid overtime. On several occasions I went to bed ahead of my husband, saying I wanted to read a bit of my book, only for him to arrive upstairs minutes later to find that its turgid prose had already stunned me into unconsciousness. Reading about someone else's marathon debugging session is only slightly less horrible than being in the midst of your own.
My one real moment of entertainment came from reading about the work of JCR Licklider. As well as having a funny name, he believed that by working with machines humans could achieve enhanced cognition. As someone who works with machines every day and often seems to be having cognitive difficulties, my response to his idea is a bitter, "Ha!". Most humans don't want their cognition enhanced and are content to muddle along with the same mixture of magical thinking and believing whatever is most convenient that we've been using ever since we were monkeys. We have created this amazing, worldwide network of machines and what do we use it for? Pornography, dating, looking at cute animals, watching amusing films of things in blenders and wanky, ego-stroking popularity contests. Some of the cleverest humans get as far as using it to pretend to be an elf. Quite frankly it would serve us all right if the Internet became self-aware and started exterminating us!
What is a little sad is that although many of the programmers mentioned were undoubtedly brilliant (and obsessive) and working at the bleeding edge of their fields, none of them got rich from their work. What you need to make money appears to middling intelligence, a sharp suit, glossy hair and a disarming smile. Bugger.
Despite the fact that I've not enjoyed this book, my friends seem to be queuing up to read it. I can't persuade them to like my favourite authors but they all want to read this crap. T! Humans, eh? They're just bloody perverse!
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