A brightly readable overview of how AI is poised to change human society—and perhaps humans themselves.
An exploration of the evolving relationships between humans and machines.
“We seldom think about how much we depend on our tools to extend the capabilities of our bodies,” technology consultant Meisel writes in his nonfiction debut. “A full view of evolution should include the tools we use constantly.” He proceeds to look at human evolution in just that way, drawing on his professional background in computer science to explore the history, nature, and possible future of artificial intelligence, which he expects to “get increasingly powerful and attack an increasing range of applications.” Meisel is an unapologetic champion of AI and marshals a wide array of cited facts and sources (each chapter ends with a reference list) to counter some of the most common objections to the greater ubiquity of high-power “smart” computing in all aspects of life. These include anxieties over the possibility of AI taking jobs from human beings; he argues that such technology would, in fact, create new jobs for people. Different chapters cover different aspects of AI, from increasing sophistication in speech recognition to advancements in “digital assistants,” now in millions of American homes, to the possibility of designing AI to mimic the deep neural networks of the human brain. Throughout, Meisel also insists on the intimate relationship between AI–infused tools and biology: “We make decisions based not only on our bodies, but on the availability of tools to help make a decision and tools to execute that decision,” he writes. “Tools extend the capability of our bodies including our brains.”
Meisel writes with the kind of knowledgeable conviction that can change minds. A persistent problem, though, is the book’s apparent misunderstanding of evolution by means of natural selection: “Humankind has always extended the ability of the human body and brain with tools,” he writes, for instance, which is true in the sociological sense but not the evolutionary sense; whatever changes that have happened to human bodies and brains over the last two centuries have likely been the result of improved nutrition and health care, not evolution. However, he compensates for this with the fierce energy with which he examines many aspects of the smart-technology world. He’s consistently engaging, for instance, when he writes about the role of tech in controlling objectionable speech in online forums: “Who decides what is ethical?” he asks. “Should we leave it in the hands of social media companies, or should it be set by governments or by industry consortiums?” Meisel’s upbeat attitude toward the future is intriguing even if some readers may consider it fairly dystopian. He believes in the enormous potential of his subject, writing that “the right tasks for AI is to do things that help humans with tasks, not emulate them.” Whether such optimism is merited is up for debate—if machines do eventually affect human evolution, it seems equally likely that they could impair human intelligence over the course of 10 generations—but it’s undeniably energizing. A brightly readable overview of how AI is poised to change human society—and perhaps humans themselves.Pub Date: April 13, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985794229
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Mindstir Media
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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BOOK REVIEW
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