Constant Touch – John Agar *****

At first sight it might seem odd that this little book has been awarded our top, 5 star rating. A book about mobile phones? Not much science. Not all that exciting. But John Agar does all the right things. In a simply superb way he weaves together the technology, society, politics and business in a way that works wonderfully – and serves as a strong reminder that science never operates in a vacuum.

In this case, of course, it’s a remarkable technology, not so much from it’s scientific wonder as the speed with which it has become pervasive. Agar argues persuasively that the mobile (cell) phone wasn’t just technologically impossible 50 years ago, but sociologically as well.

He covers the phone’s introduction across the world, why the US lagged behind Europe in second generation phones and how mobile phones have even caused the overthrow of a dictator. Agar conjures up a parallel between the mobile phone and the pocket watch as a portable technology that changes our lives, though there are also strong links made with the automobile industry.

The only glaring omission is that there is no mention of the phone’s capability to act as a portable payment device. About ten years ago, the town of Swindon in the UK was home to a fascinating experiment called Mondex, where plastic cards replaced cash. Although a lot of people never really got the hang of it, those who really got into Mondex found a huge freedom from not having to fiddle around with change, drive to cash machines, and generally handle filthy lucre for transactions too small for a credit or debit card. Mobile phones could provide all of us with instant electronic payment, with the cash coming off your phone credits – but Agar doesn’t seem to have come across this concept.

Don’t let that put you off, though. It’s simply a great little book – as with many of the Icon science books it is very short, but this is an exception where that shortness never comes across as oversimplification.

Excellent.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...

Search This Blog