Skip to main content

Natural Computing – Dennis Shasha & Cathy Lazere ****

Here we have a touch of brilliance; an exploration of computing on the edge. What the authors cover very engagingly is the different ways computer can develop, whether through the ‘natural’ route suggested by the title – using bacteria to compute with, for instance – or programming robots to be more like insects than a conventional rational individual. We see software being developed in evolutionary fashion and the attempts to harness quantum computers – reflecting on their capabilities and limitations.
It’s all very readable, though because the book is split into 14 chapters, each based on one or more individuals and their work, I found the biographies that started each chapter a little tedious because, frankly I wasn’t very interested in these people. That didn’t stop their work being fascinating, and I know popular science thrives on context, but this was unnecessary information.
The other slight hesitation I have about the book is that the authors are relentlessly enthusiastic about the outcomes – there could be more examination of chances of success. To take an example, the chapter on Jake Loveless and Amrut Baharambe looks at using evolutionary code to model a financial market and make successful trades. It says at the end that their genetic algorithm ‘worked’ – but what does this mean? Did it do better than random selection? Will it generally? All the evidence that markets really aren’t suitable for modelling and nothing can forecast crashes because they aren’t logical or following any kind of rule (other than occasional panic) – but there was no examination of how this problem was dealt with or why, if this algorithm ‘works’ it isn’t generating billionaires all over the place.
There were several other places where the enthusiasm rather plastered over what could be lack of real results, and it would have been nice to have been able to hold this work up against a more objective measure – but even so it is hugely fascinating for anyone with an interest in computing and how it can continue to change our world.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Peter Spitz

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...