In many ways, this an exemplary book:

1. The book is made up of easily digestible chunks;
2. Each chunk contains numbers. Anyone who disagrees with the conclusions of the book is therefore invited to identify the numbers that they disagree with;
3. In each case, the author explains where the various numbers come from;
4. The author makes the numbers seem plausible, but also provides copious references for people to investigate by themselves;
5. Mathematical formulae are provided too - but separated into appendices at the end of the book, to avoid detracting from the main flow of the argument;
6. The author punctures a lot of what might be called "hot air" - which he also calls "twaddle": wishful thinking about how sustainable energy might be achieved;
7. There are many "mythconceptions" sections where various widespread notions are gently but firmly dismantled;
8. The text is accompanied by a set of very clear diagrams;
9. The author sets out a range of possible solutions, rather than identifying a single way forwards;
10. The author makes it clear that none of the solutions are going to be easy, and each will require substantial ("country-sized") changes.

The author says he seeks to avoid being labelled as "pro-wind" or "pro-nuclear", declaring instead that he wishes to be known as "pro-arithmetic". Whatever solutions are contemplated, he says, must meet the test of adding up. He disagrees with those who say that "if everyone does a little, it will add up to a lot". Instead, he says, if everyone does a little, it will add up to a little. That's because of the scale of the total amount of energy used by an entire country. Actions need to be effective!

The entire book is available free online. The online summaries (eg page 238-239) reiterate the following point:

>>We have a clear conclusion: the non-solar renewables may be "huge," but they are not huge enough. To complete a plan that adds up, we must rely on one or more forms of solar power. Or use nuclear power. Or both.<<

So far, I haven't found any significant criticism of the points made in this book. It's highly recommended.

Much of the technology that will have the biggest impact on the 21st century remains as yet undiscovered. Some of these discoveries will, presumably, be made by people who are currently still children. My hope is that these children will take interest in the kinds of ideas that permeate Shannon Vyff's fine book "21st century kids: a trip from the future to you".

The majority of the action in this book is set 180 years in the future - although there are several loop-backs to the present day. Here are just a few of the themes that are woven together in this fast-moving book:

* Cryonic suspension, and the problems of eventual re-animation;
* Brain implants, that enable a kind of telepathic communication;
* Implications if human brains and human bodies could be dramatically improved;
* Options for improving the brains of other animal species, even to the point of enabling rich communications between these creatures and humans;
* Humans co-existing with self-aware robots and other AIs;
* Friendly versus unfriendly AI;
* Transferring human consciousness into robots (and back again);
* Coping with the drawbacks of environmental degradation;
* Future modes of manufacturing, transport, recreation, education, and religion;
* Circumstances in which alien civilisations might take an active interest in developments on the Earth.

Adults can enjoy reading "21st century kids", but there are parts of the book that speak more directly to children as the primary intended readership. Since I've long left my own adolescent days behind, I'm not able to fully judge the likely reactions of that target audience. My expectation is that many of them will find the contents engaging, thought-provoking, and exciting. It's family-friendly throughout.

One unusual aspect of the book is that several of the main characters have the same names (and early life histories) as three of the author's own children: Avianna, Avryn, and Avalyse. The author herself features in the book, as the (unnamed) "Mom". I found this occasionally unsettling, but it adds to the book's vividness and immediacy.

As regards the vision the book paints of the future, it's certainly possible to take issue with some of the details. However, the bigger picture is that the book is sufficiently interesting that it is highly likely to provoke a lot of valuable debate and discussion. Hopefully it will stretch the imagination of many potential future technologists and engineers, and inspire them to keep an open mind about what innovative technology can accomplish.

I was almost put off this book by its title "Immortality" and by
some of the racy publicity material for the book: "The first
transhuman has already been born. ... Present day and life as we
know it has just taken a quick left turn. Evolution is operating in
ways no one could have imagined."

I disliked this publicity material because I believe that:
1.) transhumans will typically be made, rather than being born;
2.) changes in evolution will be driven by human intelligence,
rather than by anything instrinsic in nature itself.

However, I'm glad I set aside these quibbles, and started reading
the book. I found it engrossing - and intriguing. Also quite moving,
since the main characters in the book are well elaborated (and are,
on the whole, symphathetic).

At the centre of this book is a multi-layered puzzle. It's not
appropriate for me to comment on the gradual resolution of this
puzzle - that's for each reader to explore by themselves. But I can
say that the book achieves significant momentum and very
considerable interest. And, eventually (well through the 564 pages)
the connections with important ideas of transhumanism and
immortality become clear.

There were a few points where I couldn't accept the science
involved, but on the whole, it seems largely convincing. Like all
novels, there are holes in the plot if you go looking for them, but
that shouldn't detract from the enjoyment - nor from the opportunity
to seriously explore some of the transhumanist ideas that bubble to
the surface as the book proceeds.

Recommended!

This is a populist, easy-to-read book, with plenty of pictures, and boxes that re-emphasise selected parts of the text (example: "Just think of the possibilities of a brain implant that gives you control over your mood, enabling you to turn on and off at will"). Another thing that makes it easy to read is that there are plenty of short anecdotes, about how new technologies have been changing the lives of real people. Finally, the book doesn't spend long on any one topic - it keeps moving on quickly. As such, it provides an accessible introduction to what's becoming an increasingly important subject area.

As well as providing an introduction to some interesting case studies, the author has his own message to emphasise: the prospect for human enhancement has (he believes) been over-hyped. Time and again, the science is too speculative. New medical treatments have not lived up to people's expectations. People fitted with implants eventually turned them off or removed them. Worse - in the author's view - too much writing on this subject is uncritical and prone to hype. He makes some fair points.

My own view, however, is that the author is unduly sceptical - and fails to give adequate coverage to several important technological trends. For example, there's virtually no mention of nanotechnology or stem cell rejuvenation therapy. Likewise there's no analysis of the astonishing way in which ready access to mobile IT, including smartphones and the world wide web, is making people all over the world smarter (in a very real way).

Another shortcoming of the book is the way it keeps getting bogged down in an unhelpful analysis of "is such-and-such an enhancement or is it just a therapy?" For example, in the author's view, the person with an artificial heart doesn't count as a sign of enhanced humans to come, because his quality of life (with his admittedly early generation artificial heart) isn't as good, now, as before he started having heart problems. So it's therapy rather than enhancement. But this sleight of hand just seems, to me, to unnecessarily obscure the tremendous future potential of this kind of technology. Sure, there are large challenges ahead. But we shouldn't let our pessimism or cynicism corrode our desire to improve the thoughtful application of technology to significantly improve human quality of life.

This book is based on a series of three lectures given by the author in Oxford in March 2006 at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation. I had the privilege to attend these lectures and I was spellbound by them at the time. So I was looking forward to reading this book.

However, somewhere in the process between the lectures and the book, the material has become, well, too dry. It sparkles on occasion, but the author allows himself to become bogged down too often in academic analysis, intellectual tennis, and other hair-splitting.

He's a great proponent of the merit, the morality, and even the necessity, of human enhancement. So far, so good. Some of his arguments strike home well. But in my view he gives too much time to listing various nooks and crannies of the views of various opponents of his writing. That's where the book becomes tedious. The author needs to become pithier.

The views of opponents of human enhancement (eg the people who say "Enough is enough" and that "Enhancement would destroy our core essential humanity, and must be opposed, despite all its manifest good results") do deserve attention. But I believe that a better book is waiting to be written, that will make a better job of highlighting the perversity and self-delusional destructive nature of these views.

Significant chunks of this book are astonishingly, infuriatingly bad. The subtitle of the book proclaims "On the New Immortality". And some of the better parts of the book are vignettes of Appleyard's meetings with various life extensionists, transhumanists, and immortalists. However, much of what Appleyard says is tired or unimaginative extensions of dreary OLD arguments about issues of life extension and life expansion. If only Appleyard had spent more time listening to what the "new immortalists" actually say - people like Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Max More, Audrey de Grey, and James Hughes - he would have found compelling answers to the arguments he raises.

For example, life might get boring, he says, if it went on for centuries whilst our mental capabilities remained much the same. Well, d'oh! transhumanists talk convincingly about expanding our mental capabilities and our interests in life - not just extending them. And aspects of the meaning of the human race would be changed if there was less certainty about death. Art would lose some of its current meaning, etc. Well, d'oh! why does that mean that we should continue to be enthralled by death, and prefer the currently limited and tragic human condition, to the much greater condition that humanity has the potential to transform into?

On the very last page, there's another of the (sadly) very many non-sequitors that Appleyward makes. He talks of a new world of "unageing, undying, unloving people". Hello?! Why on earth should "unageing and undying" imply "unloving"? This is nonsense.

The more interesting question is why an obviously bright person, like Appleyard, gets his thinking so immired and befuddled by these deathist (pro-death) principles? I believe the reason can be discerned from the unwarranted amount of time the book spends on trying to champion antiquated Catholic thinkers like Aquinas as (to quote) "most persuasive". Why, given the rich possible pickings from the highly creative transhumanist thinkers, does Appleyard instead tediously regurgitate tired old analyses about long-irrelevant theological debates? (He doesn't include the one about "how many angels could dance on a pinpoint?" but much of what he covers has a similar streak of other-worldiness.) In short, this is yet another example of the crippling effect that a life-long involvement in relgious thinking can have on someone's ability to reason clearly.

For a MUCH better treatment of the same concepts, go directly to the writings of the "new immortalists" themselves!

Don't let the weird title "The Lucifer Principle" put you off. This book is full of fascinating facts, covering many eras of human history, anthropology and (even more fascinatingly) animal behaviour, that shed light on human characteristics. The notes section alone covers 70 pages, in small print, and is full of jumping-off points for further reading.

The basic principle is that human instincts to anger, violence, depression, sabotage, etc - the instincts which some religions try to explain as being due to a devil or a Fall of Man, and which some modern philosophies try to blame on capitalism or western imperialism (etc) - arise much deeper in the workings of nature. These hugely destructive instincts are present because they propel progress - allowing individuals or groups to rise higher up the pecking order in whatever society they exist.

The book has a strong emphasis on looking at groups, rather than just individuals, as the basis for selection and survival. Another word for this in the book is "superorganism". Individual behaviours that initially seem baffling - eg a tendency to suicide - suddenly make more sense from the group point of view. Within human socieity, groups are organised by memes, with religion being one of the key examples.

Because of the astonishing scope of the book, it's easy to nit-pick here and there. But weighing everything up, it's hard to deny the main claims of this book - the evidence it gathers is so extensive and persuasively argued. Anyone who still hankers any illusion about "Gentle Mother Nature" or "Nature Knows Best" should read this book. Likewise for anyone who takes a benign view on religious influence. It's up to us who read it and understand it to take the steps to prise mankind out of our deeply embedded but flawed natural characteristics. There are some hints in the final chapters about how this could happen, but that's the weakest part of the book.

This book makes a great job of highlighting important ideas from the up-and-coming subject of Behavioural Economics.

Some of this material has been covered before by writers such as Gary Belsky & Thomas Gilovich ("Why smart people make big money mistakes") and Robert Cialdini ("Influence: Science and Practice") but this book brings its own fresh perspective. It also includes write-ups of fascinating new experiments devised and carried out by Ariely and his colleagues. Some of these experiments are gob-smacking. There's no denying the conclusion: our psychological make-up frequently drives us (in predictable fashion) to make irrational choices.

For example, sometimes when the price of an item is significantly increased, the demand for it significantly rises - completely at odds to the general principle of supply and demand curves from traditional economics. We also learn that there are circumstances when we will behave much more rashly - and much less honestly - than we'd expect.

Towards the end of the book, there are some meaty thoughts on what can be done to encourage more ethical behaviour (eg less cheating). These bear careful reflection.

The book can be valuable on a personal level in two ways. First, it can alert us to predictable mistakes that we would otherwise make, and help us to avoid them. Second, it can give us ideas on how to position our proposals to others, to make them more likely to be accepted.

By the way, the writer also happens to be a great public speaker. (I saw him speak at the TII/Vanguard event in Atlanta in February.) If you get a chance to see him speak, you should grab it.

This is a serious book about project management, that's easy and fun to read. Refreshingly, it's "project management" for grown ups. It doesn't talk about Gantt charts, or about checking up on whether engineers have completed the work they committed to complete, etc. Instead, it addresses the more fundamental and difficult issue of risk management.

Any project that doesn't have risk in it probably isn't worth doing. If you try to squeeze all the risk out of a project before you start (which is an approach I've often seen, alas), you'll end up with a lack-lustre and mediocre project. On the other hand, if you rush into a risky project just with a strong "can-do" attitude, hoping to get lots of lucky breaks, the outcome is unlikely to be any more successful for you.

The route the DeMarco and Lister advocate is a very sensible middle ground, where risks are continually assessed and tracked. They give lots of practical guidance on how to carry this out.

An early chapter on the fiasco of the delayed software for the DIA (Dallas International Airport) project is well worth the price of the book on its own. Think that the problem was due to faulty software development procedures? Think again. DeMarco and Lister make it clear that faulty risk-management was to blame.

The book also contains a powerful argument in favour of incremental delivery of projects, in which intermediate versions (containing real value) are made available every few weeks, with "near ready-to-ship" quality. This follows from actively managing the riskiest parts of the project, which should be brought forward in the project (so long as they will deliver real value - which is another question worth exploring) and addressed early. Aggressively managing the risks in this way will result in better predictability, and more satisfaction all round.

I found this to be utterly engrossing. The metaphor of the starfish vs. the spider is bound to enter common parlance - the same way as "Tipping Point" did. This book is a sober but enlightening account of the issues of centralisation ("spider") vs. decentralisation ("starfish"), as well as suitable mixtures of the two.

The book also shows why there's a great deal at stake behind this contrast: issues of commercial revenues, the rise and fall of businesses, and the rise and fall of change movements within society - where the change movements include such humdingers as Slave Emancipation, Sex Equality, Animal Liberation, and Al Quaeda.

There are many stories running through the book, chosen both from history and from contemporary events. The stories are frequently picked up again from chapter to chapter, with key new insights being drawn out. Some of the stories are familiar and others are not. But the starfish/spider framework casts new light on them all.

Each chapter brought an important additional point to the analysis. For example: factors allowing de-centralised organisations to flourish; how centralised organisations can go about combatting de-centralised opponents; issues about combining aspects of both approaches. (The book argues that smart de-centralisation moves by both GE and Toyota are responsible for significant commercial successes in these companies.)

The book also spoke personally to me. As it explains, starfish organisations depend upon so-called "catalyst" figures, who lack formal authority, and who are prepared to move into the background without clinging to power. There's a big difference between catalysts and CEOs. Think "Mary Poppins" rather than "Maria from Sound of Music". That gave me a handy new way of thinking about my own role in organisations. (I'm like Mary Poppins, rather than Maria!)