Cada fin de año tenemos infinitos listados de libros que resumen el impacto o la supuesta potencia esclarecedora de la literatura en sus múltiples manifestaciones. En los últimos días hemos leído algunos como….
Babelia Los 50 mejores libros de 2021;
Matias Bauso Los 40 mejores libros de no ficción de 2021;
Elisavetta Brandon 12 design and architecture books to get excited about in 2022;
The AtlanticThe 20 Best Books of 2021 The novels, nonfiction, and memoirs that stood out most ;
The Times Book Review The 10 Best Books of 2021;
Time The 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 The fiction, nonfiction and poetry that shifted our perspectives, uncovered essential truths and encouraged us forward;
NPR Books We Love Great reads, every year, thoughtfully curated;
La Nación Revista 40 libros para disfrutar el verano
The Best Science Books Of 2021
La pandemia ha llevado a que muchos autores a concentrarse y producir exquisitos títulos o propuestas. Si bien nuestro listado original era mucho mas largo, lo cortamos en 10, porque seguimos las tradiciones de las fantasías decimales o vigesimales como hacen los franceses).
Aquí enviamos el nuestro que si bien no representa todo ni lo mejor que leímos (faltan maravillas como El Di Tella. Historia íntima de un fenómeno cultural de Fernando Garcia o los dos tomos Design Unbound. Design for emergence in a White water world de Ann M Pendleton-Jullian & John Seely Brown. . MIT Press o Walter Isaacson El código de la vida: Jennifer Doudna, la edición genética y el futuro de la especie humana y el imprescindible Santiago Beruete Aprendívoros. El cultivo de la curiosidad, Turner), si al menos nos indica por donde deberíamos centrar nuestros intereses en los próximos meses (y también que debemos dedicarle otro post a esos 10 que ya si nos cambiaron el marote en el 2020, y que saldrá esta semana si o si).
Encima cada día que pasa del 2022 (y recién van 4) nos regala novedades sin fin. Con los que esta lista se convirtió rápidamente en depassé e interminable. Pero cerremos la cuestión de una buena vez y dediquémonos a otros onomásticos y propuestas que el 2022 se lo merece, mientras Omicron hace de las suyas.
1 Parag Khanna Move: The Forces Uprooting Scribner 2021
Hashtags: Long now; Migraciones masivas; geografía humana del futuro; 4.000 votantes jóvenes
In the 60,000 years since people began colonizing the continents, a recurring feature of human civilization has been mobility—the ever-constant search for resources and stability. Seismic global events—wars and genocides, revolutions and pandemics—have only accelerated the process. The map of humanity isn’t settled—not now, not ever. As climate change tips toward full-blown crisis, economies collapse, governments destabilize, and technology disrupts, we’re entering a new age of mass migrations—one that will scatter both the dispossessed and the well-off. Which areas will people abandon and where will they resettle? Which countries will accept or reject them? As today’s world population, which includes four billion restless youth, votes with their feet, what map of human geography will emerge?
2 Frank Rose The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World. Scribner, 2021.
Hashtags: Power of narrative; persuasion keys; storytelling (character, world, detail, voice); world a story to be told.
For decades, experts from many fields—psychologists, economists, advertising and marketing executives—failed to register the power of narrative. Scientists thought stories were frivolous. Economists were knee-deep in theory. Marketers just wanted to cut to the sales pitch. Yet stories, not reasoning, are the key to persuasion. Whether we’re aware of it or not, stories determine how we view the world and our place in it. That means the tools of professional storytellers—character, world, detail, voice—can unlock a way of thinking that’s ideal for an age in which we don’t passively consume media but actively participate in it. Building on insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, Rose shows us how to see the world in narrative terms, not as a thesis to be argued or a pitch to be made but as a story to be told.
3 Benjamin Bratton. La Terraformación. Programa para el diseño de una planetariedad viable. La Caja Negra, 2021.
Hashtags: Terraformación terrestre; vs ecologismo decrecionista; imaginación utópica soviética + praxis californiana; diseño geotécnico, geopolítico y geofilosófico; anticolapso
La noción de “terraformación”, que en la ciencia ficción del siglo XX invocaba la transformación de los ecosistemas de otros planetas para que sean capaces de soportar vida similar a la de la Tierra, sugiere que en el actual contexto del Antropoceno es la propia Tierra lo que debemos terraformar si queremos que siga siendo una anfitriona posible para sus formas de vida. La propuesta de Benjamin Bratton está muy lejos del ecologismo decrecionista y del mero retorno a una naturaleza idílica y no perturbada. Crítico del legado tecnófobo de la generación del 68 y de los relativismos culturales de la izquierda folk, la terraformación de Bratton conjuga la imaginación utópica soviética con la teoría y la praxis californiana en un proyecto de diseño geotécnico, geopolítico y geofilosófico que apunta a reordenar los flujos de la bioquímica planetaria en un sentido anticolapso.
4 Jorge Carrión. Membrana. Galaxia Gutenberg, 2021.
Hashtags: Año 2100; Museo del Siglo XXI. Catálogo de la exposición permanente, escrito por una inteligencia artificial. híbridos y conciencias algorítmicas; cómo cobró forma un nuevo imperio.
Año 2100. Se inaugura el Museo del Siglo XXI. El texto que leemos es el del catálogo de la exposición permanente, escrito con fuerza poética y ensayística por una inteligencia artificial. En él se cuenta la relación ancestral de la humanidad con la tecnología; cómo nacieron los híbridos y las conciencias algorítmicas; cómo cobró forma un nuevo imperio. Una novela que se interroga sobre lo que significa hoy ser humano y se inscribe en los grandes debates contemporáneos. Inesperada, brillante, muy original.
5 Kenneth Cukier; Viktor Mayer-Schönberger; Francis de Véricourt Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil. Penguin, 2021.
Hashtags: make a mental model that enables us to make sense of new situations; beyond memory and reasoning; framing as a critical function only humans can do it.
To frame is to make a mental model that enables us to make sense of new situations. Frames guide the decisions we make and the results we attain. People have long focused on traits like memory and reasoning, leaving framing all but ignored. But with computers becoming better at some of those cognitive tasks, framing stands out as a critical function – and only humans can do it. This book is the first guide to mastering this human ability.
6 Carl Zimmer Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive. Penguin 2021.
Hashtags: Alien life on other worlds; Lists of what living things have in common; Coronaviruses are alive? Have we made life in the lab?
Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts – whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It’s never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab?
7 Marta Garcia Aller Lo Imprevisible. Todo lo que la tecnología quiere pero no puede controlar. Planeta, 2020.
Hashtags: Cediendo poder a las máquinas; ¿Qué aspectos de nuestra vida llegará a calcular la inteligencia artificial? ¿Cuánto de lo que nos rodea seguirá siendo imprevisible?
Nos gusta tenerlo todo bajo control, pero a la vez queremos que la vida nos sorprenda. Hay algoritmos para predecir el tiempo, los atascos y hasta el amor. Los hay que componen música y pintan cuadros como los de Rembrandt. Algunos crean noticias falsas y otros predicen a quién vamos a votar. También hay robots que conducen coches y otros que cuidan ancianos; los hay que anticipan la película que vamos a ver y hasta qué va a ser nuestro hijo de mayor. A medida que les vamos cediendo poder a las máquinas, más nos preocupa todo aquello que escapa de su control. ¿Qué aspectos de nuestra vida llegará a calcular la inteligencia artificial? ¿Cuánto de lo que nos rodea seguirá siendo imprevisible?
8 Iain McGilchrist. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press, 2010.
Hashtags: Divided brain; two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world; LH is detail oriented; prefers mechanisms to living things, and is inclined to self-interest; RH has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity; the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, with potentially disastrous consequences
Why is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In a book of unprecedented scope, Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to reveal that the difference is profound—not just this or that function, but two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere is detail oriented, prefers mechanisms to living things, and is inclined to self-interest, where the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. This division helps explain the origins of music and language, and casts new light on the history of philosophy, as well as on some mental illnesses.In the second part of the book, McGilchrist takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists, from Aeschylus to Magritte. He argues that, despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, with potentially disastrous consequences. This is truly a tour de force that should excite interest in a wide readership.
9 Justin Reich. Failure to disrupt: why technology alone can’t transform education. Harvard University Press, 2020.
Hashtags: LT offer greatest benefit to affluent students and do little to combat growing inequality in education; institutions and investors favor programs that scale up quickly, but at the expense of true innovation; successful reform efforts will focus on incremental improvements, not the next killer app.
In Failure to Disrupt, Justin Reich delivers a sobering report card on the latest supposedly transformative educational technologies. Reich takes listeners on a tour of MOOCs, autograders, computerized «intelligent tutors», and other educational technologies whose problems and paradoxes have bedeviled educators. Learning technologies often provide the greatest benefit to affluent students and do little to combat growing inequality in education. And institutions and investors often favor programs that scale up quickly, but at the expense of true innovation. Technology does have a crucial role to play in the future of education, Reich concludes. We still need new teaching tools, and classroom experimentation should be encouraged. But successful reform efforts will focus on incremental improvements, not the next killer app.
10 Peter Burke The Polymath: A Cultural History From Leonardo Da Vinci to Susan Sontag. Yale University Press, 2020.
Hashtags: unkind history to scholars with encyclopaedic interests; 500 Polymaths and the invention of the western word; rapid growth of knowledge
From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopaedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. Identifying 500 western polymaths, Burke explores their wide-ranging successes and shows how their rise matched a rapid growth of knowledge in the age of the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World, and the Scientific Revolution.
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