Scan barcode
A review by ury949
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku
3.0
This in all honesty probably deserves four stars, but for me personally, it was a three star. I'm not too sure what to say about this. It's interesting. And there's lots and lots of interesting ideas and predictions about future technologies. He starts with a current revelation about what we have discovered or been able to do with the human brain. For example, being able to create a rough visual picture of someone's dream. That's pretty incredible so it was neat to learn about these things. Then he takes these new discoveries and makes predictions about what we could do with them, how they may be useful to humans, how they could be misused, the ethics of it all, pros and cons, etc. This starts to get science fiction-y fast, which he freely admits. For example, robots of today and of the future; the discussion includes whether or not robots should have a consciousness, or feelings, or rights. He takes his ideas all the way and beyond - it got me rolling my eyes many times.
I suppose I thought there would be more discussion about human consciousness - although there was, it just was more of every possible theory about what it is, where it comes from - lots of maybe this, maybe that, maybe we could remove it from our bodies and be immortal. I'm not totally sure why I didn't think this was the best thing ever - maybe because it was all just speculation (albeit speculation by a brilliant physicist founded in science). I really hope it wasn't because I listened to the audio and the reader pretty much read as if he were a robot (ie. it was poorly read). Another thing that turned me off it how often he refers to sci-fi movies and books and whenever he does, he summarizes the entire story - including the spoilers at the end. Another thing he spends a lot of time talking about is aliens and other-worldly civilizations, which I think, for many reasons, isn't really a possibility. In short, this was less about what we currently know about the brain and consciousness and more about our current advancements in technology and predictions of what it could mean for humans of the future.
I suppose I thought there would be more discussion about human consciousness - although there was, it just was more of every possible theory about what it is, where it comes from - lots of maybe this, maybe that, maybe we could remove it from our bodies and be immortal. I'm not totally sure why I didn't think this was the best thing ever - maybe because it was all just speculation (albeit speculation by a brilliant physicist founded in science). I really hope it wasn't because I listened to the audio and the reader pretty much read as if he were a robot (ie. it was poorly read). Another thing that turned me off it how often he refers to sci-fi movies and books and whenever he does, he summarizes the entire story - including the spoilers at the end. Another thing he spends a lot of time talking about is aliens and other-worldly civilizations, which I think, for many reasons, isn't really a possibility. In short, this was less about what we currently know about the brain and consciousness and more about our current advancements in technology and predictions of what it could mean for humans of the future.