A worthy successor to the popular physics texts of George Gamow, as thought-provoking as Stephen Hawking.
Kaku (Physics/CCNY) is the author (with Jennifer Trainer) of Beyond Einstein (1987) and of several popular volumes on advanced physics. He is also the host of a weekly radio program on modern science. Here, he offers a popular explanation of how the mathematics of higher dimensions underlies modern physical theories, notably the superstring hypothesis of how the universe is put together.
The great problem confronting physics has been the building of a bridge between relativity and quantum theory: a single theory reconciling the two extremes of the very large and the very small. Relativity is proven beyond doubt on the scale of planets and galaxies; quantum theory applies to the microcosmic world of subatomic particles. Ever since Einstein, physicists have been trying, and failing, to combine the two into a GUT (Grand Unified Theory). Although it remains controversial among physicists and cosmologists, Kaku proffers superstring theory as the best approximation yet—but it requires acceptance of a counter-intuitive system in which our sensory world, hosting three dimensions of space and one of time, is only a small part of a universe containing ten dimensions (six of them undetectable by our limited senses). Higher dimensions, aka hyperspace, seem to some physicists the most consistent description of the universe we actually inhabit, and to others just one more futile attempt to unify relativity and quantum theory. Kaku admits the futility of visualizing a ten-dimensional universe with our three-dimensional mindset; in fact, he admits that the mathematics of superstring theory are so difficult that many of the key equations remain unsolved. But he effectively marshals examples from everyday experience and the labors of working scientists to illuminate current theories of how the universe really works (to the extent that anyone can understand it without working the equations), offering intelligent speculations on how time travel and faster-than-light travel might be possible. Kaku's explanations of the principles of superstring theory are lucid, lively, and full of entertaining glimpses of the researchers involved.
A worthy successor to the popular physics texts of George Gamow, as thought-provoking as Stephen Hawking.Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-508514-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
The former president (Jankowski) and senior vice president (Fuchs) of CBS consider television's future and find the corporate networks in great shape despite cable TV's rise. The authors argue that the networks possess inherent strengths that will keep them powerful for many years to come. These include: tremendous concentrations of money, talent, and experience with long-established methods of creating popular entertainment; alliances with affiliates that pool news and other resources; and enormous audiences that will continue to lure advertisers. The virtues of the network concept explain Rupert Murdoch's recent success in building Fox and Ted Turner's attempted takeover of CBS, which occurred even as the media was sounding the networks' death knell. Meanwhile, a growing number of cable channels and emerging alternatives, though hobbled by a scarcity of money and talent, must fight for ever tinier slices of the viewer pie. This argument may be seen as self-serving, given the authors' backgrounds, and much of the rest of the book is little more than an apologia for TV. Sections on violence fail to consider important evidence of links between television and real-world violence. Other arguments- -that Americans want lowest common denominator entertainment, and that TV can't provide more balanced electoral coverage—also fail to persuade. But there's a strong dose of common sense in the authors' skepticism about the threat posed by cable and by developments like high-definition television, pay-per-view, and home shopping. The book also offers a solid overview of how networks function, of government regulation of TV, and of public television. Anyone betting heavily on the ``information superhighway'' should consider this bottom-line view. Take the rest with a grain of salt.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-507487-4
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Markoff, Levy, Lanier et al. will want to have a look at this intriguing portrait of coding and coders.
Of computer technology and its discontents.
Computers can do all kinds of cool things. The reason they can, writes tech journalist Thompson (Smarter than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, 2013), is that a coder has gotten to the problem. “Programmers spend their days trying to get computers to do new things,” he writes, “so they’re often very good at understanding the crazy what-ifs that computers make possible.” Some of those things, of course, have proven noxious: Facebook allows you to keep in touch with high school friends but at the expense of spying on your every online movement. Yet they’re kind of comprehensible, since they’re based on language: Coding problems are problems of words and thoughts and not numbers alone. Thompson looks at some of the stalwarts and heroes of the coding world, many of them not well-known—Ruchi Sanghvi, for example, who worked at Facebook and Dropbox before starting a sort of think tank “aimed at convincing members to pick a truly new, weird area to examine.” If you want weird these days, you get into artificial intelligence, of which the author has a qualified view. Humans may be displaced by machines, but the vaunted singularity probably won’t happen anytime soon. Probably. Thompson is an enthusiast and a learned scholar alike: He reckons that BASIC is one of the great inventions of history, being one of the ways “for teenagers to grasp, in such visceral and palpable ways, the fabric of infinity.” Though big tech is in the ascendant, he writes, there’s a growing number of young programmers who are attuned to the ethical issues surrounding what they do, demanding, for instance, that Microsoft not provide software to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Those coders, writes Thompson, are “the one group of people VCs and CEOs cannot afford to entirely ignore,” making them the heroes of the piece in more ways than one.
Fans of Markoff, Levy, Lanier et al. will want to have a look at this intriguing portrait of coding and coders.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2056-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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