Will computers take over?

Computer geeks are known to talk about 'Singularity,'  the moment when computers become so advanced that they “escape the limitations of the human brain”, booting themselves into ever-higher levels of intelligence. They believe the moment will occur sometime in 2045.

From the blurbs

THE CARBON CRUNCH: HOW WE’RE GETTING CLIMATE CHANGE WRONG—AND HOW TO FIX IT. By Dieter Helm. Yale University Press; £20 In this book Oxford University economist Dieter Helm questions the accepted wisdom on climate change regulation. Regulations, he says, have caused people to focus on the most expensive ways of mitigating climate change, rather than the cheapest. He argues for a new, pragmatic rethinking of energy policy, from transitioning from coal to gas to carbon pricing.

The physical Net

In the concluding chapter of the book under review author Andrew Blum visits Google’s data centre in Oregon in the US, where he gets a cold reception. Google employees refuse to show him around little more than the lunchroom. “The company’s primary colors and childlike playfulness no longer seemed friendly... They made me feel like a schoolkid.

Why we are bugged

I am sure most of us have not come across the word “zoonosis”. Speak about AIDS, SARS, bubonic plague and swine flu, the word acquires affinity. And then talk of dengue and malaria, it acquires an ominous urgency. Zoonosis is a collective noun for such—and some lesser known—infections that have jumped over from animals to humans. These infections are the subject of David Quammen’s book Spillover.

Chronicle of a transition

D K Rangnekar was a leading public intellectual who also made his mark as the editor of the Economic Times and later the Business Standard. This collection brings together his writings that begin in the early 1960s and end in 1984—at the cusp of transformation of India’s economic policies and political fabric.

Princes' game diaries

Animal Kingdoms reaches new understandings of Indian princes through their engagements with animals and environments in their states. During the British Raj, princes believed that people and animals developed similar characteristics by inhabiting shared local environments.

Tesla's world

At the beginning of the 20th century, Nikola Tesla was for most Americans the embodiment of the inventor as genius. It was Tesla not Marconi who invented radio.

High costs, little gain

For many people, the great problem of climate change has been a failure of regulation and political will. Not so, says Oxford University economist Dieter Helm. It’s not the failure of regulation but their basic design: they have caused people to focus on the most expensive ways of mitigating climate change, rather than the cheapest, imposing high costs for little gain.

Baromas

From the blurbs

WILDLIFE OF THE HIMALAYAS AND THE TERAI REGION edited by Ashok S Kothari and Boman F Chhapgar, OUP, Rs 120 This is the fourth in the Bombay Natural History Society’s series that aims to make accessible old writings, drawings and paintings of India's flora and fauna. The text draws from the works of Stanley Henry Prater, known for his classic The Book of Indian Animals, and naturalist R A Sterndale whose work is said to be the source of inspiration for many scenes in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book.