4 out of 4 stars
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Super You by Andy Walker and Kay Walker and Sean Carruthers is a non-fiction book about the future of technology. It is particularly aimed at technology in medicine and the ways in which technology will change the way we treat patients and cure diseases. It breaks down a lot of modern technologies, such as cosmetic surgery, 3-D printing, and cyborgs, to show how the world is constantly evolving.
In addition to the ‘what’ and ‘when’ of the technology, they also explain the ‘why’. It was interesting to learn how many of these technological advancements came into being and what social or political change led to their development. I learned something new in every section of the book, even when it was a technology I was familiar with prior to reading this book.
The book felt very clean and refined as I made my way through it. There were not a lot of extraneous details spread throughout to take up space. Even when they were throwing numbers at the reader, the authors did an amazing job of making the information easy to understand. I appreciated this because I feel that this topic is incredibly important to our future and more people need to engage with it. This book can serve as an excellent introduction for people who don’t really know much about modern technology but would like to learn.
The authors make a lot of interesting claims throughout this work: for example, during the chapter about human beauty they discuss the idea that women are less likely to be satisfied with their bodies than men, and they have the data to back it up. They are also able to show that attractive people are more likely to receive circumstantial benefits from society they might not even realize they are getting. All of it relates back to the overall topic of the chapter about how technology is making it possible for people change their bodies in radical ways that would not have been possible using with cosmetic surgery. People want to make changes, and now they can in new and exciting ways, but we also have to ask ourselves: how far will it go?
My favorite section of the book was about longevity and the idea that human beings might overcome death one day. They list out the ways in which people die and the idea of old-age and super-agers. The technology that might help us solve the problem of living longer is still incredibly young, but I think it is fascinating and the authors did an amazing job of explaining where the field is currently and what we can expect in the future.
This book stands out as one of the best non-fiction works I’ve read in a long time. Super You by Andy Walker and Kay Walker and Sean Carruthers earns an easy 4 out of 4 stars from me because it does such an amazing job of not only explaining what technologies are coming, but also how those technologies came to be. Anyone who is interested in non-fiction explanations of modern technological advancements will truly enjoy this book and everything it has to offer.
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Super You
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