Hannah Fry manages to offer up a book that explores algorithms and their place in various areas of society and she manages to do so in an engaging and fascinating way. Let me start off by saying I enjoyed this book immensely. After finishing the book we feel we've completed a superficial comment on things we already knew. It doesn't supply the answers for the many questions out there on the power and potential of the machines, often not even succeeding at making the proper questions. But she falls short and never grasps fully the reader's attention and, more importantly, never seems to lead to any worthy or new conclusion or to provide the reader with an insightful (let alone adventurous) analysis. It is a book well written, the author knows her trade and she's a passionate writer - she has the authority and the knowledge, without a question. For instance, when the author quotes some car makers promising to deliver driverless cars for 2020 - then the future, now already past - with that promise not fulfilled. But then the case is dealt with in a mere page and a half, it is almost a headline elongated into some paragraphs which (to repeat) we have read a few times before and nothing else.Īnother flaw, unfortunately and tediously common in technology, is that the book was written in 2018, yet it looks already dated, quite so. Great, it is a shady case in which IT & science are used to spurious aims - influencing an election. In several reviews of the book we can read that "it deals with the Cambridge Analytica case". In this line, when we get to the end (without getting to any worthy conclusion) we are left wondering: is that all? So much, that it looks more like a long introduction for the real thing. And after the reader goes through a panoply of already known examples, and some obvious platitudes, sadly the book gets nowhere. Some examples we have read a few times elsewhere. And then, however, and in spite of all the previous, I do fail to see any greatness in "Hello World.".įirst, the book reads as a long list of examples on the current uses of the algorithm - the usual: driverless cars, computers playing chess, medical predictions, dangerous legal applications, etc. The same website ranks the autobiography of Julie Andrews, as the best book on cinema ever written - this should have warned the reader, as said autobiography (both volumes of it) is, at most, a fair recollection of reminiscences written without much passion of personality. Surprisingly, it appears as "the best book on algorithms" in a references blog. This book is publicized with an accolade of prizes, "best of" lists inclusions and the usual. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Continue without accepting’ or ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices or learn more. Third parties use cookies for the purposes of displaying and measuring personalised advertisements, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier.
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