Michael Belfiore

What an amazing topic and series of subjects this book discusses. The chapter on battlefield Trauma Pods blew my mind with the possibilities. Probem is, it's incredibly, depressingly dully narrated. The writer wrote a total of two sentences that could be considered jokes. Hey bud, loosen up a little! In more energetic hands, this could have been a masterpiece, instead it's only a quite good book.

As a fervent reader of Wired, I'm generally positively impressed by books written by its contributors and so was looking forward to this story of DARPA by Michael Belfiore. But it turned out to be disappointing: military-heavy and without any critical questioning of the technologies discussed or of their planned use: is the US army happily distilling its own jet fuel from vegetable oil in the middle of a battle zone really going to change the world in the way we want it?

This is a frustrating book.

On one hand, it talks about some of the coolest innovations coming down the pipe from an agency that's made its reputation on cool innovations, such as GPS and the internet. I found myself excited as hell as the author walked us through--at a very high, undetailed level--things like artificial limbs, on-site operating robots, self-driving cars, and fossil fuel replacements, to name a few. It's fascinating to find out someone is turning this science fiction stuff show more into reality...within our lifetime.

On the other hand, it's that high, undetailed level that kind of drove me bonkers. While I understand...this is DARPA, so you're not going to be long on specifics, give us something, even some peripheral research...something. Because, without it, even though there's examples of the tech in action in many of the passages--and, in my opinion, far too much of it in the self-driving car section...seriously, that bit went on and on--most of it is what an old friend of mine would refer to as "gosh" science. That is, science that makes you say, "gosh!"

Another good point is the high-level history of DARPA. Another low point is the unnecessarily extended passages about how tough it was to get past their PR person--to the point where, at times, it felt like padding to an already slim book.

In the end, I'm glad I read it, because there really is some seriously cool stuff in here, and the general idea of DARPA fires the imagination. I just there was a little more chicken and a lot less feathers. show less

A good read on the true history of DARPA and introduces some very interesting people and projects. It makes one appreciate just how unlikely it's establishment was, and therefore just how much of a fortunate 'accident' the world-changing results of its work have been.

However, I felt this could have been a much better book if it actually delved deeper into the science and technologies. Perhaps showing the authors bias (a journalist), every time the narrative came close to getting into show more fascinating detail, we are seemingly pulled back with a 'woah! this is getting too heavy for us to understand'. Frustrating, and a missed opportunity. I would have preferred the kind of treatment that Dava Sobel gave us with Longitude, or Lewis Wolpert with A Passion for Science. show less