When Things Start to Think

This book "When Things Start to Think" has been on my husband's bookshelf for years and I never thought about reading it. With recent discussions about AI, I decided to pull it off the shelf and start to read it. Reading this book, published in 1999 through the lens of 2023 eyes, I realized how prescient Dr. Neil Gershenfeld was. Through these pages, he talked about computerized fashion - such as smart watches, health/exercise meters, how the inanimate objects (computers) become animate through the information they glean and learn from us the end users.

As I read each page, my eyes appreciated more and more Dr. Gershenfeld's work, his mind, and kept wanting to read on. Now I want to read his other works.

I liked this book; although I read it about 4 or 5 yeats ago and I can't remember everything in this book. I find the prospect of the "internet of things" coming to pass to be a little bit of a 2 edged sword. The nefarious aspect of this is that he is essentially writing about RFID tags on everything. His newest book is a lot cooler. Read this book to find out about a possible Big Brother future where technology can be used against the people. Read his new book, "FAB", to read about a much brighter future where technology is used to empower people.

The title of this book as well as certain passages describing the 'Home of the Future was very enticing. There were too many digressions into only tangentially-related areas though.