What to read this weekend: The history of overhyped tech, and a new graphic novel from Charles Burns

Richard Powers’ Playground is a novel of contrasts: the huge unknown of Earth’s oceans, a place of fixed discovery and marvelous creatures that appear all the time to be at play, versus technological development and the rise of AI; the unlikely friendship between a younger poet and a boy whose life revolves round coding; a distant island with a tiny inhabitants nonetheless feeling the results of a history of exploitation, and the tech elites who envision it because the stepping stone to their very own utopia.

Through the views of 4 characters who’ve been introduced collectively on Makatea, an atoll within the South Pacific, Playground explores friendship, play, the wonders of the pure world and humanity within the age of synthetic intelligence. Powers’ writing is gorgeous, and Playground guarantees to go away you with a lot to take into consideration.

The Long History of the Future: Why Tomorrow’s Technology Still Isn’t Here is a surprisingly entertaining have a look at the failed guarantees of applied sciences lengthy touted to be on the horizon, and the grand ambitions of the innovators behind them. Tech and science journalist Nicole Kobie takes us on a journey by the many years to hint the roots of some of the most important concepts that by no means fairly got here to fruition in the best way it was as soon as projected they might — flying vehicles, the hyperloop, robots that may truly do all of our chores for us, and many others. Kobie provides a witty evaluation and a lot of wealthy anecdotes, making for a actually informative deep dive that’s additionally fairly enjoyable to read.

It’s a massive week for anybody who’s been ready years for an English-language launch of Charles Burns’ Dédales — Final Cut, because the English model is known as, is right here. Final Cut follows a group of buddies who, led by aspiring filmmaker Brian, set out to make a sci-fi horror film within the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Brian’s favourite film. But obsession takes maintain of Brian in a nightmare mix of romantic longing (for the movie’s star, Laurie) and creative creativity that has gone too far, and issues take a flip for the darkish and disturbing. As is attribute for Burns, Final Cut is surreal and unsettling, made all of the extra impactful by his crisp illustrations. In some methods it looks like a non secular successor to Black Hole, and I count on this to be one of these works I hold coming again to.