Book Review: The Sensory Deception

The Sensory Deception is an amazing ride. Ransom Stephens takes you from the moneyed halls of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley to the dirt poor coast of Somalia's pirates and then onto the deep jungle of the Amazon Basin. The sense of wonder he conveys using the idealism and technical know-how of the entrepreneurial protagonists is matched by the thrilling settings and the situations in which they find themselves. I highly recommend you read this book, it's incredible.

Farley Rutherford and his team of technical wizards have invented a device that allows a person to totally experience the world from the viewpoint of another being---human or otherwise---seeing, hearing, smelling what they do. This book is about how they use this technology to try to change the world. Let's hope that this is a case where reality soon catches up to fiction because this is a device that can really change minds and souls. Imagine experiencing the loss of polar ice from the perspective of a polar bear: sensing in hours what the polar bear endures across weeks searching for a next meal---but also being immersed in the joy of swimming with those powerful limbs, stalking, killing and eating a seal from the bear's perspective, temporarily losing your human perspective. Stephens conveys this in a visceral way that is believable and convincing. This is one hell of a book!

Comments

kenju said…
I will try to remember to check it out. What a concept.
11:42 PM
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