en.david.grajal

Before Rollback, I had only read one book of Sawyer before, titled ‘The terminal experiment’. I remember that read it was a wonderful experience, although I don’t remember what the book is about!

When I saw this title in the bookstore, I instantly recognize the guy. That’s surprising, remember something, for my short term, selfish memory, homer like, fish-memory it’s a lot! I bought the book right away (plus it was cheap)

I must admit that I had never heard about this book before and I was surprised when I read the back page and I saw that this book was nominated for the Hugo 2008. I remember saying to myself “Waw! I had been too much time disconnected from sci-fi”

Let’s start speaking about the book, reading it couldn’t be on better time, because I just returned from Canada and this book is set in Toronto with lots of references to places I visited a few days before. Furthermore this is one of the the geekest book I have ever read, in the sense that the main characters do the same things we geeks do.

They explore the web opening tabs with firefox, they use google to look for information, they check slashdot, and one of them devote her life to the SETI project. And they are constantly making references to interesting Internet culture.

And what is the book about? It’s a interesting reflexion about two main topics. On one hand it show the importance it will have for humanity to stablish a first contact with alien lifeforms and the difficulty we will have to communicate over vast distances. Generally speaking the author mentions that something like that will suppose a huge impact in the world the first year but the lack of the news (space communication can take generations) will make the people to forget as time goes on.

On the other hand the author foreseen a future in which biotechnology has progressed a lot and people will have the opportunity to ‘reboot’ their body to the same state they had in their 20′ by reengineering their DNA and implanting new organs.

The most interesting thing is that the author don’t explore the topic in the tipical technological centered way, instead he describe his vision of what will happen in a marriage when one of them return to a younger state while the other stay old.

Mixing technology, aliens, cyphers, love and geek culture is a good combo. It’s a pretty easy to read book that I recommend strongly

Randy is a computer science teacher who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He prepare a last lecture for his students. His history is really passional and was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment. It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

Randy transmits in only 10 minutes a lot of energy. He want the people to improve their mindset, refocus their priorities looking at the bottom of their hearths to find what is really important in life. He also mention perseverence is the key to sucess and how you should live your life: Always having fun everyday in every single action. Which has been also my mantra in the last times.

I really have enjojed this lecture and I’ve seen that although Randy has so time left, he has written a book (The Last Lecture) that seems also very interesting and motivational. The following video is the lecture he prepared for their sons. “I think it’s great that so many people have benefited from this lecture, but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t really even give it to the 400 people at Carnegie Mellon who came. I only wrote this lecture for three people, and when they’re older, they’ll watch it,”

Watch it with a clear mind.

Thanks Jaimi for let me know this stuff.