More Everything Forever

MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, by Adam Becker Elon Musk predicts that a million Earthlings will be living on Mars in 20 years — not just for the exciting adventure but as a matter of survival: “We must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a space-faring civilization & extending life to other planets.” Not so fast, says the science journalist Adam Becker. As he puts it in his smart and wonderfully readable new book, “More Everything Forever,” life on Mars is bound to be worse than life on our own planet, however much ecological havoc we have wreaked. Becker, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics and is the author of a previous (equally readable) book about quantum theory, clearly lays out the many problems of getting to, and surviving on, the Red Planet. There is the not insignificant issue of enormous amounts of surface radiation. There is also the not insignificant issue of the toxic dust. Exp ... Read full article.