Noteworthy Books

Noteworthy Books [Insights for Leaders: 2 min read] I love tech and find our industry endlessly fascinating. As an IT writer of 30+ years I enjoy eating books to fuel my knowledge. ⛽ You too?

Notable early reads of my career are: Being Digital (Nicholas Negroponte, 1995) - prescient. Accidental Empires 📈 (Robert X. Cringely, 1996) - hilarious. Inside Intel (Tim Jackson, 1998) - concerning. 💻

Here are three books I recently ate and enjoyed. 😋

📘 2084 and the AI Revolution, John Lennox (2025 edition)
Lennox is an eminent Oxford Uni Maths Professor, philosopher and Christian thinker 🧠. He conscientiously covers AI and related issues such as ethics, transhumanism, autonomous weapons 🔫 and the AI-human relationship. His approach is balanced, considered and academic, whilst being highly readable. A fascinating study. 🍀

📕 The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future, Mustafa Suleiman (2020)
Legislate, mitigate and proceed with caution ⚡. That’s the message of Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman. Like Lennox, Suleiman envisages a future where AI and synthetic biology proliferate. As co-founder of DeepMind he knows his stuff. He expertly covers security, politics, work & prosperity, global risk and other weighty subjects. Powerful. 💣

📗 Genesis: Artificial intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit, Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie (2025)

Genesis takes a deep dive into the history of technology. 💡 It also makes some outlandish predictions about AI, with both hubris and panache. This detailed study argues that AI will help humans solve world problems and mysteries. 🌎 Meanwhile, it could challenge our relationship with the divine and spur a new phase in human evolution. 🤖 (In reality, Lennox is far more coherent and realistic on this.) A good read, nevertheless.

Takeaways for Tech Leaders

📘 2084 and the AI Revolution
A well-researched and provocative read.

📕   The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future
Repetitive in places, but insightful and thought provoking.

📗 Genesis: Artificial intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit
Ambitious and a tad overwritten, but with many enjoyable historical analogies.