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The CD-ROM was extremely helpful with studying for tests or clarifying a chapter that was a bit confusing. For each concept there is a PDF worksheet, a pre-quiz, an animation with video and audio and text, and a post quiz. The CD-Rom was the biggest help in studying for my final, I’m more confident that I will pass because of this CD-ROM.

And on the web tutorial browser used, I had ZERO problems with the program working within my Mozilla Firefox browser. No Netscape needed.

The book isn’t perfect for everyone. If your teacher strays from the book in lectures, you may need other sources to help clarify some concepts. My teachers never strayed farther than their own experiences in the field that were very closely related to the topics we were studying at the time. Most cases, the book will be all you need for raw information and the CD-ROM can help clarify a topic even more and help you study for your tests. Don’t be afraid of the book, it’s large but very much worth the money.

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This textbook seems to put too much emphasis on experiments done in the past that all the material is lost beneath piles and piles of experimental ‘abstracts’. I once misunderstood the textbook, specifically on the differences between genes important in developmental biology, and ended up giving wrong information on a Q&A session. I ended up having to spend a lot of time tracking down every single person who had come to the session in order to let them know about the error.

Now I say Campbell & Reece is better because it makes better use of its diagrams and figures in order to clarify points made in the text itself. Freeman does not do as good of a job in this way. I guess it does a mediocre job of enabling you to delve out relationships between experimental results and conclusions that have been deduced from those experiments. But for one who is studying introductory biology I, I do not personally see the purpose of looking at experimental data just yet. With all the definitions and concepts that need to be understood first, the emphasis should not be as much on experiments than on developing concepts and throwing in experiments every once in a while.

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The pros: I am at length impressed at Freeman’s attempt to draw an inquisitive experimental nature into a bio book. He talks about many interesting scientific experiments and really introduces you to the scientific method. His diagrams while usually not as detailed as other biology books are sufficient.

The cons: What Dr. Freeman attempts in his book forces him to leave out a lot of basic bio. A multitude of biology terms are just missing, as if they never existed. What’s worse is that this terminology is actually required on bio tests. I had to refer extensively to my professor’s notes and look up the missing terms through the web to make the grade.

Unfortunately Dr. Freeman is not a very clear writer either, at least in this volume. He talks about many important topics but with his writing style, I have actually mentally missed many important points. He just doesn’t emphasize what you need to know in basic biology. There are many decent biology books that have the organization you need to sort through the unimportant and the important material but Freeman’s somewhat conversational style muddles his book.

Furthermore, many of his multiple choice practice problems in the text have incorrect solutions in the back of the book. In fact for some odd reason the solutions in the back of the book cover all the volumes. I felt he should have instead devoted the answers to the correct solution and the reasoning behind the solution instead of putting up these additional answers to volumes I don’t have and don’t intend to purchase. The index and the glossary do the same thing; they pull material from all volumes. It would have benefitted his book if he used that extra space to put in more indexed topics that actually appear in this volume. The result was that the usage of these back pages was disgracefully subpar and inefficient. In addition, the included CD is outdated for macs with OS X. To be fair, I don’t know about its functionability on the PC, since I predominately use OS X. From what I’ve heard the CD is actually one of the most useful parts of the book, so keep this in mind.

In summary if you are a student who is well versed in biology, this book will frustrate you to no end. I acquired the paperback version for $25 from another student of which I felt was not worth that price. The book only functions well as a supplement when you want to read more about the experiments done in biology. It should not be used as the main reading material. In this regard I have to be brutally honest. The book fails miserably. There are many other better bio books to invest your money in and you will know the difference if you’ve read a few of them.

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If you’re reading this you know the premise of the book. Mr. K maintains that the pace of technological change (and by technology he means the really cool technologies, like infotech, biotech, and nanotech) is not simply increasing, but increasing exponentially, so fast that we will soon reach a point where man and machine have become one, and are brains are a million (or maybe a billion) times more powerful. When this happens everything we know will have changed forever.

Moreover, this is not someting that will happen at some vague time in the far future. It’s just around the corner. Mr. K even gives us a date: 2045.

While reading the book I kept thinking, What if Mr. K had written this in the mid 1950’s? Certainly he’d have backup for his basic premise–the changes that occured in the first half of the 20th century were indeed tremendous. Take aviation, a hot technology in those days. Mr. K would no doubt have observed that we went from Kitty Hawk to the Boeing 707 in just 50 years. Projecting ahead, Mr. K would have concluded that the second half of the century would see an even greater rate of advancement, so that by now we’d all have our own personal flying devices, zipping off to Europe in just minutes.

But that hasn’t happened. Certainly there has been signigicant progress in aviation in the last 50 years, but not like the 50 years before that. In some says it’s worse. I suspect that since 9/11 the time it takes to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco (from the time you get to one airport to the time you leave the other) may be longer now than it was in the 1950’s.

Why has this happened? A lot of this has to do with social conditions, not technological ones. Supersonic trasport never got off the ground (so to speak) in part because people didn’t want the sonic booms near populated areas. These same social factors may well put the brakes on a lot of what Mr. K predicts.

It’s not that Mr. K’s book isn’t based on hard science. It’s positively larded with science, so much so that my eyes tended to glaze over many times. It’s just that he doesn’t seem very critical. While he does acknowledge the existence of contrary opinion, he quickly (albeit politely) dismisses any cautionary thoughts. Those who disagree with his beliefs are clearly stuck-in-the-mud, nay-saying Luddites.

Mr K is obviously a brilliant, well-informed scientist. I don’t have enough knowledge to judge the accuracy of his facts, except in a few situations. When that does occur, though, I become unimpressed. For example, he spends a few pages talking about the increases that have occured in life expectancy, and uses this to project further increases to 150 years and then to 500 years. But he fails to distinguish between life exoectancy and life span. The former has indeed increased, but the latter has not. I am certain Mr. K knows the difference. His failure to make the distinction is misleading and disingenuous. It makes me wonder about the veracity of the rest of the book.

As to the book itself, it’s far too long. He repeats his points so much it seems as though he thinks that by mere repetition the reader will become more convinced that he’s right. And some parts of the book are simply annoying, like the smug pseudo-conversations among past, present, and future personages that appear throughout the work.

To his credit, though, his optimisim about the future is refreshing, and certainly an antidote to the dystopian views typical in literature and Hollywood (Brave New World, 1984, Blade Runner, Mad Max, The Terminator, Waterworld, etc.).

The bottom line here is that Mr. K. doesn’t seem to remember that virtually all predictions about the future are wrong, since the predictions are simply extrapolations of current trends. The future is never what we think it will be, and Mr. K is no exception.

Then again, he could be right. If so, I just hope I can live long enough to enjoy the sigularity, so I can have my body filled with nanobots and my brain uploaded to (as he would say) a suitable substrate. Maybe being a cyborg won’t be so bad.

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As you might expect, Ray is at the top of his game when examining trends in computer science. He has many examples of “narrow” A.I. to share. More importantly, he believes that computer modeling of brain functioning will yield the algorithms we need in order to eventually achieve an artificial general intelligence. Indeed, cognitive science is exploding thanks to increases in computing and scanning power, and the brain will likely yield up many of its secrets in coming years. I find his predictions in this area quite believable.

I found some of his arguments regarding nanotechnology to be less convincing. In particular, his predictions for nanorobotics seem optimistic beyond all reason given the currently nascent state of this technology. Examples drawn from the current state of the art seem almost hopelessly far removed from the robust and exceedingly powerful technology he imagines within 25 years. On the other hand, if these surprising predictions are borne out it will be a powerful confirmation of his “law of accelerating returns”. I guess I’ll be reserving judgement until then.

There’s alot more I could say (good and bad) about this important book, but the bottom line is that if you frequently find yourself wondering about the role of technology in the future of our species, “The Singularity is Near” will give you far more than your money’s worth in food for thought.

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It should be especially useful for convincing people who are skeptical about the dangers of GMOs. I speak from experience: I used to be a skeptic, and this book makes the sort of case that woke me up. Especially convincing was the extensive, painstaking documentation of how Monsanto has corrupted the scientific peer-review process, as well as government agencies responsible for assessing the safety of Monsanto’s products. I can vouch for the author’s accuracy in describing the mechanisms used to retaliate against scientists who won’t play ball with Monsanto, because I used to collaborate with the Government Accountability Project. The author is also on-target in identifying the scientific organizations that help destroy the careers of honest scientists.

One of the most important questions this book answered for me was, “No matter how evil Monsanto is, how can it possibly collect royalties from farmers all around the world who might plant its GMO soybeans on the sly?” Page 272 gives a convincing answer.

So, I strongly recommend this book. However, I do have a few suggestions for improving it.

Suggestion #1:

Given the sheer number of cases the author covers, and the consistent, calculatedly evil behavior Monsanto showed in every one of them, the author is to be commended for how little emotionalism and editorializing crept into her book. Honestly, I don’t know how she managed to restrain herself. But that having been said, the odd bits of emotionalism are indeed there, and the book would be better without them. I hope the author will re-issue it after submitting it to some “friendly enemies” or “argumentative friends” who will point out the offending passages. (I’ve done this in my own copy, and would be happy to make my notes available to the author free of charge.)

Suggestion #2:

An unnecessary weak point in the case against Monsanto is the farmers who complain about Monsanto enforcing the contracts they signed. Similarly, the author weakened her book by allowing those farmers to tap-dance around the question that an investigative reporter of her caliber should have asked: “Did you, or did you not, violate the contract by using some of your crop as seed for the next year?”

This weak point is more serious than most activists like to think, but there are good ways to address it. One would be to interview someone not directly involved in the lawsuits, and ask that person, “Why do I get the feeling that it might have been awkward, had I asked the farmers if they’d used their crop as seed the next year?”

That person could answer by describing Monsanto’s long history of criminality, etc., and the possible implications of the Kelo vs. City of London case for farmers who might use a variety of corn or soybeans that’s less productive than Monsanto’s. He could conclude by saying, “Monsanto has successfully created a rigged game where it can break the law with impunity, while siccing the government on the little guy. It’s unrealistic to expect the common citizen to respect laws made by people who act lawlessly.”

That message would have resonated with me.

SUMMARY

This is an excellent book that deserves to be made even better. Highly recommended.