Inspired by the Currivan clips @johnnydavis54 provided us, I ordered her The Cosmic Hologram. Thanks to Amazon prime (the warehouse is located 5 km from my house), it arrived this afternoon. I’m only half-way through chapter 2, and I have to say that my head hurts more now than it did after watching the clips.
What she is offering is, in a word, mind-bending, to say the least. The advantage of the book, as I’ve seen so far, is that she is actually writing for a lay audience. The biggest disadvantage of it is that she’s writing for a lay audience.
Part of my experience has to do with what I mentioned in our conversation last night: she’s “redefining” a commonly used term (at least here at the begining): infomation. I think I see what she’s trying to do, but with every sentence it becomes clearer to me how easily the informaniacs are going to pick up the half-knowledge of what (I think she’s) saying and run with it. Moreover, she’s pointing out as crucial “facts” (I’m guessing they’re true as she’s presenting them) that are nothing like the blind presuppositions that most of us operate on (e.g., the “flat” universe, the difference between universe and cosmos, and most importantly, I think, how little most of us understand of the language of mathematics, etc.). There have been few books I’ve read where I’ve had such an acute awareness of the brink (breakdown/breakthrough) we’re standing on as this one.
I will continue, but I’m sure I’m going to have to go back over the text more than once to truly understand what she’s telling us. Granted, this is just a first impression, but I’m starting to think this may be a book that is best read slowly and in a group. I’m not saying that we should shift gears on any plans that are coalescing right now, but I do think that reading it unalone could be helpful. So, if any of you are familiar with it, I wouldn’t mind exchanging thoughts on it … and it can be off-thread so as not to disturb everyone else. It could be that I’m just in my end-of-year-funk and can’t think clearly. Maybe it’ll read differently in January. I’ve got the feeling, though, that I’m not going to put it down till then. Maybe I’ll give it another go then. That seems more likely.
A wise man once told me, you only ever one chance to make a first impression. I got to verify that twice.