First Readers’ Reviews Of My Book

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Do you want to know if humanity’s development has any direction? The answer is in my book. My book is nonfiction history. First readers’ reviews are started to come in. Below are quotes from five reviews.

An Interesting Take On Humanity’s Timeline

This book takes on an incredibly challenging task, making us aware of our current place in the history of mankind and attempts to help us figure out where we will go from here. The difficulty of this task is made more simple by the fluidity of the way he presents his findings.

I am most fascinated by the historical sections and how the book looked back in time, but for those not as familiar with the new technology coming into practice, the ‘looking ahead’ section would be quite helpful.

Thought Provoking Book

Your thought provoking book sets out mankind’s trajectory in overwhelming detail. Humans may have increased opportunities for our collective futures in various different ways without having any sense of how their potential would eventually be realized when we first created them.

However, this directional analysis doesn’t suggest that mankind is sufficiently equipped to know what to do and how to act with intention when the time comes to making crucial decisions with far-reaching consequences for our long-term viability.

The story of the last 40,000 years told in terms of resource creation and opportunity exploitation

If you have a fascination with historical connections or the hidden structure of human history this book is worth a read.

The Subsurface History of Humanity poses a highly important and fascinating set of questions. Is there a direction to the development of humanity – some structure below the chaos? If so, where and how fast is it going? Which forces are driving it?

The book successfully abstracts away the 44,000 years of historical minutiae to reveal the author’s answer using a framework inspired by focusing on the interactions between parts AKA systems thinking.

The story is unique in that it combines the author’s intellectual journey to the answer along with the destination. In parts, the story feels meandering losing tempo however like a good hike the reader is rewarded for their ongoing commitment.

The reward is a charming medley of thought-provoking ideas on human history as a story of resource creation and opportunity exploitation. The book shuns the conventional historical “revolution” metaphor and thus exposes original insights.

Refreshing and stimulating view of humanity’s development

‘Subsurface…’ tackles a grand question – is there a direction to humanity’s development, and if so can it be described?

It is a question that seems to fit in between established theories. Evolution cannot account for the manmade world around us – it has happened too fast (and is anyway artificial) for evolution to be a big factor. History and sociology tend to focus on smaller fragments of humanity’s story.

‘Subsurface…’ attempts a different approach. Critical moments over the past 44,000 years are classified and mapped out as significant opportunities mankind has generated for itself. The frequency of these is assessed over time and used as the basis for discussion.

It is a compelling idea and results in a direct simplicity for tackling the big questions posed. There is accessibility to the text. The construction of the core model is transparently explained. Selected side stories and examples are brief, and serve to add color to the overall thrust of the main logic.

Very thought-provoking towards raising awareness

This book aims at answering the key question, “Does humanity’s development has any direction?” Victor Torvich shares a vision for finding patterns and trends beyond the sequence of historical events. His proposed approach is quite interesting.

He deploys the theory of complex dynamic systems to model humanity in a way that is amenable to quantitative analysis. To build a model that allows for emergent behavior analysis and reveals the sought direction, it is suggested to wisely choose the information and keep the model as simple as possible but not simpler than that.

Following this line of thinking, this book investigates the foundations of mankind’s actions, the required resources for making those actions possible, and the key role that imagination and creativity play in achieving goals.

Finally, this thought-provoking study comes to the conclusion that “mankind’s development is a directional process” and “humanity is moving towards an increase in the arsenal of opportunities created by mankind for itself”, which shows an increasing pace over time.

It is a joyful read, which provides a fresh look over the whole human history, and raises awareness towards what we are as a species and where we may be heading.

The book provides a nice update survey of the ongoing research on artificial intelligence. Another interesting feature of the book is the quotes that appear at the beginning of each chapter.

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For my book “Subsurface History of Humanity: Direction of History” – go to amazon marketplaces (paperback, Kindle book, and audiobook), and for the audiobook – go to Audible or iTunes. The audiobook comes with a supplemental digital booklet.

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