Insights into the intelligence throughout the natural and technical
environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes,
and under our skin.
Is there a way to understand the materials that surround us not as
passive objects, but as other intelligences interacting with our own? In
Parallel Minds, expert in materials science and nanotechnology Laura
Tripaldi delivers not only detailed insights into the properties and
emergent behaviors of matter as revealed by state-of-the-art chemistry,
synthetic biology, and nanotech, but also a rich philosophical
reflection that crosses the frontier between nature and culture, where
the most cutting-edge scientific syntheses resonate with ancient myth.
The result is a technomaterial bestiary full of unexpected encounters
with "strange minds"--from cobwebs to kevlar and carbon fibre, from
centaurs to amoebas to arachnids, from polycephalic slime to resonating
plasmons, from viruses to golems.
Parallel Minds reveals the intelligence at large throughout the
natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and
dwellings, in our clothes, and even under our skin. Full of lateral
ideas and unexpected images, Tripaldi's book imbues the study and
synthesis of materials with a new urgency. For not only do the materials
that surround us participate actively in the construction of the world
in which we live, but harnessing their ability to interact intelligently
with their environment could be the key to the future of our species.
