My new book SMARTS is available now

 

My new non fiction SMARTS is available for purchase today. Learn more below.

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BUY SMARTS ON AMAZON.COM, CLICK HERE
BUY SMARTS ON AMAZON.CO.UK, CLICK HERE
FIND SMARTS IN YOUR EUROPEAN COUNTRY, CLICK HERE TO SEARCH FOR SMARTS


SMARTS: computing slime molds,political primates,masterful plants,amoeba machines, high IQ chips,signals,spies,the brilliant life and mysterious death of Alan Turing, and the boundary-busting story of intelligence.

SMARTS is a NON-FICTION book available for print-on-demand and as an e-book. It is written by award winning author and journalist Elaine Dewar.


Watch two short trailers for the book:

 


Synopsis:

Smarts tells the stories of the brilliant men and women who are redefining what intelligence is and who or what displays it. Merging Darwin’s ideas with Alan Turing’s, they have found intelligence everywhere, and in everything, while turning it into a process to be used. Smarts’ characters include the mysterious Turing; the infamous eugenicist Francis Galton; ethologist/psychologist Frans B.M. de Waal and his political chimpanzees; Anne E. Russon and  miming orangutans; Dario Floreano and his altruistic robots; Stefano Mancuso and his masterful plants; engineer/philosopher Chris Eliasmith whose simulation of intelligence is as smart as the average university student and will be coming soon to a robot near you. Along the way, there are slime molds that compute, octopuses that signal in colors they cannot see, mysteries, spies, deaths and disappearances. Part history, part memoir, part politics, Smarts is a report from that dangerous front where machines are getting way too smart, and smart life is being machined.

Praise for SMARTS from popular fiction, non-fiction, and sci-fi authors:
“Everyone should read this book. It’s so brilliant it takes my breath away. I was so fascinated in places that I began to wonder if it is too late to study biology or maybe to try mathematics one more time. (Yes it is.) As a creative personality, a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction, I kept objecting to where the science seemed to be taking us, but the riveting story and the accessible prose carried me through to the end. We all owe Dewar a debt of gratitude for this marvelous work about humans struggling to understand intelligence.”
Sharon Butala, Officer of the Order of Canada, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for both fiction and nonfiction, is the author of sixteen books including the bestseller The Perfection of the Morning, and The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder, HarperCollins. Her forthcoming novel Wild Rose, will be published by Coteau Books. www.sharonbutala.com

“Smarts is an astonishing blend of science and memoir, at once an investigative essay and a profound work of the imagination. It is the third in a remarkable trilogy in which Dewar accomplishes nothing less than a comprehensive history of the human species. In Bones, she examined the controversies surrounding human origins; in The Second Tree, she looked at the present state of the biological and genetic sciences. Now, in Smarts, she explores the history and evolution of intelligence, human and otherwise, and raises important and disturbing questions about how we will deal with the future, and how the future will deal with us. It flows with the swiftness of thought itself.”
Wayne Grady, author of the recently published novel, Emancipation Day, as well as many highly regarded non fiction works, such as Bringing Back the Dodo.

“A terrific book — one I wish I’d written myself. Dewar takes us on a fascinating multidisciplinary odyssey, bouncing effortlessly from biology to neuroscience to computer research, in which she explores aspect of the notion of intelligence. Her personal journey weaves it all together in a compulsively readable, hugely informative, highly entertaining account from the very frontiers of science.”
Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of _FlashForward_

Praise from SMARTS from notable bloggers:

“With a breezy but meticulous writing style, and just enough sass to make you smile, Elaine reports on her interviews of some of the world’s most creative minds in science and technology, as she searches for the meaning of “intelligence.”… Even though I may not understand the chemical processes and algorithms, however, I understood what she was getting at…people are pursuing ideas that are literally changing the world…slime that thinks…plants that plan…technology that evolves independent of humans…governments and industries are investing big bucks in pursuing the implications for non-human intelligence. And the public is completely unaware – unless they read SMARTS.”
CLICK TO READ THE FULL REVIEW
Dawn Forsythe, Chimp Trainer’s Daughter


BUY THE BOOK
BUY SMARTS ON AMAZON.COM, CLICK HERE
BUY SMARTS ON AMAZON.CO.UK, CLICK HERE
FIND SMARTS IN YOUR EUROPEAN COUNTRY, CLICK HERE TO SEARCH FOR SMARTS


REQUEST A REVIEW COPY OF SMARTS FOR A PUBLICATION