Physics of the Impossible

I’m hoping that as I make my way through Physics of the Impossible, Kaku will avoid Hawking’s penchant for history. I wonder how much of the futurist’s tendency to repeat himself is really the fault of the author; I imagine Kaku’s editors are told by the publisher to make any book in the series serve as a possible entry point for any reader, so that means we’re going to hear about how Kaku built an atom smasher in high school again, or read an explanation of Michael Faraday’s early years in every book. Annoying? Yes. Necessary? Not so much.

So, how much do you know how to know?

Jonathan V. Last’s article “Google and Its Enemies” on The Weekly Standard got me thinking about knowledge. But not so much knowledge itself, but the retention of knowledge. What does it mean to be knowledgeable in a web 2.0 twenty-first century? Is…