It sounded so weird and so unbelievable that I wasn’t sure if this was a serious work from an accomplished academic, as Dr Robin Hanson, or a science fiction dystopia. Perhaps, it’s both.
Athena
Maquina Lectora: Notes of a curious mind
may be one of the most inadvertently horrifying works ever created, both for the future it presents and for what it says about its author’s psyche
Andrew Hickey
The Promethians: Introduction, Head of State
A truly remarkable book; easily in the top 5 most insightful out of the 400 I have reviewed here.
Anonymous
Been reading, Q1 2017, there could be snakes in here
You want to know how to get me to hate you? Tell me about how shitty science fiction is at predicting the future.
Tietsu
A Land of Rum and Writing
Age of Em … is an entirely new genre of futurism. … masterpiece of futurism.
Slava Akhmechet
coffee mug
Dies alles steht nicht in einem Science-Fiction-Roman, sondern in einer sozialwissenschaftlichen Monographie, in der ein in Oxford lehrender Ökonom ganz ernsthaft und mit zahllosen Fußnoten erkundet, wie es in der Gesellschaft der „Brain emulations“ zugehen wird
Mark Siemens
Die Regierung der gescannten Hirne, Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton
Simultaneously an economic treatise and a work of deep speculative fiction, it’s a melding of genre rarely seen, but dearly welcome. … Hanson, simply, is willing to take chances, make big assumptions, and see where the cards fall. It’s a style of romantic academic endeavor long out of favor.
Michael J. Hanson
Metaxis, Age of Em: Where Sci-Fi Meets Economics
Ale máme tu ještě něco podstatně šílenějšíh. … Hanson bystře vyvozuje, jak bude pak vypadat práce, zábava, mezilidské vztahy, ozbrojené konflikty.
Petr Koubský
Knížky roku 2016, které by se čtenářům Lupy mohly líbit
Robin Hanson … is a genuine polymath with a background in physics, early AI and economics. His book … is one of the strangest, most challenging books I have ever read.
Gerard de Valence
Researching the Far Future, Construction Industry Economics and Policy
It's a wild idea but what’s so nice about this kind of this science fictional idea and treatment in this book … is how rigorous it is. Hanson really goes through all the possible implications of what this means. … A great great read, dizzying with ideas
Ira Flatow, Lee Billings
Science Friday
is a very strange book; in a way, it reminds me of my version of team blogging, only actually rigorous and comprehensive … At a minimum, it’s a fascinating intellectual exercise … The most distinctive book I read in 2016.
Tom Gower
What I’ve Been Reading (Football and Not), Reading and Thinking Football
The book provides vivid descriptions of the world of uploads. … It covers a wide range of details, from the size of their cities to the types of music they might listen to. … What is clear is that the prospect of uploading warrants serious attention now.
Seth Baum
Scientific American blog
Book of the week: … it’s an interesting read, and I’d at least take on board Hanson’s advice to make sure you are the owner of a few ems.
The Investor
Monevator
In general sounds like a very nice place that I hope my descendants would manage to experience
Ozymandias Frantz
Thing of Things
It’s perhaps the strangest book you’ve ever heard of. … This book really does make you think about the world in a different way. … It even makes you question what it means to be human.
Michael
Postlibertarian
For a book without a plot or characters, it offers a surprisingly engaging and compelling storyline. … Hanson’s book and his approach to thinking about the future are extremely important for anyone who wants to have a say in the future of humanity.
Ariel Conn
Future of Life Institute
A highly speculative, possibly over ambitious, but nonetheless fascinating 'thought exercise’ … New concepts or implications explored on nearly every page.
Jonathan Cowie
Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation
A mash-up of robotics and social theory, The Age of Em is a comprehensive treatise … This tomorrow, as envisioned by Hanson, `weird' as it is, is rich with meaty data.
Alakananda Mookerjee
Pop Matters
An interdisciplinary thought experiment … The sheer amount of detail … really allows readers to engage with these scenarios and reflect back on our current situation.
David Lorimer
Books in brief, Network Review, No. 121, pp. 62-63
The Age of Em is imaginative and provides a thought-provoking discussion of the social implications of an em economy.
Randall Mayes
A Singularity Economy — If Uploads Come First, AAI Foresight Signals
Not sure it is a world I'd like to be a part of, but it's a fascinating world nevertheless.
Lance Fortnow
Computational Complexity
A fascinating and engaging book, containing much to enjoyably disagree with.
Calum Chace
Pandora’s Brain
Fascinating. Two months later, the book’s ideas still pop into my mind daily. Nothing else I’ve read in the past year has done that.
Geoff Greer
Geoff.Greer.fm
Overall, the book is a nerdvana for the transhumanist and can be recommended for all who like to think (as opposed to merely feel) about the future.
Rafal Smigrodzki
Extropy Chat List
Hanson’s work is revolutionary, not in what it says, but how it attempts to say it. … once over the peak, the expedition feels more than worthwhile.
Jade Fell
Engineering and Technology Magazine
I enjoyed the book … enriching our sense of the range of possible futures that might be out there … is the reason I got value from his book.
Henry Farrell
Crooked Timber
This hellish cyberworld is quite cool to think about in a dystopian Matrixy way. … brilliantly weird extrapolations
Steven Poole
The Guardian
What is remarkable … is not just the detail … but the way he situates it within a perceptive analysis of our human past and present.
Daniel Levitin
Wall Street Journal
Lots of creative, intelligent people … doing remarkable wonderful things with big expensive toys … but you only got, personally, subsistence wages … What it is like to be an Em is … a graduate student.
Josh Storrs Hall
Where is my Flying Car?
I highly recommend it. … His language is always incredibly direct and clear. Hanson is an academic Hemingway.
Jess Riedel
foreXiv
It’s certainly an impressive exercise in world-building, which, with the addition of plot and character, would have the potential to make a spectacular series of novels.
Richard Jones
Soft Machines
The Age of Em is bound to be a classic. … it is a gap in the mist clouds covering the future.
Anders Sandberg
Andart II
I can’t think of another book of this depth and quality in the same niche. … I highly recommend Age of Em as a fantastically fun read and a great introduction to these concepts. It’s engaging, readable, and weird. I just don’t know if it’s weird enough.
Scott Alexander
Slate Star Codex
Hanson repeatedly tackles questions that scare away mainstream academics, and gives relatively ordinary answers
Peter McCluskey
Bayesian Investor Blog
The book [is] a fascinating survey of what we know about humans – think David Brook’s The Social Animal, but through a more removed lens, and with a deeper blend of hard and soft sciences.
Neerav Kingsland
Relinquishment
The pacing is fast, chock-full of interesting ideas to play with … Hanson has done a fantastic job sketching technologically and economically plausible outcomes to the future of humans and near-humans.
Peter St Onge
Profits of Chaos
Very often Robin is describing our world in cloaked fashion … [It is] a reminder of how strange everything is. … I am wildly enthusiastic about everything the Robin upload does.
Tyler Cowen
Marginal Revolution