Geek Sublime
The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
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Geek Sublime
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Narrated by:
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Neil Shah
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By:
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Vikram Chandra
About this listen
Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary new audiobook, his first work of nonfiction, he searches for the connections between the worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style, just as writers are, but do the words mean the same thing to both? Can we ascribe beauty to the craft of writing code?
Exploring such varied topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the machismo of tech geeks, the omnipresence of an "Indian Mafia" in Silicon Valley, and the writings of the eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker Abhinavagupta, Geek Sublime is both an idiosyncratic history of coding and a fascinating meditation on the writer's art. Part literary essay, part technology story, and part memoir, it is an engrossing, original, and heady book of sweeping ideas.
©2014 Vikram Chandra (P)2015 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 54
The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Punderful Little Book
- By B. Lane on 01-10-13
By: John Pollack
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Thinking Machines
- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - and Where It's Taking Us Next
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Gus Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 52
When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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The Formula
- How Algorithms Solve all our Problems…and Create More
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 447
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 389
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Story4 out of 5 stars 388
A fascinating guided tour of the complex, fast-moving, and influential world of algorithms - what they are, why they’re such powerful predictors of human behavior, and where they’re headed next. Algorithms exert an extraordinary level of influence on our everyday lives - from dating websites and financial trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches - Google's search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not about algorithms. Not an original book.
- By Landon Rordam on 12-02-14
By: Luke Dormehl
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Seeing Voices
- A Journey Into the World of the Deaf
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 177
In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Rich Experience
- By Douglas on 11-27-12
By: Oliver Sacks
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William Blake vs the World
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story5 out of 5 stars 83
A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best book ever
- By idamae on 11-04-22
By: John Higgs
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Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
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Kingdom of Characters
- The Language Revolution That Made China Modern
- By: Jing Tsu
- Narrated by: Jing Tsu
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Missed important information
- By Ms. on 04-01-22
By: Jing Tsu
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World Without Mind
- The Existential Threat of Big Tech
- By: Franklin Foer
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 254
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 219
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Story4 out of 5 stars 216
Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon, socialize on Facebook, turn to Apple for entertainment, and rely on Google for information.
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5 out of 5 stars
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5-Star Book with a 1-Star Title
- By David Larson on 09-18-17
By: Franklin Foer
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On Quality
- An Inquiry into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
- By: Robert M. Pirsig, Wendy K. Pirsig
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Abby Craden
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
More than a decade before the release of the book that would make him famous, Robert M. Pirsig had already caught hold of the central theme that would animate Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Though he was revered by fans who considered him a guru, the famously private Pirsig published only two books and consented to few interviews and almost no public appearances. Now, for the first time, listeners will be granted access to five decades of Pirsig’s personal writings in this posthumous collection that illuminates the evolution of his thinking to an unprecedented degree.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Interesting trip inside an obsessed mind.
- By Tom on 05-03-22
By: Robert M. Pirsig, and others
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The Art Instinct
- Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
- By: Denis Dutton
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
The Art Instinct combines two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will revolutionize the way art itself is perceived. Aesthetic taste, argues Denis Dutton, is an evolutionary trait, and is shaped by natural selection. It's not, as almost all contemporary art criticism and academic theory would have it, "socially constructed".
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5 out of 5 stars
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A breath of fresh air!
- By Michael on 02-19-14
By: Denis Dutton
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A Mind at Play
- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 522
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 445
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 445
Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
- By Bonny on 05-08-18
By: Rob Goodman, and others
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To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- By: Phillip Lopate
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not a guide on writing personal essays
- By A. Yoshida on 08-07-13
By: Phillip Lopate
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The Hidden Habits of Genius
- Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness
- By: Craig Wright
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 352
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 305
What is genius? The word evokes iconic figures like Einstein, Beethoven, Picasso, and Steve Jobs, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet Beethoven could not multiply. Picasso couldn’t pass a fourth grade math test. And Jobs left high school with a 2.65 GPA. The Hidden Habits of Genius explores the meaning of this contested term, and the unexpected motivations of those we have dubbed "genius" throughout history, from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Click-bait title, minimal substance inside
- By James S. on 11-27-20
By: Craig Wright
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Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
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Secular Buddhism
- Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World
- By: Stephen Batchelor
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good, but repetition of old material
- By Ludwig on 02-25-18
What listeners say about Geek Sublime
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Pam
- 05-25-15
Tornado thought miasma
There's a lot of good and interesting ideas here, but Chandra seems to smash the most disparate of them together in some sort of frenzied confluence of idealism and fever dreams. I read it straight though, which was exhilarating, but I will definitely have to go back and pick through things in order to find theme or thesis. Chandra seems to hit on these a few times, but the scope of this work is so big that each time he approached having a pristinely packaged unification of thought, it would switch to a new topic, leaving things unfinished, still in scaffolding. However, this may have been intentional--the flow and pacing may indicate that this was by design, and perhaps this frenzied form adds to the conversation. Either way, the whirlwind mixture of feminism, computer science, lit crit, eastern philosophy, and personal memoir was thrilling, even though it took work not to glaze over during some of the thicker passages. Very interesting perspectives.
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