{"product_id":"firmware-tom-andreas-9798180778239","title":"Firmware: Why human cognition can't run the world it built - and the mind that might","description":"\u003cp\u003eWe have been asking the wrong question.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor a decade, the smartest institutions on earth - central banks, finance ministries, the people paid to see the future coming - have stared at their own data and called it \u003ci\u003epuzzling\u003c\/i\u003e. They are not stupid. They are running cognition built for a small band of kin on an African savanna, and using it to govern a planet of eight billion. The equipment is not broken. It was simply never specified for the job.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFIRMWARE\u003c\/b\u003e is a reply to Yuval Noah Harari. It accepts almost everything Harari argues across \u003ci\u003eSapiens\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHomo Deus\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNexus\u003c\/i\u003e - and then takes the step he stops short of. The real threat to civilization is not the corruption of our information networks. It is the \u003ci\u003ereceiver\u003c\/i\u003e: the human mind doing the receiving, hard-wired for problems on the scale of a lifetime and a village, now asked to reason across centuries, continents, and feedback loops it cannot feel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom a desk on the Norwegian coast - with a small dog named Soya as its unlikely guide - the book moves from the collapse of Bronze Age empires to Iran unravelling in real time, from Japan's silent demographic winter to the white-collar jobs quietly dissolving as you read this. Each is the same failure, at a different speed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen it asks the question almost no one will say out loud: if human cognition cannot govern what humanity has built, who - or what - should? The answer is not comfortable, and the book does not pretend that it is. But it is the only answer the evidence honestly allows - and it is stranger, and more hopeful, than the argument that leads to it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA bracing, vivid, and genuinely original case for readers of Yuval Noah Harari, Vaclav Smil, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb - and for anyone trying to understand what artificial intelligence is actually \u003ci\u003efor\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Tom Andreas\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798180778239\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/09\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 238\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.71lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d","brand":"Tom Andreas","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49173585789183,"sku":"9798180778239","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_95ea5a06-a418-4aa4-acc5-371285bb0fab.jpg?v=1788955369","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/firmware-tom-andreas-9798180778239","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}