Underbug
Subtitle: an obsessive tale of termites and technology
By: Lisa Margonelli ; illustrations by Thomas Shahan
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
ISBN-13: 9780374282073
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Social aspects; Technology and civilization; Termites
Other titles: Obsessive tale of termites and technology
Description: "Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with one of nature's most influential but least understood bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we're building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military-industrial complex. Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite's properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind? Underbug burrows into these questions and many others--unearthing disquieting answers about the world's most underrated insect and what it means to be human"--Dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-287) and index.
Table of contents: title: Part I. A termite safari; title: Part II. Riddles in the dirt ; An inconvenient insect ; Into the mound ; Complexity is the essence ; Because they are so sweet ; A black box with six legs ; Waiting for Carnot; title: Part III. The second termite safari ; Life in the firehose ; Jazz in the metagenome ; Burning very slowly ; Restless streams; title: Part IV. Crossing the abstraction barrier ; Influential individuals ; The robot apocalypse; title: Part V. Darwin's termites ; The soul of the soil ; The math of fairy circles ; The soul of the cell ; Empathy and the drone ; White ants; title: Part VI. Them and us.