Infinite Machine - bookrastinating.com

No cover — Camila Russo: Infinite Machine (2020, HarperCollins Publishers)

352 pages

English language

Published Sept. 10, 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-288615-6

(2 reviews)

"Everyone has heard of Bitcoin, but few know about the second-largest blockchain, Ethereum, which has been heralded as the "next internet."

The story of Ethereum begins with Vitalik Buterin, a supremely gift nineteen-year-old autodidact who saw the promise of blockchain when the technology was in its earliest stages. He convinced a crack group of coders to join him in his quest to make a supercharged global computer.

The Infinite Machine introduces Buterin's ingenious idea and unfolds Ethereum's chaotic beginnings. It then explores the brilliant innovation and reckless greed the platform--an infinitely adaptable foundation for experimentation and new applications--has unleashed and the consequences that resulted as the frenzy surrounding Ethereum grew: increased regulatory scrutiny, incipient Wall Street interest, and the founding team's effort to get the platform to scale so it can eventually be accessible to the masses.

Financial journalist and cryptocurrency expert Camila Russo details the wild and often hapless …

"Everyone has heard of Bitcoin, but few know about the second-largest blockchain, Ethereum, which has been heralded as the "next internet."

The story of Ethereum begins with Vitalik Buterin, a supremely gift nineteen-year-old autodidact who saw the promise of blockchain when the technology was in its earliest stages. He convinced a crack group of coders to join him in his quest to make a supercharged global computer.

The Infinite Machine introduces Buterin's ingenious idea and unfolds Ethereum's chaotic beginnings. It then explores the brilliant innovation and reckless greed the platform--an infinitely adaptable foundation for experimentation and new applications--has unleashed and the consequences that resulted as the frenzy surrounding Ethereum grew: increased regulatory scrutiny, incipient Wall Street interest, and the founding team's effort to get the platform to scale so it can eventually be accessible to the masses.

Financial journalist and cryptocurrency expert Camila Russo details the wild and often hapless adventures of a team of hippie anarchists reluctantly led by the ambivalent visionary, and lays out how this new foundation for the internet will spur both transformation and fraud--turning some into millionaires and others into felons--and revolutionize our ideas about money." --inside cover

4 editions

colin reviewed The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo

Uncritical, overly positive, occasionally interesting

2 stars

This book is a fairly dry blow-by-blow of the creation of Ethereum, based on interviews with many of the people involved. It's fairly dull. Almost everything that happens in this book is given a positive spin. A few paragraphs close to the end are devoted to describing what essentially amounts to a payday loan via an app powered by Ethereum. Nothing is remarkable about the loan other than the way the money is transferred, but it's presented as a revolution in finance where everyone is happy with the result.

The book describes multiple security exploits and attacks, but uncritically papers over the flaws inherent in the design of the network (and the obvious failures of the developers to plan for abuse) by lauding the hacker skills involved in rescuing the network from destruction.

There's some things that were vaguely interesting here. Occasionally the author will veer into questions about the …

This book is a fairly dry blow-by-blow of the creation of Ethereum, based on interviews with many of the people involved. It's fairly dull. Almost everything that happens in this book is given a positive spin. A few paragraphs close to the end are devoted to describing what essentially amounts to a payday loan via an app powered by Ethereum. Nothing is remarkable about the loan other than the way the money is transferred, but it's presented as a revolution in finance where everyone is happy with the result.

The book describes multiple security exploits and attacks, but uncritically papers over the flaws inherent in the design of the network (and the obvious failures of the developers to plan for abuse) by lauding the hacker skills involved in rescuing the network from destruction.

There's some things that were vaguely interesting here. Occasionally the author will veer into questions about the speculative nature of crypto, the environmental aspect, the commodification of everything, web3,and so on, and implies that some of the people involved are also struggling with these questions. But that exploration never gets very deep, and is often no more than a sentence or two followed by a bunch of exuberance about crypto.

After I was finished with the book, I discovered that the author is turning it into a movie, being funded/produced with NFTs, so I guess that tells you something about the voice here.

jm3 reviewed The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo

Review of 'The Infinite Machine' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Well researched and thorough but not a particularly engaging read for either the layperson or a geek. It’s a linear history of the Ethereum ecosystem’s evolution (from its inception to the end of 2019) that attempts to make crypto comprehensible to a non technical casual outsider. Unfortunately, it’s not a particularly riveting story.

I think it’s indicative of the quality of this book that while I’m very interested in crypto currency and have been for years, I found this book much less engaging than other contemporary techno-histories like Mike Isaac’s SUPER PUMPED, Nick Bilton’s HATCHING TWITTER or his Silk Road book AMERICAN KINGPIN, Nicole Perlroth’s THIS IS HOW THEY TELL ME THE WORLD ENDS, or any of Joseph Menn’s hacking related books like FATAL SYSTEM ERROR.

I would recommend this to few people, but not many. If you’re just curious about crypto I’d probably recommend some podcasts instead.