Hitting the Books: When better living through technology isn't enough

Welcome to Engadget's newest series, Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories. Modern tech culture has long been enamored with the mythos of the lone genius achieving superhuman status (a la The Matrix). Whether it's Jack Dorsey's self flagellating dietary restrictions, Peter Thiel's obsession with "young blood" transfusions, or Tim Ferris' outright maniacal 4-hour self improvement regimens, if you're a wealthy white guy in Silicon Valley and not trying to live forever, you're doing it wrong. But for all the Bond villain-esque grifters selling the promise of eternal youth in 12 easy steps, a dedicated cadre of technologists have spent years investigating how we might actually achieve Ray Kurtweil's predicted singularity.