The Kafkaesque world around us
We praise mediocrity, mock genuine effort, and fight our battles online.
By Cybernews
This won’t be your usual Cybernews weekly recap newsletter. I’m back from vacation, and you probably know more about what happened in the cyber world than I do. But I don’t come empty-handed.
This time, I traveled to Prague, among other cities, to run a marathon. As always, I read a few books about the city to get into the mood and absorb its atmosphere. While The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco remains, in my opinion, the best novel set in Prague, I recently discovered another masterpiece that led me down a rabbit hole into the quantum world.
I mention my marathon not to brag, but rather to complain - and it will become relevant in a few paragraphs. Please, keep reading.
The book is called Einstein in Kafkaland, a graphic novel by Ken Krimstein. Albert Einstein spent a little over a year in Prague. In 1911–1912, Prague was home to both Einstein and Franz Kafka, and, according to this well-researched book, that year was pivotal for both men: Einstein became “Einstein,” and Kafka became “Kafka.”
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Kafka achieved this by writing The Judgment in 1912. Personally, The Trial is the Kafka novel that resonates with me most these days, as I try to settle back in after weeks of wandering around Europe.
“Congratulations on your 5,000th place in the marathon,” someone said when I returned, just adding to the list of insults.
What kind of world is this, where we belittle people who go to extraordinary lengths to push the boundaries of their bodies and minds? Suddenly, I feel as though I have to defend myself- why didn’t I choose therapy, who am I running from, or why am I so slow?
It’s Kafka’s world.
But this beautiful book also reintroduced me to Einstein’s world. To this day, his revolutionary 1905 paper - where the formula equating energy and mass (E = mc²) first appeared - continues to shape our understanding of the universe.
So it’s only natural that the next book I picked up was a rather unconventional biography. Unconventional because it’s not a biography of a person, but of an equation: E = mc²: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis.
I’d say this is a must-read for anyone interested in technology and physics. Even if you already grasp the meaning and impact of the formula, I still recommend giving it a go. The book explores each symbol in the equation - how we understand energy (E), mass (m), the speed of light (c), and why the speed of light is squared. After explaining the formula, Bodanis delves into its wider implications, such as the making of the atomic bomb.
Again, a fascinating read, which eventually ties into a few other wonderful books that I can recommend. Here’s a short list for those interested in the topic:
And do you know the first thing I heard when I started talking about Einstein’s formula back at work?
“You must be fun at parties.”
Ouch.
You see what I did here - like so many people, I took to social media to vent about a few snarky comments that got under my skin.
We praise mediocrity, mock genuine effort, and fight our battles online.
It’s a Kafkaesque world.
