Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think

Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future — and Shape it. What makes the human mind so unique? And how did we get this way?

This fascinating tale explores the three leaps in our history that made us who we are—and will change how you think about our future.

Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas? In Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think (Aug. 18, 2022 / Benbella Books), Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in.

Envisioning human history as the development of a societal superorganism he names Agora, Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, to predict—and eventually master—the future.

Byron in Print

PRE ORDER

EXPLORE

A Message in a Bottle – Byron on Writing

“The best thing to me about writing is that my message goes out into the world, and I have no idea who will see it. It goes to people I could live a hundred lifetimes and never pass on the street.

About every other day, I get a note from someone who read something I wrote, or saw a video I was in, or attended one of my talks, and such great things have come out of them. For instance, I had the great opportunity to work with a museum on an exhibit about the future. A person hearing one of my speeches made an introduction for me, and I ended up as a dinner guest at our then Vice President’s home. On another occasion, something I wrote led to an amazing visit to Mount Athos in Greece where over a thousand monks live in monasteries the same way they did 500 years ago.

One day, I received a phone call from an unknown international number, and it was Mexico’s prior president, Vicente Fox, who had discovered Infinite Progress while browsing the Kindle store. He told me he loved the book and invited me to stay at his home and teach at his presidential library. That was an amazing trip where, among other things, my meager chessplaying skills were compared favorably to Fidel Castro’s by a man who played against him. And so, I keep writing, sending out messages in bottles.”

Byron visiting the Simon Petra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece. Read Byron’s account of his time at the monastery, Accessing the Internet Atop the Holy Mountain.