Smoke and Mirrors

Gemma Milne
Robinson
LittleBrown

The myriad intricacies of the science and technology fields seem beyond reach for many of us: we work; we feed our families; we don’t necessarily want to spend our spare time reading through turgid research papers or trying to cut through the corporate-marketing-speak of tech giants and their egotistical CEOs to figure out what’s really happening. It’s no surprise, then, that when a newspaper headline claims capers are the newest natural cure for cancer, or when Elon Musk tweets that he will be putting people on Mars in under a year, many of us take these things in our stride as perhaps slightly exaggerated, but probably based on something like reality.

It’s easy to think that this is a harmless process; that it doesn’t matter if the public thinks that fully functioning humanoid robots are being put together as we speak, or that the AI Singularity is, really, just around the corner. But public misinformation always has negative consequences. It changes the social conversation, impacts how taxpayer funds are allocated and often gives power to those who shouldn’t necessarily have it. Newspaper headlines or media hype may be intended to hook a reader or sell a product, but they have much wider ranging effects than this.

So how can the general reader be equipped with skills to see beyond the publicity and reach the facts of science and technology innovation? This is the question driving journalist Gemma Milne’s first book Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It. Thanks to a background in investment banking and advising venture capitalists where to put their money, Milne is more than adept at understanding the intentions and downfalls of hype, as well as the very real consequences of reality getting lost within it. And she’s on a mission to teach us all how to think critically in the face of media exaggeration.


The result is an intensely readable look at some of the most misunderstood fields of science and technology today; from AI and quantum computing to food systems and cancer treatments. Smoke and Mirrors doesn’t shy away from such controversial issues as the commercialisation of space and the possibility of life beyond Earth, but she also makes fascinating the topics that wouldn’t strike you as interesting—I never thought I’d enjoy a deep dive into the ethics of batteries quite so much. In this book, Milne succeeds in both educating and entertaining, while also seeding the basic tenets of critical thinking as a discipline, encouraging readers to look beyond the headlines and to the real truth. 


—Heather Parry