Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology

<b>The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of<i>Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank</i>, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature's most misunderstood insects.</b><br /><br />Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In<i>Underbug</i>, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually--and yet, in Margonelli's telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we're building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition.<br /><br />Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite's properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind?<i>Underbug</i>burrows into these questions and many others--unearthing disquieting answers about the world's most underrated insect and what it means to be human.