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The Book
Hind Hacks –Tips & Tools for using your brain
Tom Stafford and Matt Webb
O’Reilly Publishing
ISBN 0-596-00779-5

Price
£12.25 (amazon.co.uk)

Difficulty
N/A

Review
Behind this provocative title lurks a goldmine of interesting neurological “hacks” that probe how our brains work. Clearly, if we’re all wired up the same, the alert magician could have a field day coming up with effects that exploit things we simply can’t help and of which we aren’t aware.

For instance, shown two shapes (one smooth, another jagged) and two words (one smooth-sounding, the other, well, you get the picture) we naturally associate the “correct” words with the pictures.

The book contains exactly 100 such hacks. Some are curious, but others cry out for exploit. If you’re working on an effect that blends sleight of hand with speed and need to distract the spec for just a split second, Hack 39, for example, may have the answer. It begins: “Our ability to notice things suffers in the half-second after we’ve just spotted something else.” That’s useful to know, but Hack 78 is downright spooky. It describes how, if we add a few tweaks to the way something moves, it seems to take on a life of its own – ideal for fake séances!

Each hack has a general description of the principle it demonstrates, an example of it in action and an explanation of how and why it works before giving references to very serious papers and books on psychology. There are also copious diagrams and photographs throughout, including some very interesting optical illusions.


Overall
This book makes great toilet reading, but as a toolkit for enhancing existing effects and even inventing new ones, there are more than a few gems contained within its pages.

There are clear parallels between the brain and a machine, and it raises some interesting philosophical questions in the reader about why we all tend to respond to certain things in very similar ways. That we do seems like a very interesting thing to know in the world of magic, especially mentalism and other bizarre arts.

Tomo thanks for bringing this book to our attention, unlikely I would have spotted this one otherwise.

Happy Toad wrote:Tomo thanks for bringing this book to our attention, unlikely I would have spotted this one otherwise.

No problem.