Product Description

This is more than just the story of a geek elite, however. Hayleslooks at cybernetically inspired science fiction by the likes ofPhilip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson to show how thelarger culture grapples with the same issues that dog thetechnologists. She also draws lucidly on her own broad grasp ofcontemporary philosophy both to contextualize those issues and tocontend with them herself. The result is a fascinatingintroduction--and a valuable addition--to one of the most importantcurrents in recent intellectual history. --Julian Dibbell ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Hayles Forgets and Didn't do her research
Interesting how Ms. Hayles does not mention the transhuman or transhumanism, Max More and his seminal essay "Becoming Posthuman" written several years before Ms. Hayles book was published.Anyone using the book in their course work might want to think about this.

What is the Posthuman Future?
This is an important, impressive, and infuriating book that should be read by all those interested in the posthuman movement, the possibility of a cyborg future, and the nature of cyberspace. I agree with other reviewers that it is a penetrating analysis of the cultural revolution taking place in information and what it means for human (and posthuman) society. It is important as a powerful statement of the post-modern concern with embodiment and what that might portend for the future of humanity. It is impressive as a wide-ranging analysis of the inter-linkages of technology, culture, and the human body. It is infuriating because of the jargon-filled text and convoluted nature of the writing. That last criticism is one that is generic for post-modern works such as this, and certainly not a specific criticism of this book.

UCLA professor of English N. Katherine Hayles makes the case that the body (or lack thereof) is central to this posthuman future. She notes that the body is lost in the information age, as disembodied voices/knowledge/data came to dominate thinking about a posthuman evolutionary stage. She also explores the development of the concept of the cyborg, and what the merger of humans and machines might eventually come to mean. She undertakes the analysis through a series of case studies. One of the best of them is her chapter on the science fiction of Philip K. Dick, whose novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was made into the classic feature film "Blade Runner." His obsession with artificial life, and by extension "real" life, consumed much of Dick's writing and has much to say about the essence of the posthuman.

The most challenging and interesting part of this book is Hayles argument that Homo sapiens as a species are endangered in ways we have never conceptualized. Hayles notes that the rise of artificial life will lead to the next stage of the evolution of life on Earth. "If the name of the game is processing information," she writes, "it is only a matter of time until intelligent machines replace us as our evolutionary heirs. Whether we decide to fight them or join them by becoming computers ourselves, the days of the human race are numbered" (p. 243). The author does not view this with serious trepidation. As her last sentence in the book states: "Although some current versions of the posthuman point toward the anti-human and the apocalyptic, we can craft others that will be conducive to the long-range survival of humans and of the other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we share the planet and ourselves" (p. 291).

I think Hayles would agree with the Borg's slogan, "resistance is futile," but not with the dystopian concept of the human future it offers.

Too full of jargon for me
This is probably one of the hardest books I have ever read--with no background in either philosophy or cybernetics, much of what Hayles discusses is just plain incomprehensible.I also found it difficult to accept the idea of humans already being "post-human."If you are interested in deep philosophical writings on technology and the human condition, with links to literature, read this.If you don't really care about the post-human, skip it.

this book rules, her writing style is near impenetrable
This book is worth the effort.Or maybe all the effort you'll put into this triggers a cognitive dissonance reaction:I just spent 4 hours reading one chapter, so it must have been good.Right?Right?

This book is good, if only for her obvious reverence for the cyberpunk grandaddy PKD (Phil K Dick if you don't know already).Whether or not you accept her premise that we are already "posthuman" she considers her subject matter in a most interesting and relevent way, bringing in fiction that relates to the subject, as well as the history of computing and cybernetics (with some fun little anecdotes about the one and only Norbert Weiner).If you're a geek or into future-minded philosophy, pick this one up.She makes some convincing arguments, it just takes a good long while to decipher what those arguments actually are.

Resistance is futile - read this book
In this book of panoramic scope Hayles considers no less than the fate of the human race. In a rich and detailed discussion ranging from the science fiction of Greg Bear and Philip K. Dick to the science of Norbert Wiener's cybernetics and Claude Shannon's information theory, Hayles traces the changing conception of human consciousness and claims that a great many of us are already posthuman. A posthuman is someone who has been reconstructed in some sense, either physically or mentally, such that he or she exceeds, or believes they can exceed, the boundaries of a human. About ten percent of Americans can be considered cyborgs in the technical sense by virtue of having some kind of artificial implant - these people would qualify as posthuman since they have compensated for some limitation of their bodies through technological augmentation. However, Hayles claims that to be posthuman no prosthesis is necessary, simply the way in which we think about ourselves as conscious agents needs to change. The advent of Shannon's information theory has led to the modern convention of treating information as if it were entirely non-physical. If this idea is applied to the information in our heads - that is, the collection of memories that make each of us unique - then we quickly arrive at the conclusion that our consciousness can be uploaded into a computer, decanted into a robot-body, or even backed-up onto computer disk, giving us eternal life.

This is the story of how information lost its body and it is an idea which is now well established in Western culture and technology. Yet, Hayles believes it to be misguided. Any informational pattern, be it pebbles on the beach or electrons whizzing across the internet, must have a physical embodiment to exist. The importance of embodiment is also being discovered in fields such as neurology and experimental robotics. A surprisingly large amount of the information processing essential for being a responsive agent in the world goes on in body parts such as nerves, the spine and the proprioception of joints - our powerful human consciousness is a relatively recent add-on.

Hayles argues that future posthumans will not be the ethereal information-beings of much of current science fiction, but they will certainly have a much more intimate relationship with computers than we do today. In terms of information flows, a collection of humans and computers contains no boundaries between one and the next. As computers approach the complexity of our bodies and information becomes more important to our work and leisure, humans and computers will become more compatible with each other and there will be an increasing potential for one to collapse into the other. Whether this is to the detriment or betterment of humanity represents a cross-roads which urgently needs to be addressed. Hayles is well aware that technology issues such as these currently concern relatively few people - the majority of the world's population has yet to make their first phone call. Yet, now is precisely when such issues need to be aired before our posthuman futures are set in stone as either assimilated components in a vast machine or as free agents with powerful human-integrated technology at our disposal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The thermostat of society
We know the ideal room temperature that we want. There are however all kinds of factors continually changing the room- temperature. We havea means of measuring the temperature continually and making readjustments to keep it steady. The feedback, the report on what is 'happening now in the system'enables us to alter the system to produce the ideal result that we want. This feedback enables us to pilot the system as we want it , and keep it under our control.
So much for the thermostat, feedback, and I believe the basic idea of Norbert Weiner's communications- control world.
But what happens when the ideal result is not agreed upon at the outset? And what happens when the ' measuring' of the system is not a non- ambiguous straightforward matter?
Is it possible that human affairs are so complicated, so informed by what Isaiah Berlin might call 'competing and conflicting ideal ends and values', that a model for their development based on a simple physical analogy is not appropriate? and this even though that model is presented by a very great genius?

This book captures the essential aspects of communications.
The purpose of communication is to control our enviornment.In order to communicate effectively, however, it is essential that we consider the feedback we are getting.Alteration of sending messages is the mostimportant aspect of effective communication.That requires that weconsider the audience we are talking to and change our message relative tothe feedback and the audience.Weiner presents the philosophic argumentsfor communication.These concepts remain unchanged since the publicationof this book in 1954.This is the finest book on theory of communication Ihave read.Everyone concerned with improving communication should readthis thought provoking book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An oldie but a goodie...
This book is definately an 'oldie'... but it is, without doubt, a 'goodie'. Despite being a little outdated in some areas, Sales Cybernetics still offers some of the most powerful mental strategies for success, in selling or in life.

Further to this, the book covers a wide range of sales issues; job slection, sales management, organising your time, motivation... as well as sales skills such as prospecting, presenting and closing - all based on principles of psycho-cybernetics.

On the whole, the book was an enjoyable journey. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Excellent Work
Victor Milán managed to synthesize artificial intelligences, post-apocalyptic cyberpunk, and space adventure in this excellent novel. I picked it up almost at random, and was pleasantly surprised by its depth.It takes place in an alternative history to ours, a couple of decades aftera NATO-Warsaw Pact Third World War, and just a couple of weeks after aFourth World War fought by the embittered successor states. In a worldwhere the pre-War Three Great Powers (the US, Soviet Union, China, westernEurope) havebeen devastated, and where the pre-War Four Great Powers(Brazil, Indonesia, Greater Queensland, EasyCo) have fallen into civil war,only Japan has managed to survive intact, as a technological power. Thefirst AI created -- TOKUGAWA -- saved Japan from nuclear war, but killedhimself rather than lead Japan into empire.His children, HIDETADA andMUSASHI, manage to throw the world into chaos through their fights, asJapan approaches the point of military coup d'état, Europe becomes atheocracy, and the rest of the world sinks into chaos. MUSASHI -- by farthe more benevolent of the two AIs -- tries to launch a starship to letsome people escape from the hell that is Earth ... This story isn't themost cheerful that I've read, but it's one of the most complex anddownright interesting that I've happened upon. I strongly recommend anyonereading this review to get it, by hook or by crook. ... Read more

Product Description
Managing the Complex is an ambitious title - and it would be an audacious one if we were not to begin with a frank admission: to date few to none of us have a skill set which includes managing the complex. We try various things, we write about others, and we wonder about still others. When a tool, perspective, or technique comes along which seems to evoke success, we emulate it probe it and recoil at the all too often admission that it was situation and context which afforded success its opportunity, and not some quality intrinsic to the tool perspective or technique. Indeed, if the study of complexity has done anything for managers, and for those who espouse managerial theory, it is in providing a 'scientific foundation' for the notion that context matters. Those who preach abstract ideas have then to reconcile themselves to the notion that situation and embodiment matters. Those who believe in strong causality and determinism are left to wrestle with the role of chance, uncertainty, and chaos. Those who prefer to argue that men move history are confronted with the role of environment and affordances, while those who argue the reverse are left to contend with charisma, irrationality of crowds, and the strange qualities we know as emotions.A series on complex systems has less ambitious goals to contend with than this. Such a series can deal with classifications, and categories, and speak of 'noise' as if it were not the central focus of the problem. Managing the complex is about managing 'noise' or perhaps we should say it is about 'dealing with' 'accepting' 'making room for' and 'learning from' 'noise'. The articles in this volume and in volumes to come will each be considered as 'noise' by some and as 'gems' by others, but we hope that practicing managers and academics alike will find plenty of fuel to drive their personal explorations into understanding, and perhaps even managing, the complex. ... Read more

Product Description

The text begins by reviewing the origins and aims of cybernetics with particular reference to Warren McCulloch’s declared lifetime quest of “understanding man’s understanding”. It is shown that continuous systems can undergo complex self-organization, but a need for classification of situations becomes apparent and can be seen as the evolutionary beginning of concept-based processing. Possibilities for complex self-organization are emphasized by discussion of a general principle that has been termed significance feedback, of which backpropagation of errors in neural nets is a special case.

It is also noted that continuous measures come to be associated with processing that is essentially concept-based, as acknowledged in Marvin Minsky’s reference to heuristic connection between problems, and the associated basic learning heuristic of Minsky and Selfridge. This reappearance of continuity, along with observations on the multi-layer structure of intelligent systems, supports a potentially valuable view of intelligence as having a fractal nature. This is such that structures at a complex level, interpreted in terms of these emergent measures, reflect others at a simpler level. Implications for neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence are also examined.

The book presents unconventional and challenging viewpoints that will be of interest to researchers in AI, psychology, cybernetics and systems science, and should help promote further research.

Product Description
Weaving Buddhist "Middle Path" thought into Western psychotherapy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An Actual Review
The title of the book says a lot about it (unsurprisingly). If you are not interested in system cybernetics, such as the first 2 reviewers, you should not (obviously) pick up the book and attempt to read it. To say "I don't understand it so its bad" or "there's too many big words" is really infantile. This book is aimed at the intellectual. His other books, such as Radiant Mind are entirely experiential therapeutic meditation handbooks that anyone can understand! Read those instead, if you don't have a philosophy degree.

Terrible book
This is a terrible book.It is all just a bunch of mumbo jumbo gobbledy gook.It says nothing.The author is just trying to see how many big words he can put in a book, all saying nothing.Don't waste your money, this is not even a joke of a book it is so bad.

How not to understand Madhymika
This book attributes inconsistent premisses to Madhaymika, and then, wonder of wonder, finds that contradictions can be deduced. Dumb beyond words. Don't waste your money. ... Read more

Product Description
This Is A Study Of Human Control Functions And Mechanico-Electrical Systems Designed To Replace Them. ... Read more

Product Description
The new and rapidly growing field of communication sciences owes as much to Norbert Wiener as to any one man. He coined the word for it--cybernetics. In God & Golem, Inc., the author concerned himself with major points in cybernetics which are relevant to religious issues.The first point he considers is that of the machine which learns. While learning is a property almost exclusively ascribed to the self-conscious living system, a computer now exists which not only can be programmed to play a game of checkers, but one which can "learn" from its past experience and improve on its own game. For a time, the machine was able to beat its inventor at checkers. "It did win," writes the author, "and it did learn to win; and the method of its learning was no different in principle from that of the human being who learns to play checkers.A second point concerns machines which have the capacity to reproduce themselves. It is our commonly held belief that God made man in his own image. The propagation of the race may also be interpreted as a function in which one living being makes another in its own image. But the author demonstrates that man has made machines which are "very well able to make other machines in their own image," and these machine images are not merely pictorial representations but operative images. Can we then say: God is to Golem as man is to Machines? in Jewish legend, golem is an embryo Adam, shapeless and not fully created, hence a monster, an automation.The third point considered is that of the relation between man and machine. The concern here is ethical. "render unto man the things which are man's and unto the computer the things which are the computer's," warns the author. In this section of the book, Dr. Wiener considers systems involving elements of man and machine.The book is written for the intellectually alert public and does not involve any highly technical knowledge. It is based on lectures given at Yale, at the Société Philosophique de Royaumont, and elsewhere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A worthwhile venture
Weiner was something of a revolutionary in his time. He (among others) pushed the revolution in computing out of the slipstick era. He, at the height of the Cold War, wrote for audiences in both the USSR and the USA. Small wonder that he took on religion. I mean that he took it on as a duty and companion, not as an opponent, though many might have seen opposition.

Much of this book lacks direction. He skims issues that are still contentious, including the right to die. His arguments about self-reproducing machines tend twaords the vague, although he admits that he avoided tedious precision. Many of his points are clear and sharp, however. Drawing on the genie in the bottle, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, and other popular literature, he argues that the capabilities of technology steadily run ahead of our ability to predict and mitigate its consequences. He also notes, during first light of the transistor age, that "Living matter has a fine structure ... [approached by] machines which operate according to the principles of solid-state physics." As usual, technological optimism carried him well beyond justifiable extrapolation. Also as usual, he had a fair inkling of how today's 0.1 micron transistors might compare to 1.0 micron brain cells.

His sharpest commentary starts in the faith that scientists and engineers are moral people, and work in the belief of the human good that comes from their life's work. (Please, don't descend to the belief that we think we are evil people reveling in evil outcomes.) Weiner notes that the deepest hell in Dante's Inferno is reserved for the sin of simony - directing the Church's good power to personal gain, using the force of money. He draws a direct analogy to the sin of corrupting vast technological power towards personal gain, also using money as controlling force. If you're already queasy about the amorality of the MBA's "bottom line" ethos, this may give you some very bad dreams.

It's an important book. It's flawed, but has the honesty to ask hard questions. It also has the courage to attach a moral sense to the analytic trait of mind - it ought not be surprising that the two fit closely.

Among all the quotable lines in this book, one stands out: "... remember that in the game of atomic warfare, there are no experts." Here, now, under the president that demolished 30 years of arms control treaties, it's a phrase to remember.

//wiredweird

Good retrospective of the history of computing
Written in 1964 when the concept of a human interacting dynamically with a machine was first becoming a reality, there are facets of this book that are dated. Nevertheless, the concepts that are described are still as pertinent today as they were when Wiener first set down his thoughts. The book is a collection of essays where Wiener explains his ideas for what he thinks the future holds for humans interacting with machines.
The approach is very non-technical so it is possible for the lay person to understand his thoughts. The prose is also well structured, making it very easy to read through. Reading this book is a good way to go back in time and get some idea of what the early experts thought would be the direction and consequences of the development of the new "thinking machines". It is also an excellent choice for gaining a retrospective in any history of computing course.

Technological Ethics
A brief series of personal essays by famous mathematician Norbert Wiener on the ethics of modern technology and questions whether humans should follow all leads of technology regardless of the consequences. An easy-to-read, informative book. No technical background is needed to understand the arguments. ... Read more