From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death

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pages: 323 words: 100,772

Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb by William Poundstone

90 percent rule, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, cuban missile crisis, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Frank Gehry, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Herman Kahn, Jacquard loom, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, RAND corporation, Richard Feynman, seminal paper, statistical model, the market place, zero-sum game

I really love you, and, within the limitations of my horrible nature, I do want to make you happy—as nearly as possible, as much of the time as possible.” What was the horrible nature? In an interview with journalist Steve J. Heims (in John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, 1980), Eugene Wigner asserted that “Johnny believed in having sex, in pleasure, but not in emotional attachment. He was interested in immediate pleasures but had little comprehension of emotions in relationships and mostly saw women in terms of their bodies.” Wigner suggested that von Neumann’s real love was his mother.

In General Systems (1966) 11:203–14. Haldeman, H. R., with Joseph DiMona. The Ends of Power. New York: Times Books, 1978. Halmos, Paul. “The Legend of John von Neumann.” In American Mathematical Monthly 80, no. 4 (April 1973): 382–94. Heims, Steve J. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Macmillan, 1958. Hofstadter, Douglas. Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern. New York: Basic Books, 1985. Kahn, Herman. On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios. New York: Praeger, 1965. ______.


pages: 518 words: 107,836

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy) by Benjamin Peters

Albert Einstein, American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Anthropocene, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commons-based peer production, computer age, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Davies, double helix, Drosophila, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gabriella Coleman, hive mind, index card, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, power law, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, scientific mainstream, scientific management, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the strength of weak ties, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, transaction costs, Turing machine, work culture , Yochai Benkler

Kay, “Cybernetics, Information, Life: The Emergence of Scriptural Representations of Heredity,” Configurations 5 (1) (1997): 23–91.Books on the cybernetic context before and during the U.S. cold war include Edwards, The Closed World; David Mindell, Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2002); Jennifer Light, From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); and Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson, and Alessio Cavallaro, eds., Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).A few biographical works include Steve J. Heims, The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); Steve J. Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982); Pesi R. Masani, Norbert Wiener, 1894–1964 (Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1990); Flow Conway and Jim Siegelman, Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics (New York: Basic Books, 2005); and Hunter Crowther-Heyck, Herbert A.

Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969. Heidegger, Martin. The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, [1954] 1977. Heims, Steve J. The Cybernetics Group. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. Heims, Steve J. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Hobsbawm, Eric. How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Hoffmann, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.


The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Ada Lovelace, air freight, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Apple II, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bill Atkinson, Bill Duvall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, Byte Shop, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, Dennis Ritchie, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, experimental subject, Fairchild Semiconductor, fault tolerance, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, functional programming, Gary Kildall, Haight Ashbury, Howard Rheingold, information retrieval, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Ivan Sutherland, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Rulifson, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Leonard Kleinrock, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, Multics, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, popular electronics, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Robert Metcalfe, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, The Soul of a New Machine, Turing machine, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Von Neumann architecture, Wiener process, zero-sum game

Miller, "Stanley Smith Stevens, 1906-1973," In Bzographical Memoirs, vol. 47 (Washing- ton, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1975). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. George A. Miller, "J. C. R. Licklider, Psychologist" (unpublished address given before the Acousti- cal Society of America, 1 991). 7. Steve Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 379. 8. Jerome B. Wiesner, "The Communications Sciences-Those Early Days," in R. L. E.: 1946+20 (Cambridge, Mass.: Research Laboratory for Electronics, MIT, 1966), 13. 9. Pesi R. Masanl, Norbert Wiener (Basel: Blfkhauser, 1990), 16. 10.

Tropp, "Ongln of the Term Bit," Annals of the H15tory of Computing 6 (1984). 3. Jerome B. Wiesner, "The Communications Sciences-Those Early Days," in R.L.E.: 1946+20 (Cambridge, Mass.: Research Laboratory for Electronics, MIT, 1966), 12. 4. Steve Helms, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 206. 5. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and CommunicatiOn in the Animal and the Machine, 2d ed. (Cambndge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1961),23. 6. Heims, Von Neumann/Wiener, 189. 7. Norbert Wiener, "A Scientist Rebels," Atlantic Monthly, January 1947, and Bulletin of the Atomic Sci- entlSts, January 1947. 8.

Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind 59, no. 236 (1950). Repnnted In The Mind's I: Fantasies and ReflectiOns on Self & Soul, ed. Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Den- nett (New York: BasIC Books, 1981), 53-67. 15. Ibid. 16. QIoted In Steve Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 276. 17. QIoted ibid., 370. 18. QIoted ibid. 19. QIoted ibid., 371. 20. George A. Miller, "The MagICal Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capac- ity for Processing Information," Psychological Review 63, no. 2 (1956): 81; http://www.well.com/user/ smalin/ miller.html. 21.


pages: 524 words: 120,182

Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell

Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic management, anti-communist, Arthur Eddington, Benoit Mandelbrot, bioinformatics, cellular automata, Claude Shannon: information theory, clockwork universe, complexity theory, computer age, conceptual framework, Conway's Game of Life, dark matter, discrete time, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Eddington experiment, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Garrett Hardin, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gregor Mendel, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker News, Hans Moravec, Henri Poincaré, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Conway, John von Neumann, Long Term Capital Management, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, Menlo Park, Murray Gell-Mann, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, Norman Macrae, Paul Erdős, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, Ray Kurzweil, reversible computing, scientific worldview, stem cell, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine

For an account of self-replication in DNA and how it relates to mathematical logic and self-copying computer programs, see Hofstadter, D. R., Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, 1979, pp. 495–548. “reproductive potentialities of the machines of the future’ ”: Quoted in Heims, S. J., John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980, pp. 212–213. “their respective nonfiction”: Kurzweil, R., The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking, 1999; and Moravec, H., Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

SLACER: A Self-Organizing Protocol for Coordination in Peer-to-Peer Networks. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(2), 2006, pp. 29–35. Hardin, G. The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1968, pp. 1243–1248. Heims, S. The Cybernetics Group. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Heims, S. J. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980. Hobbes, T. Leviathan. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, (1651/1991). Hodges, A. Alan Turing: The Enigma. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983. Hoelzer, G. A. Smith, E., and Pepper, J. W., On the logical relationship between natural selection and self-organization.


pages: 476 words: 121,460

The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya

Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, Andrew Wiles, Benoit Mandelbrot, business cycle, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clockwork universe, cloud computing, Conway's Game of Life, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, DeepMind, deferred acceptance, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Georg Cantor, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jean Tirole, John Conway, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, Norman Macrae, P = NP, Paul Samuelson, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, second-price auction, side project, Silicon Valley, spectrum auction, Steven Levy, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological singularity, Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, zero-sum game

Haigh, Thomas, Priestley, Mark and Rope, Crispin, 2016, ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Hargittai, István, 2006, The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Heims, Steve J., 1982, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Hoddeson, Lillian, Henriksen, Paul W., Meade, Roger A. and Westfall, Catherine, 1993, Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hodges, Andrew, 2012, Alan Turing: The Enigma.

Nasar, A Beautiful Mind. 41. Sylvia Nasar claims Nash was not gay: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/mar/26/biography.highereducation. 42. Leonard, Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory. 43. Steve J. Heims, 1982, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 44. Quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 45. Quoted in ibid. 46. See Leonard, ‘Reading Cournot, Reading Nash’. 47. Merrill M. Flood, 1952, Some Experimental Games, RAND Research Memorandum RM-789-1. 48. From Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma. 49.


pages: 332 words: 109,213

The Scientist as Rebel by Freeman Dyson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asilomar, Boeing 747, British Empire, Claude Shannon: information theory, dark matter, double helix, Edmond Halley, Ernest Rutherford, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gregor Mendel, Henri Poincaré, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, kremlinology, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Norbert Wiener, Paul Erdős, Plato's cave, precautionary principle, quantum entanglement, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, traveling salesman, undersea cable

The day after his arrival, he died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism on the steps of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Dark Hero of the Information Age5 is the third biography of Norbert Wiener, unless there are others of which I am ignorant. First came a joint biography of Wiener and the mathematician John von Neumann, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, by Steve Heims in 1980.6 Then came Norbert Wiener, 1894–1964, by Pesi Masani in 1990.7 The main justification for a new biography is that the three biographies emphasize different aspects of Wiener’s life and character. The Heims biography emphasizes politics. It is mainly concerned with Wiener’s activities as a social critic in the last third of his life.


pages: 453 words: 111,010

Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Aldred

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, nudge unit, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spectrum auction, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

Quoted in Leonard, Robert J. (1995), ‘From Parlor Games to Social Science: Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory 1928–1944’, Journal of Economic Literature, 33 (2), 730. 8 Nasar, 94. 9 Ibid. 10 Quoted in Heims, S. (1980). John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge: MIT Press), 327. 11 Quoted in Poundstone, W. (1992), Prisoner’s Dilemma (New York: Anchor Books), 168. 12 Quoted in Ferguson, N. (2017), The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook (London: Allen Lane), 260. 13 Hertzberg, H. (2001), ‘Comment: Tuesday, and After’, New Yorker, 24 September 2001, 27.


pages: 413 words: 119,587

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots by John Markoff

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, AI winter, airport security, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Atkinson, Bill Duvall, bioinformatics, Boston Dynamics, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, call centre, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chris Urmson, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, collective bargaining, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data acquisition, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, dual-use technology, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, General Magic , Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Gunnar Myrdal, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, haute couture, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, hype cycle, hypertext link, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, Ivan Sutherland, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, medical residency, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Philippa Foot, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Richard Stallman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, semantic web, Seymour Hersh, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, skunkworks, Skype, social software, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, strong AI, superintelligent machines, tech worker, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tenerife airport disaster, The Coming Technological Singularity, the medium is the message, Thorstein Veblen, Tony Fadell, trolley problem, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, zero-sum game

pagewanted=all. 12.Ibid. 13.Ibid. 14.Carew, Walter Reuther, 144. 15.The Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, “The Triple Revolution,” Liberation, April 1964, http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm. 16.Mark D. Stahlman, “Wiener’s Genius Project” (invited paper, IEEE 2014 Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century, 2014). 17.Steve J. Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980), 343. 18.Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964), 29. 19.“Machines Smarter Than Men? Interview with Dr. Norbert Wiener, Noted Scientist,” U.S.


pages: 759 words: 166,687

Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics by David A. Mindell

Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Claude Shannon: information theory, Computer Numeric Control, discrete time, Dr. Strangelove, Frederick Winslow Taylor, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, James Watt: steam engine, John von Neumann, Lewis Mumford, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, Norbert Wiener, Paul Samuelson, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, tacit knowledge, telerobotics, Turing machine

The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. Heims, Steve J. Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America: The Cybernetics Group, 1946–1953 . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993. ———. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980 . Hewlett, E. M. “The Selsyn System of Position Indication.” General Electric Review 24 (March 1921): 210–18. Hochheiser, Sheldon. “What Makes the Picture Talk: AT&T and the Development of Sound Motion Picture Technology.” IEEE Transactions on Education 35 (November 1992): 278–85.


pages: 608 words: 150,324

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code by Matthew Cobb

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Claude Shannon: information theory, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, CRISPR, dark matter, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, factory automation, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gregor Mendel, heat death of the universe, James Watt: steam engine, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, phenotype, post-materialism, Recombinant DNA, Stephen Hawking, synthetic biology

Heijmans, B. T., Tobi, E. W., Stein, A. D. et al., ‘Persistent epigenetic differences associated with prenatal exposure to famine in humans’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 105, 2008, pp. 17046–9. Heims, S. J., John von Neumann & Norbert Weiner: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, London, MIT Press, 1980. Heims, S. J., The Cybernetics Group, London, MIT Press, 1991. Henikoff, S., Keene, M. A., Fechtel, K. and Fristrom, J. W., ‘Gene within a gene: nested Drosophila genes encode unrelated proteins on opposite DNA strands’, Cell, vol. 44, 1986, pp. 33–42.


pages: 339 words: 57,031

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, Bill Atkinson, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, book value, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Californian Ideology, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, distributed generation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Dynabook, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Gilder, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, new economy, Norbert Wiener, peer-to-peer, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Richard Stallman, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Yom Kippur War

Constructing a Social Science for Post-War America: The Cybernetics Group, 1946 –1953. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. ———. “Gregory Bateson and the Mathematicians: From Interdisciplinary Interaction to Societal Functions.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 13 (1977): 141–59. ———. John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980. Helmreich, Stefan. “Artificial Life, Inc.: Darwin and Commodity Fetishism from Santa Fe to Silicon Valley.” Science as Culture 10, no. 4 (2001): 483 –504. ———. Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.