Audiobook13 hours
Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
Written by Thomas Rid
Narrated by Robertson Dean
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
As lives offline and online merge, it's easy to forget how we got here.#160;Rise of the Machines#160;reclaims the story of cybernetics, a control theory of man and machine. Thomas Rid delivers a portrait of our technology enraptured era. Springing from mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of myths about the future of machines. This vision radically transformed the postwar world, ushering in sweeping cultural change. Cybernetics triggered cults, the#160;Whole Earth Catalog, and feminist manifestos, just as it fueled martial gizmos and the air force's foray into virtual space. As Rid shows, cybernetics proved a powerful tool for two competing factions-those who sought to make a better world and those who sought to control the one at hand. In the Bay Area, techno-libertarians embraced networked machines as the portal to a new electronic frontier. In Washington, DC, cyberspace provided the perfect theater for dominance and war. That ldquo;first cyberwarrdquo; went on for years-and indeed has never stopped. In our cybernetic future, the line between utopia and dystopia continues to be disturbingly thin.
Author
Thomas Rid
Thomas Rid is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author most recently of the acclaimed Rise of the Machines (2016), a history of cybernetics. He testified on disinformation in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
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Reviews for Rise of the Machines
Rating: 3.522727254545455 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
22 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This wasn't quite what I expected. Rather than a general overview, it focuses on three areas— military interests, stones fascinated by the possibilities of virtual reality trips, and anarchists looking to retain their anonymity—and how each of these cultural groups viewed cybernetics. My take away from it is that the promise of cybernetics seems to be continually undermined by those who wish to abuse it. So it goes.