Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
"Dazzling." —Financial Times
As lives offline and online merge even more, it is easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the spectacular story of cybernetics, one of the twentieth century's pivotal ideas.
Springing from the mind of mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of seductive myths about the future of machines. Cybernetics triggered blissful cults and military gizmos, the Whole Earth Catalog and the air force's foray into virtual space, as well as crypto-anarchists fighting for internet freedom.
In Rise of the Machines, Thomas Rid draws on unpublished sources—including interviews with hippies, anarchists, sleuths, and spies—to offer an unparalleled perspective into our anxious embrace of technology.
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Thomas Rid. (2016). Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History. W. W. Norton & Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Thomas Rid. 2016. Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History. W. W. Norton & Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Thomas Rid. Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
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"Dazzling." —Financial Times
As lives offline and online merge even more, it is easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the spectacular story of cybernetics, one of the twentieth century's pivotal ideas.
Springing from the mind of mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of seductive myths about the future of machines. Cybernetics triggered blissful cults and military gizmos, the Whole Earth Catalog and the air force's foray into virtual space, as well as crypto-anarchists fighting for internet freedom.
In Rise of the Machines, Thomas Rid draws on unpublished sources—including interviews with hippies, anarchists, sleuths, and spies—to offer an unparalleled perspective into our anxious embrace of technology.
- reviews
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- source: Bruce Sterling;New Scientist
- content: [E]very chapter opens up as smoothly as an automated glass door. . . . [A] thoughtful, enlightening book. . . a melange of history, media studies, political science, military engineering, and, yes, etymology. . . . In Rise of the Machines, Rid has created a meticulous yet startling alternate history of computation.
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- source: Michael Saler;Wall Street Journal
- content: Rid's fascinating survey of the oscillating hopes and fears expressed by the cybernetic mythos offers an implicit lesson.
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- source: Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, author of What Technology Wants and The Inevitable
- content: A common theme connects war machines, computer networks, social media, ubiquitous surveillance, and virtual reality. For fifty years or more the same people and the same ideas weave through these innovations united by the term 'cyber,' as in cyberspace and cybernetics. Read this amazing history and you'll go: 'Aha!'
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- source: Financial Times
- content: Rid, a professor in security studies at King's College London, is a fine chronicler of the debate, deftly recounting the hope, hype, and fears that have accompanied our thinking on automation. . . . Fascinating. . . Dazzling.
- premium: False
- source: Zeynep Tufekci;The New York Times Book Review
- content: Rid's book offers a useful history as well as a chance to re-examine our current technological crossroads.
- premium: False
- source: P. W. Singer, author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know and Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War
- content: Rise of The Machines isn't just an insightful history of cybernetics but also a fascinating journey with the twentieth-century thinkers—from tech giants and eccentric mathematicians to science fiction writers and counterculture gurus—who have shaped how we understand machines and ourselves.
- premium: False
- source: General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA
- content: Sometimes the most important things are hiding in plain sight. At least that's what I concluded from Rise of the Machines, Thomas Rid's masterful blending of the art of a storyteller, the discipline of an historian, and the sensitivity of a philosopher. Machines unmasks how really disruptive this "cyber thing" has been and will continue to be to nearly all aspects of human experience. It's more than food for thought. It's a banquet.
- premium: False
- source: Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots
- content: Rise of the Machines is a fascinating history of cybernetics, and of the visionaries like Norbert Wiener who first imagined the potential—and peril—of machines that would begin to replicate the capabilities of the human mind.
- premium: False
- source: Robert Lee, former U.S. Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations officer and SANS instructor
- content: Everyone I know should read this book. It will be a classic.
- premium: True
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Starred review from May 15, 2016
A fascinating study of the "seductive power of the cybernetic mythos."The first triumph of cybernetics, the interaction of humans and machine, occurred during World War II. In 1940, British anti-aircraft gunners almost never hit high-flying Luftwaffe bombers; within a few years, input from early computers and radar vastly increased their accuracy. More triumphs and misfires followed, along with an ongoing debate over what it means, all superbly recounted by Rid (War Studies/King's Coll., London; Cyber War Will Not Take Place, 2013, etc.). He deplores observers who regularly predict that computer "intelligence" will ultimately surpass that of the human brain. Intelligence (i.e. "thinking") is irrelevant, emphasized early scientists led by cybernetics guru and Rid's hero, MIT mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener (1894-1964). "The brain is not a thinking machine, it is an acting machine," wrote cybernetics pioneer Ross Ashby in 1948. "It gets information and then it does something about it." True cybernetics describes a symbiosis between humans and machines, but science-fiction writers missed the point with raging robots a la the movie 2001, and the counterculture delivered products from dianetics to The Whole Earth Catalog. While popular enthusiasm peaked during the 1970s, the pitiful reality was massive computers with less power than an iPhone churning out payrolls and tracking Soviet aircraft. Stewart Brand, of Whole Earth fame, launched modern cybernetics by putting the Catalog online in 1985. Since then, its vision has pitted libertarians, who predict an interconnected world free of government and commerce, against the establishment, who see increasing social control, burgeoning commerce, and efficient, nearly bloodless war. Not a history of computers but an ingenious look at how brilliant and not-so-brilliant thinkers see--usually wrongly but with occasional prescience--the increasingly intimate melding of machines and humans.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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"Dazzling." —Financial Times
As lives offline and online merge even more, it is easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the spectacular story of cybernetics, one of the twentieth century's pivotal ideas.
Springing from the mind of mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of seductive myths about the future of machines. Cybernetics triggered blissful cults and military gizmos, the Whole Earth Catalog and the air force's foray into virtual space, as well as crypto-anarchists fighting for internet freedom.
In Rise of the Machines, Thomas Rid draws on unpublished sources—including interviews with hippies, anarchists, sleuths, and spies—to offer an unparalleled perspective into our anxious embrace of technology.
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