Darwin Among the Machines
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Darwin Among the Machines retraces the steps that led us into the digital wilderness, no less wild for being a universe of our own device. Introducing a cast of known and unknown characters, George B. Dyson traces the course of the information revolution, illuminating the lives and work of visionaries --- from the time of Thomas Hobbes to the time of John von Neumann --- who foresaw the development of artificial intelligence, artificial life, and artificial mind. Weaving a cohesive narrative among his brilliant predecessors, Dyson constructs a view of the evolution of mind in the global network, on a level transcending our own. He concludes that we are in the midst of an experiment that echoes the prehistory of human intelligence and the origins of life. Just as the exchange of coded molecular instructions brought life as we know it to the early earth's primordial soup, and as language and mind combined to form the culture in which we live, so, in the digital universe, are computer programs and worldwide networks combining to produce an evolutionary theatre in which the distinctions between nature and technology are increasingly obscured. Nature, believes Dyson, is on the side of the machines.