Heaven in a Chip: Fuzzy Visions of Society and Science in the Digital Age [Paperback]

Bart Kosko (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2000

Would you still be you if a chip replaced your brain? Who draws the line in the digital age? Those with the most power? Does the digital age even have black-and-white parameters? Where does one country's Internet jurisdiction end and another's begin? Who owns the ocean or the moon -- or your genome blueprint? Bart Kosko sheds new insight on these questions and shows how a revolutionary way of thinking will affect every aspect of life from politics and genetics to warfare, technology, art, privacy, and even mortality itself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As the leading American proponent and theorist of the software-design philosophy known as fuzzy logic, Bart Kosko, author of Fuzzy Future: From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip, can be expected to have high hopes for the discipline. And it's not like it hasn't lived up to some of them already. Forsaking the binary either/or at the heart of digital computing, fuzzy logic's emphasis on the shades of gray between true and false makes it a valuable way to program microchips that guide factories, cars, household appliances, and other gadgetry that works with the physical world's nonbinary facts. It also makes for a pretty slick philosophical end run around the yes-or-no logic that has been the basis of Western thought for the last couple of millennia.

But here Kosko announces that fuzzy logic is ready to do more. Taxes, voting rights, abortion, warfare, genetic engineering, deep physics, computer-generated art, the quest for transcendent posthuman immortality--all of these and more, he tells us, may in the future be transformed by the powerful techniques of fuzzy thinking. The overall result: less government, ignorance, poverty, death; more power to the people. This of course is exciting news, and that may explain why Kosko sometimes seems less than interested in nailing down the details of what fuzz has to do with any of it. So if it's an education in fuzziness you want, look elsewhere--at Kosko's earlier, more introductory Fuzzy Thinking perhaps. But for a vivid snapshot of fuzzy thinking at its most ambitious, jump right on in. --Julian Dibbell --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Kosko's Fuzzy Thinking (1993) explained to laypeople the provenance and uses of "fuzzy logic," a technique of mathematics and engineering that takes into account approximations, half-truths and good guesses about states of affairs that can't be evaluated well in black-and-white terms. Kosko's very readable followup applies "fuzziness" to government, economics and wars ("Fuzzy Politics"); to physics, chemistry and biology ("Fuzzy Science"); and to computers ("Fuzzy Digital Culture"). Sometimes fuzziness, as Kosko explains it, seems mostly an excuse to connect useful, brief explanations of concepts already known by other names. His application of "fuzz" to culture and history, for instance, may strike some readers as coals to Newcastle: a square with four corners (liberal, conservative, libertarian, populist) certainly explains political ideology better than a mere left-right continuum, but is the idea really Kosko's? His explanations of neural networks, entropy and statistical approximation, on the other hand, will give lay readers handy descriptions of important and hard-to-grasp concepts. "Fuzzy logic" in computer science and engineering have helped machines approximate the seat-of-the-pants, rule-of-thumb decision making humans already accomplish. A provocative final chapter promotes the idea that digital networks will be able to hold our own (still-fuzzy) consciousnesses, putting an end to human death: "Biology is not destiny for the minds that will follow us.... Chips are destiny." The breezy, self-assured style of Kosko's chapters contrasts sharply with his meticulous footnotes; readers with some background in areas Kosko covers will want to read both together. Nine b&w illustrations. Author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (November 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609805673
• ISBN-13: 978-0609805671
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #648,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read With an Empty Stomach and an Open Mind, March 11, 2007

By 

Howard Goldowsky "ChessWriter" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Heaven in a Chip: Fuzzy Visions of Society and Science in the Digital Age (Paperback)

There is a lot going on in this book. I'd like to say that it was actually good. But I can't. It was OK. About ten years ago I read an interview of Kosko in the IEEE Spectrum magazine. I was immediately floored by this man's talents: musician, mathematician, scientist, philosopher, you name it, the man had done it. At about the same time, I read Kosko's Fuzzy Thinking. This was at the tail end of a graduate school career, and I enjoyed it very much. The raves from that interview were true. That book opened my mind to a whole new way of approaching math. Recently, I was in the book store, and noticed Kosko's newest book, Noise, on the shelf; I opened it up, skimmed the contents, and remembered what a pleaseure it was to read Fuzzy Thinking so many years ago. I thought I would "catch up" with my Kosko reading before tackling his newest volume. So this is why I bought Heaven in a Chip.

The book is full of ideas.

Unfortunately, many of these ideas read like science fiction, and only a small fraction of them will prove prescient. The appendix is loaded with equations and notes that, I think, would have read better if they were integrated into the main text. The book reads like a stream-of-consciousness at times, with the end-notes tacked on to provide some rigor. Kosko surely knows his stuff.

Being ten years older than when I read Kosko for the first time, I'm much more tuned in to the man's writing ability, his ability to convey ideas in a tight manner, and his grammar and punctuation. Probably due to the success of his previous work (or laziness by the editor) many punctuation errors abound, giving way to choppy sentences and difficult to understand prose. The ideas are there, but they're not tight.

The book is divided into three parts:
Part 1: Fuzzy Politics
Part 2: Fuzzy science
Part 3: Fuzzy Digital Culture

Each part is divided into chapters that give examples of how fuzzy logic can help make a better society, make better technology, or make better government.

In brief, fuzzy logic is the application of the belief that things in the world (and universe) are not just "black and white," but shades of gray. Objects can "be" two apposing properties at once. For example, a person can be both evil and good, to a certain degree, at the same time. Extend this reasoning to math, and then apply it to society, government, and science, and you have the jist of this book.

I don't know where you will find a book quite like this one. Buy it because it's unique, but try not to squirm too much every time Kosko misses a comma.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Ambitious Attempt to Integrate Numerous Ideas, November 26, 2001

By 

David F. Nolan (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Fuzzy Future: From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip (Hardcover)

"The Fuzzy Future" is a wide-ranging work that attempts to integrate concepts from disciplines as diverse as physics, neurophysiology, and the social sciences. It's well-written, but not always easy to follow, due to the diverse subject matter. Definitely not "light reading"!

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kosko's Predictions for the Future of Technology, January 27, 2000

By 

Uni Q - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fuzzy Future: From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip (Hardcover)

Kosko predicts the future within the framework of a paradigm shift from binary thinking to fuzzy logic. There is an extensive index to allow for easy reference and about 100 pages of footnotes that keep the technical jargon out of the primary text. The story flows like a science fiction novel in which the author is constantly surprising the reader with new insights into the way things may be. A great book that leaves you feeling enlightened and just plain smarter.