Customer Reviews

II cybernetic frontiers

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This is one of those books that I've periodically pulled off the shelf again and again over the years. Stewart Brand's journalistic foray into (what was then) pre-Internet, hacker/computer culture shows us the roots/rock/reggae of an earlier generation of programmers and designers who were busy creating a new world minus the hype, marketing and IPO fever. Re-viewing this book over the years since it was first published always gives fresh insight into where we've been.(Gosh nose where we are going.) Worthy of reprinting and rediscovery in the 21st century. Thank you, Mr. Brand...

The booklet looks like a couple of vanity press scientific articles until you actually read it. It's instructive to remember, once you do read it, that it was written while Richard Nixon was still in office, when ARPAnet was getting its bottom spanked on its way out of the Military-Industrial womb, and when computer games were little more than an idea. Brand's interviews with cybernetics pioneers and then-20-something compunauts (now pushing retirement) make clear in retrospect that the age that began in the late 60's is still the one we're in now. The cultural puzzles of deepening computer interaction started *there*. This engaging snapshot of personalities in context, mixed with Brand's pre-2001 spin on what computerization could mean to culture, should be required reading.

"Fascinating account (1974 edition) of cybernetics & early days of AI by Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog, Long Now Foundation etc.).

Early mention of ARPA net's potential is prescient: 'Since huge quantities of information can be computer digitized & transmitted, music researchers could...swap records over the Net with "essentially perfect fidelity." So much for record stores (in present form).'