Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World (Paperback)

by Kevin Kelly (Author) "I AM SEALED in a cottage of glass that is completely airtight..." (more)
Key Phrases: mobot lab, prediction machinery, coevolutionary life, Tom Ray, Biomorph Land, Prediction Company (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
In many ways, the 20th century has been the Age of Physics. Out of Control is an accessible and entertaining explanation of why the coming years will probably be the Age of Biology -- particularly evolution and ethology -- and what this will mean to most every aspect of our society. Kelly is an enthusiastic and well-informed guide who explains the promises and implications of this rapidly evolving revolution very well.

Review
...represents an attempt to comprehend the possible future evolution of everything. This is the wonderful sort of subject which can quickly transform a reader's idle curiosity into an obsessive craving for more knowledge and imaginative interpretation. Kelly offers plenty of both, with hackle-raising enthusiasm, eloquence, and even that scientific rarity, a sense of humor. -- London Spectator

...the best of an important new genre. The book offers a pointed reminder that self organization...is the essence of innovation, progress, and life itself. These are eternal ideas -- and ideas whose time has come. -- Forbes ASAP

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 13, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201483408
• ISBN-13: 978-0201483406
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #41,706 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Painful but thought provoking evaluation of complex systems, February 1, 1998

By A Customer

This is the best badly written book I have read lately. Kelly's book provides an enthusiastic reflection on the evolution of complex systems, full of vivid images and provocative metaphors, yet one can't avoid the impression he wrote it down as he thought of it. Kelly is a magazine editor (Wired) and his book comes across like a 475-page magazine article -- whenever he decides to change directions mid-chapter, he simply inserts a rosette and moves on. This book and its readers would have been well served by passing the text through the hands of a demanding book editor -- the result would have been a text about 150 pages shorter and much clearer. It also would have been helpful to have had the text proofread -- I nearly tore up the book reading over and over his confused expression "hone in on", an illiterate cross between "hone" and "home in on." I don't know Kelly's educational background. Reading his book I get the impression that his formal credentials are minimal but that he's very good at finding smart people and following them around. The result is a book that chronicles the development of this field while communicating his fascination with complex concepts he just barely understands, and his dilletante's infatuation with the jargon that describes it. The ideas in this book, and particularly the juxtapositions of ideas that Kelly assembles, are well worth reading about. But a better approach might be to skim the book, noting authors and titles, and then go straight to the source material listed at length in the back.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mind-expanding ride, March 25, 2000

By	Craig Webster (Auckland, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This book is a fascinating roller-coaster ride through a host of emerging technologies which will no doubt have an influence on all our futures. Kevin Kelly demonstrates quite convincingly how the technological is becoming more biological. Artificial intelligence, robotics and our knowledge of ants and bees has produced insect-like robots capable of smart collective behaviour. Genetics, evolutionary theory and massively parallel connectionist machines (the fastest computers on the planet) are yielding emerging fields like evolutionary software design where the computer code is "bred" rather than being written. Open, closed, complex, self-organising, centrally controlled and distributed systems are all examined and contrasted, including everything from Borgian libraries to zero-sum games. Kelly tells us of his personal experience in Biosphere II, and contrasts the paradigmatic differences between the made and the born. What is made by us tends to be minimal, mechanical, predictable and maintenance intensive (even in our "autonomous" systems). By contrast, when we consider the different magnitudes of information in a blueprint compared with a DNA strand, we see that the born is vastly more complex, organic, unpredictable and constantly adapting to environmental changes.

The book on the whole is accessible and a real technological page turner. It will be of particular interest to anyone with some background in computing, artificial intelligence, biology, information theory or cognitive science.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended for anyone interested in the future., March 5, 1999

By A Customer

Love this book. A great introduction to a world of ideas and concepts about evolution and technologies that are already shaping our (near) future. Horizon-expanding ideas--indeed, the chapter on Borges Library literally had my brain "buzzing" with activity and a restless night of wild dreams on the subject. As the author states himself, he does not write or develop anything new, rather, he creates exposure to the fascinating work of others. Though it is not difficult or dry, the entire book is concepts--not for someone looking for a light novel.