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

~ (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.

From Publishers Weekly

In this mind-expanding exploration of the synergistic intersection of computer science, biology, systems theory, cybernetics and artificial intelligence, Kelly investigates what he calls "vivisystems"--lifelike, complex, engineered systems capable of growing in complexity. Among the objects and ideas that he scrutinizes are computer models that simulate ecosystems; the "group mind" of bee hives and ant colonies; virtual-reality worlds; robot prototypes; and Arizona's Biosphere 2. Former publisher and editor of Whole Earth Review , now executive editor of Wired , Kelly distills the unifying principles governing self-improving systems, which he labels "the nine laws of god." Leaping from Antonio Gaudi's futuristic buildings in Barcelona to computerized "smart" houses to computer simulations that challenge Darwinian evolutionary theory, this sprawling odyssey will provoke and reward readers across many disciplines.
Copyright 1994 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: 528 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 13, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201483408
• ISBN-13: 978-0201483406
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #94,060 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 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.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps the most important book of the 90s, August 23, 2006

By	Chris Anderson (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Why are the three most powerful forces in our world--evolution, democracy and capitalism--so controversial? Hundreds (in the case of democracy, thousands) of years after they were first understood, we still can't quite believe these three phenomena work. Socialist Europe resists capitalism, the religious right in America questions evolution and the Middle East makes a mockery of democracy. When you think about it, it's easy to understand why: all three are radically counterintuitive. "One person, one vote?" What if they vote wrong?

But that's the problem--we're thinking about it. Our brains aren't wired to understand the wisdom of the crowd. Evolution, democracy and capitalism don't work at the anecdotal level of personal experience, the level at which our story-driven synapses are built to engage. Instead, they're statistical, operating in the realm of collective probability. They're not right--they're "righter". They're not predictable and controllable--they're inherently out of control. That's scary and unsettling, but also hugely important to understand in a world of increasing complexity and diminishing institutional power (mainstream media: meet blogs; military: meet insurgency).

Fortunately, this book that makes sense of all of this. Out of Control was first published in 1994, well before its time, but it's one of those rare books that sells better each year it gets older. That's because Kelly recognized that the messy markets of natural selection, enlightened self-interest and invisible hands all anticipated the Internet and the delights of watching peer-to-peer cacophony create the greatest oracle the world has ever seen. Some of the examples may be a bit dated a dozen years later, but the message has only become more true: "There is no central keeper of knowledge in a network, only curators of particular views," he writes. The emergent mob wisdom of the blogosphere and Wikipedia were unimaginable then, but somehow Kelly imagined them all the same. This may be the smartest book of the past decade.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Co-Evolution of Man and Machine, April 17, 2000

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Kevin has produced what I regard as one of the top five books of this decade. A very tough read but worth the effort. I had not understood the entire theory of co-evolution developed by Stewart Brand and represented in the Co-Evolution Quarterly and The Whole Earth until I read this book. Kevin introduces the concept of the "hive mind", addresses how biological systems handle complexity, moves over into industrial ecology and network economics, and concludes with many inspiring reflections on the convergence of biological and technical systems. He was easily a decade if not two ahead of his time.