War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Paperback)

by Manuel De Landa (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
In the aftermath of the methodical destruction of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War, the power and efficiency of new computerized weapons and surveillance technology have become chillingly apparent. For Manuel DeLanda, however, this new weaponry has a significance that goes far beyond military applications; he shows how it represents a profound historical shift in the relation of human beings both to machines and to information. The recent emergence of intelligent and autonomous bombs and missiles equipped with artificial perception and decision-making capabilities is, for Delanda, part of a much larger transfer of cognitive structures from humans to machines in the late twentieth century. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines provides a rich panorama of these astonishing developments; it details the mutating history of information analysis and machinic organization from the mobile siege artillery of the Renaissance, the clockwork armies of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic campaigns, and the Nazi blitzkrieg up to present-day cybernetic battle-management systems and satellite reconnaissance networks. Much more than a history of warfare, DeLanda's account is an unprecedented philosophical and historical reflection on the changing forms through which human bodies and materials are combined, organized, deployed, and made effective. Manuel DeLanda has published essays on philosophy and film theory. He is a computer programmer and a film artist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Zone Books (December 26, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942299752
• ISBN-13: 978-0942299755
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #393,184 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for wireheads, June 18, 1998

By	William Michael Brown (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

De Landa strikes me as a popularizer, but what he lacks in theoretical rigor he more than makes up for with discipline, serious intent, and sheer vision. Best antidote in print to the kind of mostly ignorant, ahistorical cyberphilia that dominates too much of "Wired" and other ongoing public discussions of our technological future. If you like this, you must not miss "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History", which advances his methods and insight to a much wider, even more significant level.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent and widely-focussed book, September 16, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Hardcover)

This is an amazing piece of work that brings together many diverse fields of study into a remarkable, comprehensive view of humanity's technological and industrial development. highly reccommended for anyone interested in humanity's relationship to the things it makes, and everyone else. A little technical/academic at times, but overall a brilliant work

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars military technologies = emergent systems, February 11, 2006

By	Jeremy P. Bushnell (imaginaryyear.com) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Manuel DeLanda's preeminent virtue as a scholar is the way in which he applies the ideas of complexity theory (emergence, feedback, etc.) to the historical record, and this book follows this template, looking at moments where technological developments (the conoidal bullet, wireless technology) spur military systems to evolve (a process which, in turn, triggers other armies to evolve in response).

If you accept this premise (fail to at your peril), it naturally suggests that the militaries of today will one day evolve even further. So in addition to sketching out historical instances of this sort of thing, DeLanda spends a lot of time drawing attention to contemporary developments in technology or military theory that might be putting us on the road to future phase shifts that might spell Bad News for soldiers and civilians alike. Artificial intelligence, RAND-style war game simulators, and predatory machines (of the sort outlined in DARPA's "Strategic Computing Initiative") all come in for an extended critique, although DeLanda seems more optimistic about technological systems that don't take human beings "out of the loop" (the book ends with an appreciation of humanist interface designer Doug Engelbart).

All in all, this book is pretty essential reading for anyone interested in the "machine" part of the war machine, although it could definitely benefit from a little revision and expansion: some of the Cold War anxiety undergirding the book has lost some of its edge in the intervening years, and I could stand to lose some of it in favor of having DeLanda as a guide through past two wars (although War was published in 1991, Desert Storm hardly ranks a mention, a little odd, given the use of Israeli-built Pioneer UAVs in that conflict).