Get 3 audiobooks free with a 30-Day Free Trial Sign Up Free

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History

Author:
Thomas Rid
Read by:
Robertson Dean
Read Read Own Own

Unabridged Audiobook

Listen Free Now
  • Listen free with a 30-day free trial
  • Choose 2 bonus VIP books
  • Enjoy 10,000 always free books
Ratings
Book
Narrator
Release Date
June 28, 2016
Duration
13 hours 1 minute
Summary
As lives offline and online merge, it's easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the story of cybernetics, a control theory of man and machine. Thomas Rid delivers a portrait of our technology enraptured era.

Springing from mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of myths about the future of machines. This vision radically transformed the postwar world, ushering in sweeping cultural change. Cybernetics triggered cults, the Whole Earth Catalog, and feminist manifestos, just as it fueled martial gizmos and the air force's foray into virtual space.

As Rid shows, cybernetics proved a powerful tool for two competing factions—those who sought to make a better world and those who sought to control the one at hand. In the Bay Area, techno-libertarians embraced networked machines as the portal to a new electronic frontier. In Washington, DC, cyberspace provided the perfect theater for dominance and war. That “first cyberwar” went on for years—and indeed has never stopped. In our cybernetic future, the line between utopia and dystopia continues to be disturbingly thin.
Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History

Author: Thomas Rid
Read by: Robertson Dean
Listen Free Now Get any book plus
2 bonus VIP books
1 book added to cart
Subtotal
$29.99
View Cart