Books: Hypewatch
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Your support makes all the difference.The author: George Dyson, kayak-builder, Canadian wilderness buff, and youngest sprog from a dynasty of techno-gurus. Father Freeman is a pioneer of quantam theory; sister Esther a digital-age prophetess and entrepreneur. Now young George has quit his boat-house and joined the family trade.
The book: Darwin Among The Machines (Allen Lane, pounds 20), the Penguin group's latest bid to colonise upmarket chat shows (and keep Melvyn Bragg in ideas) with high-concept pop science. Dyson minor aims at a grand synthesis of evolutionary theory and computing technology. Forget the old "can machines think?" chestnut, he advises. Collectively, they can and do, as they evolve intelligence and form a "composite mind". Data-processors now constitute a second nature beyond any central control, and we share the "digital wilderness" with them.
The deal: This bears all the hallmarks of a Brockman project. Hard-bargaining New York agent John Brockman has been the hidden hand behind the boom in headline-hogging pop-sci books over the past decade. Dyson deftly targets two flanks of the Brockman audience: the fans of big-picture evolutionary explanations and zippy Wired types who fancy a dose of High Theory to justify those endless hours spent Net-surfing.
The goods: In essence, this is technological history with a mystical spin, not hard science from a specialist. Dyson treks through the development of computing from Leibniz to Turing and Von Neumann. He treats it all as a tale of evolutionary growth rather than a string of isolated breakthroughs. Hence the Web is a "primitive metabolism" and "the software industry qualifies as a Darwinian process". On top of that he ladles Utopian uplift and lyrical prose (digital intelligence is "a fibrous cocoon that spans the globe with a web of light"). Add detours into SF, and you have a perfect recipe for an intellectual cult.
The verdict: From Emerson to McLuhan, North America has spawned feel- good prophets who bond Spirit with Science and tell us not to fret about new gadgetry. Dyson speaks right from the optimistic heart of this tradition. And his underlying message (Get happy! Go with the flow!) will be music to the ears of the software barons. A history shaped by politics and money appears as - quite literally - a force of nature. No wonder the Microsoft bosses adore this book.
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