The Future Does Not Compute

Transcending the Machines in Our Midst

By Stephen L. Talbott
1st Edition May 1995
1-56592-085-6, Order Number: 0856
502 pages

This book explores the networked computer as an expression of the darker, dimly conscious side of the human being. What we have been imparting to the Net -- or what the Net has been eliciting from us -- is a half-submerged, barely intended logic, contaminated by wishes and tendencies we prefer not to acknowledge. The urgent necessity is for us to wake up to what is most fully human and unmachinelike in ourselves, rather than yield to an ever more strangling embrace with our machines. The author's thesis is sure to raise a controversy among the millions of users now adapting themselves to the Net.