An often interesting and provocative - though sometimes obvious
and, finally, unconvincing - historical exploration of humanity's
relationship to machines. Mazlish (History/MIT; The Meaning of Karl
Marx, 1984, etc.) says that the three great shocks to our
conception of ourselves-with each shock forcing us to relinquish
another claim to uniqueness - have been the Copernican Revolution,
removing Earth from its centrality; Darwin's placement of humanity
within the animal kingdom; and Freud's excavation of the
unconscious. Now, claims the author, "we are now coming to realize
that humans are not as privileged in regard to machines as has been
unthinkingly assumed" - and thus the "fourth discontinuity,"
between ourselves and machines, is eliminated. That people and
machines have coevolved, each shaping the other, is demonstrable;
that they are of the same essential nature is an idea that seems,
at least as treated here, destined to remain a metaphor. To support
his claim, Mazlish surveys an eclectic intellectual history,
including a chronicle of automata, from the Jewish golem to
Vaucanson's duck (once the talk of 18th-century Paris, said to have
"drank, ate, digested, cackled and swam") to Blade Runner, the
intellectual response to the Industrial Revolution; the work of
Linnaeus and Darwin; the research of Freud and Pavlov, revealing
mechanistic aspects of behavior; Babbage's Difference Engine,
turning the power of machines to intellectual tasks, as well as
Samuel Butler's Erewhon, which depicted machines in revolt; and the
two revolutions of our own age - the coming of computers and of
biogenetic technology. Too flat and meandering to germinate
something as vital as a reassessment of the humanity/machine
symbiosis. (For a more expansive and engaging treatment of a
similar theme, see Gregory Stock's Metaman, reviewed below.)
(Kirkus Reviews)
From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to current films like The
Terminator about menacing androids, writers have expressed concern
about computers and biogenetic creations taking over or altering
human life. In this engrossing and lively book, Bruce Mazlish
discusses the complex relationship between humans and machines,
pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical (our
bodies increasingly hooked up to artificial parts), and of computer
robots being programmed to think. Mazlish argues that just as
Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud overturned our illusions of
separation from and domination over the cosmos, the animal world,
and the unconscious, it is now necessary to relinquish a fourth
fallacy or discontinuity--that humans are discontinuous and
distinct from the machines they make. Drawing on history and
legend, science and science fiction, Mazlish examines how events
and individuals have shaped the ways that humans relate to
machines. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons
(forerunners of the robot); he discusses the seventeenth-century
debate over what was called the "animal machine"; he shows how the
Industrial Revolution created a truly mechanical civilization; he
looks at what thinkers such as Descartes, Linnaeus, Darwin, Freud,
Pavlov, Charles Babbage, T.H. Huxley, and Samuel Butler contributed
to our understanding of human nature as contrasted with animal or
machine; and he surveys the modern revolutions in biogenetics and
computer and brain sciences that have brought humans and machines
closer together than ever before. Mazlish argues provocatively that
human nature is best understood in the context of the machines and
tools we have created and that humans and our creations-computer
robots-will eventually evolve into two new species coexisting in a
symbiotic relationship.
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