An internationally renowned scientist who fears she's taken one scientific risk too many; a distinguished archaeologist who's haunted by taking too few; a world famous financier who's lost everything except his money; an art gallery owner with a heartbreaking burden; a fugitive filmmaker; the head of a battered women's shelter--these are some of the people who find themselves at the end of the Old Santa Fe Trail at the end of the 20th century. Chance has brought them from all over to beautiful, legendary Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they shape, illuminate, and even deform each other's lives unexpectedly, as if on the very edge of chaos. This edge of chaos, a scientific term for that slender territory between frozen predictability and hopeless disorder, is a dangerously unstable place. Learning and change can only happen there, but always under threat of sliding back to frozen order--or over into the chaotic abyss. And Santa Fe's sons and daughters, even now, keep a precarious foothold on "The Edge of Chaos," bringing their own pasts and their city's rich history into an uncertain but exhilarating future. Pamela McCorduck has published eight other books, translated into most of the major European and Asian languages. She has written for magazines ranging from "Redbook" and "Cosmopolitan" to "Daedalus," and was a contributing editor to "Wired." She was a board member and officer of the American PEN Center in New York, the authors' organization, and an officer of the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She has appeared on many television shows, including PBS's News Hour and the CBS Evening News. CNN based a two-part documentary on her book, "The Futures of Women." For more, see www.pamelamccorduck.com

In the autumn of 1960, twenty-year-old humanities student Pamela McCorduck encountered both the fringe science of early artificial intelligence, and C. P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture on the chasm between the sciences and the humanities. Each encounter shaped her life. Decades later her lifelong intuition was realized: AI and the humanities are profoundly connected. During that time, she wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers of AI, This Could Be Important follows the personal story of one AI spectator, from her early enthusiasms to her mature, more nuanced observations of the field.

This book is a history of artificial intelligence, that audacious effort to duplicate in an artifact what we consider to be our most important property-our intelligence. It is an invitation for anybody with an interest in the future of the human race to participate in the inquiry.

Pamela McCorduck revisits the artificial intelligence arena and updates this look at the history and future of artificial intelligence with over 100 pages of new material. This book should inspire anyone interested in human intelligence and the future of machine intelligence. The reader should not be surprised to find out that there is much more to AI than simple robots and manufacturing automation.

In the autumn of 1960, twenty-year-old humanities student Pamela McCorduck encountered both the fringe science of early artificial intelligence, and C. P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture on the chasm between the sciences and the humanities. Each encounter shaped her life. Decades later her lifelong intuition was realized: AI and the humanities are profoundly connected. During that time, she wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers of AI, This Could Be Important follows the personal story of one AI spectator, from her early enthusiasms to her mature, more nuanced observations of the field.

They're the golden couple of Santa Fe. With his vast wealth, Molloy has launched an innovative foundation. His new wife, Judith Greenwood, is an internationally known scientist, who works at the famous think-tank, the Santa Fe Institute, pursuing the sciences of complexity. They've found each other late in life, and their love story is the envy of everyone in town. Santa Feans yearn to be invited to the famous long table Molloy and his wife host every Sunday night, or to their monthly salon, for the best talk, the best food, and the best wine. Sure to be at these evenings are some of the couple's closest friends, the "starchitect" Leandro Torres, known worldwide for his prize-winning buildings; the influential gallery owner, Nola Holliman; and the beautiful trilingual legal translator, Lucie Marchmont. Yet each of these enviable men and women conceals a tragic personal story. When 9/11 occurs in faraway New York City, these privileged Santa Feans are deeply affected, and must struggle to keep their secrets hidden. An intergenerational struggle erupts, where fathers and sons, and even grandfathers, intrude on each other's lives. As everyone negotiates the catastrophic autumn of 2001, two deaths, plus a nearly fatal car accident, intensify already raw emotions. Though each of these friends suffers deeply, and seeks consolation in very different ways, it is above all Molloy and his wife, the golden couple, who are forced to confront the cruelest meanings of the poem they've loved and read together, "Paradise Lost." PAMELA McCORDUCK is the author or coauthor of ten published books, three of them novels. "Bounded Rationality" is the second in a projected series of Santa Fe Stories, a trilogy whose first book is "The Edge of Chaos," also published by Sunstone Press. Her "Machines Who Think," a history of artificial intelligence, was honored the year of its publication by the New York Public Library; and was reissued in 2004 in a 25th anniversary edition. She has recently written and lectured on "the singularity," that future moment when computers might be more intelligent than their human creators. Among her other books are "The Universal Machine." a study of the worldwide intellectual impact of the computer, and "Aaron's Code," an inquiry into the future of art and artificial intelligence. With Nancy Ramsey, she wrote "The Futures of Women," four scenarios for women worldwide in the year 2015. She has consulted, and constructed future scenarios, for numerous firms in the transportation, financial, and high-tech sectors. She has appeared on CBS, CNN, and Public Television, and CNN devoted a two-part series to "The Futures of Women." She divides her time between New York City and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

An internationally renowned scientist who fears she's taken one scientific risk too many; a distinguished archaeologist who's haunted by taking too few; a world famous financier who's lost everything except his money; an art gallery owner with a heartbreaking burden; a fugitive filmmaker; the head of a battered women's shelter-these are some of the people who find themselves at the end of the Old Santa Fe Trail at the end of the 20th century. Chance has brought them from all over to beautiful, legendary Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they shape, illuminate, and even deform each other's lives unexpectedly, as if on the very edge of chaos. This edge of chaos, a scientific term for that slender territory between frozen predictability and hopeless disorder, is a dangerously unstable place. Learning and change can only happen there, but always under threat of sliding back to frozen order-or over into the chaotic abyss. And Santa Fe's sons and daughters, even now, keep a precarious foothold on "The Edge of Chaos," bringing their own pasts and their city's rich history into an uncertain but exhilarating future. Pamela McCorduck has published eight other books, translated into most of the major European and Asian languages. She has written for magazines ranging from "Redbook" and "Cosmopolitan" to "Daedalus," and was a contributing editor to "Wired." She was a board member and officer of the American PEN Center in New York, the authors' organization, and an officer of the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She has appeared on many television shows, including PBS's News Hour and the CBS Evening News. CNN based a two-part documentary on her book, "The Futures of Women." For more, see www.pamelamccorduck.com