Alex Roland, Philip Shiman: Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993 (2002)

“This is the story of an extraordinary effort by the U.S. Department of Defense to hasten the advent of “machines that think.” From 1983 to 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent an extra $1 billion on computer research aimed at achieving artificial intelligence. The Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI) was conceived as an integrated plan to promote computer chip design and manufacture, computer architecture, and artificial intelligence software. What distinguished SCI from other large-scale technology programs was that it self-consciously set out to advance an entire research front. The SCI succeeded in fostering significant technological successes, even though it never achieved machine intelligence. The goal provided a powerful organizing principle for a suite of related research programs, but it did not solve the problem of coordinating these programs. In retrospect, it is hard to see how it could have.

In Strategic Computing, Alex Roland and Philip Shiman uncover the roles played in the SCI by technology, individuals, and social and political forces. They explore DARPA culture, especially the information processing culture within the agency, and they evaluate the SCI’s accomplishments and set them in the context of overall computer development during this period. Their book is an important contribution to our understanding of the complex sources of contemporary computing.”

Keywords and phrases
DARPA, expert systems, Teknowledge, Connection Machine, Shiman, Robert Kahn, supercomputers, ARPA, IntelliCorp, Artificial Intelligence, Lynn Conway, VLSI, ARPANET, Alex Roland, U.S. Congress, Saul Amarel, CPSR, George Heilmeier, Xerox PARC, Craig Fields

Publisher MIT Press, 2002
ISBN 0262182262, 9780262182263
427 pages

Publisher

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Joan Broadhurst Dixon, Eric J. Cassidy (eds.): Virtual Futures. Cyberotics, Technology and Posthuman Pragmatism (1998)

“Virtual Futures explores the ideas that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world. New technologies like cyberspace, the internet, and Chaos theory are often discussed in the context of technology and its potential to liberate or in terms of technophobia. This collection examines both these ideas while also charting a new and controversial route through contemporary discourses on technology; a path that discusses the material evolution and the erotic relation between humans and machines. Including essays by Sadie Plant, Stelarc and Manuel de Landa, the collection heralds the death of humanism and the rise of posthuman pragmatism. This collection provides analyses by both established theorists and the most innovative new voices working in conjunction between the arts and contemporary technology.”

Keywords and phrases
Neuromancer, telepathy, cybernetic, Freud, body without organs, pleasure principle, deterritorialization, Lyotard, postmodern, fascism, cyborg, cyberspace, metaphysic of presence, Hebrew alphabet, Talmud, Cybergothic, Habiru, University of Warwick, pictographic, schizoanalysis

Publisher Routledge, 1998
ISBN 0415133793, 9780415133791
125 pages

Publisher

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Richard Barbrook: Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village (2007)

“Cooperative creativity and participatory democracy should be extended from the virtual world into all areas of life. This time, the new stage of growth must be a new civilisation.

Richard Barbrook traces the early days of the Internet, beginning from a pivotal point at the 1964 World’s Fair, in what critics are saying is the most well-researched and original account of cybertechnology among contemporary works. He demonstrates how business and ideological leaders put forth a carefully orchestrated vision of an imaginary future, where robots would do the washing up, go to the office and think for us. With America at the forefront of these promises, Barbrook shows how ideological forces joined to develop new information technologies during the Cold War era and how what they created historically has shaped the modern Internet, with intended political consequences.

Crucially, he argues that had the past been different, our technological and political present would not be what it is today. Barbrook’s conclusions about the modern state of the Internet, puts forward a call for action in how the world’s most important tool of revolutionary politics should be approached.”

Key terms: Fordism, W.W. Rostow, Marxism, cybernetic, Bell commission, artificial intelligence, gift economy, Stalinist, Maoist, Cold War game, Trotskyist, information society, laissez-faire liberalism, soft power, Hard power, American empire, Tet Offensive, Unisphere, grand narrative, Cold War Left

Publisher Pluto, 2007
ISBN 0745326609, 9780745326603
334 pages

Book website
Video introduction
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