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How do computer networks really behave? Through hardware and software, symbols and code, they do their work. Though machine language has been in development for decades, it seems only recently that spoken and written language has seemed primitive by comparison. Intelligence today is forever coupled with these intensive languages of distributed communications, tied to computerized markets, economies and networks. Talk is cheaper than ever.
In "Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence" George Dyson comes from an eminent family of theorists to relate his personal study of machine intelligence -- intelligence that resides elsewhere than in a human brain. He traces the evolution of machine language to the philosophers Leibniz and Hobbes up through a lineage of prescient thinkers including Charles Babbage, whose "Analytical Engine" predated reusable computer code, and George Boole, whose Boolean algebra allows concepts or ideas to be formulated through the logical operations of symbols operating on variables expressed in binary arithmetic. (Yes, it's what you use with some search engines.)
From the nineteenth-century English physician Alfred Smee, to the twentieth-century English logician Alan Turing, great strides were made in machine thought, long before computers were ever built. Other scientists pursued the connections between computation and self-replicating organisms, paving the way for the modern study of artificial intelligence.
Dyson recounts the various experiments in a clear and interesting narrative. The lay reader is more than ready to conclude, by the middle of this book, that computer code and organic matter are not dissimilar. Which explains not only why computers won't go away, but also the inevitability of more movies such as "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World."
This book is challenging and entertaining, and also explains much about the digital universe, much more so than many books which concentrate on the technological and business side. It is extensively annotated and has some interesting surprises. If you enjoy the connections between business and technology, read "Darwin Among the Machines."
Michael Pellecchia writes about business and finance books each month He can be reached at michael_pellecchia@bookpage.com.
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