Moths to the Flame: The Seductions of Computer Technology - Hardcover

Rawlins, Gregory J. E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262181762 ISBN 13: 9780262181761

Publisher: Bradford Books, 1996

Synopsis

"For two decades now I've been awaiting a book explaining computers and their social consequences to literate readers without using any unnecessary jargon or pedantry—or math. I wanted such a book to lend to all those friends who've pestered me about computers and to all the computer science students who've asked me about computers over the years. I particularly wanted a book that I could buy for my father, who's an accountant of the old school, to explain something of the mysterious world I live in."

Gregory Rawlins, who teaches artificial intelligence at Indiana University, got tired of waiting for that book and decided to write it himself. In Moths to the Flame he takes us on a humorous yet thought-provoking tour of the world wrought by modern technology, a technology, he points out, that is rooted deep inside the military: a technology that when applied to everyday life, may have startling results. Unlike space technology, today's technological race won't simply bring us Tang-flavored Velcro.

Rawlins educates by entertaining. His stories and anecdotes enliven and surprise us while increasing our awareness of technology itself as a player in the political and commercial climate of our times. In our headlong rush toward networked humanity Rawlins raises serious concerns about our future jobs and our future wars: we can figure out what kind of job to get today if we know where technology is taking us tomorrow.

The book's first four chapters explore the worlds of privacy, virtual reality, publishing, and computer networks, while the last four focus on social issues such as warfare, jobs, computer catastrophes, and the future itself. Throughout unusual, eye-opening analogies and historical comparisons—from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the sewing machine to the codebreakers of World War II—give us a context for the computer age, showing how new technologies have always bred intertwined hope and resistance.

Provocative yet balanced and sophisticated, Moths to the Flame is an indispensable guidebook to the future: a Baedeker for the Brave New World.

A Bradford Book

About this title

About the Author:

Gregory Rawlins is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University. He is the author of two texts, one on genetic algorithms and another on the mathematical analysis of computer programs. He is also a noted speaker on issues of electronic publishing.

From Kirkus Reviews:

In eight essays, Rawlins (Mathematics/Indiana Univ.) speculates on the exciting, scary new world computers are bringing us. In some areas, such as military technology, Rawlins does not expand much on Howard Rheingold's study Virtual Reality (1991). And so much is written these days about the Internet that nothing Rawlins says, startling as it might have been even a year ago, seems surprising today. Rawlins's comments on book publishing, however, offer a fascinating scenario for the next 10 or 20 years. It is now cheaper to produce a book electronically than to print it, and publishers, Rawlins suggests, will soon offer inexpensive subscriptions to their lists of upcoming books, in much the way that the cable TV industry works. Many publishers will resist, as movie producers resisted video, but then will find that they cannot exist without electronic books. All that is needed to set this chain of events in motion is a cheap, user-friendly electronic reader. Rawlins is also insightful on the economics of computers: The frighteningly short cycle of invention and obsolescence, and the manner in which software climbs up the organizational charts, performing ever more complicated and vital functions, eliminating not just typists but executives, too. Careers will turn over and over, and few of us, he suggests, will know with any certainty what the rapidly evolving machines are doing. Rawlins also touches on the most vexing problem of all: the poor. Knowledge, expressed by technology, is power. The numbers of those left out of this equation are growing exponentially. Will the economic benefits of the computer ever trickle downward? Is there any way to avoid the creation of an increasingly small elite controlling access to many of technology's most important uses? Does utopia lie ahead--or endless poverty and war? Such questions have no answers, but Rawlins asks them brilliantly. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bradford Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0262181762
• ISBN 13: 9780262181761
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184