The Fuzzy Future: From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip - Hardcover

Kosko, Bart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609604465 ISBN 13: 9780609604465

Publisher: Harmony, 1999

Synopsis

Who draws the line in the digital age? Those with the most power? Does the digital age even have black-and-white parameters? Where does one country's Internet jurisdiction end and an-other country's begin? Who owns the ocean or the moon -- or even you? Would you be you if a chip replaced your brain?
        
Fuzzy logic has been the most explosive new concept in science since chaos theory. Now, Bart Kosko, the leading proponent of this revolutionary worldview, tackles these questions and shows how fuzzy thinking will shape every aspect of life in the digital age, from politics and genetics, to warfare and technology and art, and finally to mortality itself. The Fuzzy Future starts with a self-contained explanation of fuzzy logic and then explores how shades of gray, or fuzz, will change how we vote, pay taxes, fund science, shop on the Internet, view abortion, have children, fish the oceans, wage "smart" wars or create "smart" art, raise machine IQs, invest money, view black holes, and confide in our software agents. It also shows us how we may someday challenge death in the digital immortality of a nanochip. Today camcorders, Internet spam filters, nuclear power plants, and the new Volkswagen Beetle depend on fuzzy logic. Tomorrow we may, too, because the future is fuzzy.

About this title

Review

As the leading American proponent and theorist of the software-design philosophy known as fuzzy logic, Bart Kosko, author of Fuzzy Future: From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip, can be expected to have high hopes for the discipline. And it's not like it hasn't lived up to some of them already. Forsaking the binary either/or at the heart of digital computing, fuzzy logic's emphasis on the shades of gray between true and false makes it a valuable way to program microchips that guide factories, cars, household appliances, and other gadgetry that works with the physical world's nonbinary facts. It also makes for a pretty slick philosophical end run around the yes-or-no logic that has been the basis of Western thought for the last couple of millennia.

But here Kosko announces that fuzzy logic is ready to do more. Taxes, voting rights, abortion, warfare, genetic engineering, deep physics, computer-generated art, the quest for transcendent posthuman immortality--all of these and more, he tells us, may in the future be transformed by the powerful techniques of fuzzy thinking. The overall result: less government, ignorance, poverty, death; more power to the people. This of course is exciting news, and that may explain why Kosko sometimes seems less than interested in nailing down the details of what fuzz has to do with any of it. So if it's an education in fuzziness you want, look elsewhere--at Kosko's earlier, more introductory Fuzzy Thinking perhaps. But for a vivid snapshot of fuzzy thinking at its most ambitious, jump right on in. --Julian Dibbell

From the Back Cover

"The best way to learn more about fuzz and its increasing applications, not only to technology but also to science, politics, and even the liberal arts, is to read [Heaven in a Chip]. Bart Kosko writes about it with unfuzzy skill and enthusiasm that makes his book a delight to read."         
-- Martin Gardner, editor of Great Essays in Science

"If you think that resolving ethical, legal, and political disputes is a matter of deciding where to draw the 'line,' think again. Bart Kosko's fascinating new book will convince you that it is the 'line' that's the problem."        
-- Prof. Ian Stewart, author of The Magical Maze

"The mind-boggling epic that is [Heaven in a Chip]."
-- Techweek

About this edition

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0609604465
• ISBN 13: 9780609604465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384