Talking Back to the Machine: Computers and Human Aspiration

From the editors of the wildly successful Beyond Calculation comes another exploration of the overwhelming impact of computers on our future. This time, the essays focus on the human impact of computer technology and culture: how computers will affect the ways we teach, learn, communicate, relate to each other, and live in the coming decades. The contributors, representing the best of many fields, include Secretary of Defense William Perry on how computers will affect warfare; Brian Ferrin on technology and storytelling; Patti Maes on intelligent agents; Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann on the quality of information; Eliot Soloway on the impact of computers on education; and many more. Like Beyond Calculation, praised by the New York Times for its "astonishing intellectual reach," this sequel engages readers with some of the most compelling and important issues of our time.

Peter J. Denning is associate dean for computing and chair of the Computer Science Department in the School of Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University. He was formerly the founding director of the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science at the NASA Ames Research Center, and the president of the Association for Computing Machinery 1980-82.