A Whole Ea•uth Catalog Communication Tools for the Information Age EDITED BY KEVIN KELLY FORE ORDBY STEWA T BRAND Communication Tools for the Information Age EDITED BY KEVIN KELLY Catalog A Whole Earth ~ HARMONY BOOKS Staff gathered on deck, with two weeks to go 1ill deadline. Starting with the front row, left to right: Sally, office dog; Don Ryan, usually at the other end of the camera; Susan Erkel Ryan, resting for a change; Laura Benne, paste-up freelancer; Corinne Cullen Hawkins, researcher on loan from Whole Earth Review; Richard Kadrey, with sun glasses and smirk. In the back row, same direction: Kevin Kelly, smiling foolishly (the book is late); Sally, alta. Sarah, Vandershaf, smiling happily (she's done); Sarah Satterlee, chief of the early morning shift; Lori Woolpert, general purpose aide; Kathleen O'Neill, sole designer of book. Not present here, but shown elsewhere: John Chan, paste upper; David Bumor, master indexer; Jeanne Carstensen, midwife of the preliminary book. SIGNAL Researchers Far-Ranging SIGNAL David Finacom Factotum Communication Tools for the Information Age Editor in Chief Corinne Cullen Dick Fugett Kevin Kelly Hawkins Copyright © 1988 by Point Foundation Typesetter Editors Special thanks to James Donnelly All rights reserved. No part of this book may be Richard Kadrey Jay Kinney reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any Circulation Sarah Satterlee means, electronic or mechanical, including Stats and Halftones Keith Jordan Sarah Vandershaf photocopying, recording, or by any information Marins tat Promotion storage and retrieval system, without permission Signal Special in writing from thE publishers. Literary Agent Richard S<:hauffler Issue Editor John Brockman Jeanne Carstensen EWEC Editor Published by Harmony Books, a division of Associates J. Baldwin Crown Publishers, Inc., 225 Park Avenue South, Designer Harmony Books New York, New York 10003 and represented in Kathleen O'Neill Michael Pietsch Canada by the Canadian MANDA Group. Production Manager Point Board HARMONY and colophon are trademarks of Susan Erkel Ryan POINT Crown Publishers, Inc. Stewart Brand Camerawork Doug Carlston Don Ryan Bookkeeper Manufactured in the United States of America Robert Fuller Cindy Fugett Pasteup Huey Johnson Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Laura Benne Subscriptions Kevin Kellly Data John Chan Paul Davis Signal : a whole earth catalog. Includes index. Proofreaders Office Manager 1. Telecommunication-Apparatus and Hank Roberts Susan Rosberg supplies-Catalogs. I. Kelly, Kevin, 1948- Lori W oolpert Assistant Editor TK5103.S49 1988 621.38'0294 88-13165 Indexer Richard Nilsen BOMC offers recordin"s and compact discs, cassettes and records. For infonc·>ation and catalog write to DavidBumor BOMR, Camp Hill, Pi\. 17012. TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Operating Instructions 56 Newsletters 110 Body Language 170 Computer News 3 Introduction 57 Self-Publishing 111 Body Circuits 171 Computer Care 58 Desktop Publishing 112 Performance Art 172 Cheap Computers PRIME INFORMATION 60 Bookmaking 113 Street Performing 173 Used Computers 61 Getting Published 114 Mime 174 Home Office 4 Symbols 62 Independent Publishing 175 Media Rooms 5 Information Theory 63 Alternative Distribution THE AUDIBLE SIGNAL 176 Computers In Nonprofits 6 Cybernetics 64 Alternative Printing 177 Enabling Computers 7 Whole Systems 115 Voicing 8 Self-Organizing Systems 65 Printmaking 116 Public Speaking 178 Robotics 66 Copy Machines 179 Robotic Supplies 9 Cellular Automata 117 Interviewing 67 Xerox Culture 180 The Media Lab 10 Chaos 118 Storytelling 68 Xerox Art 181 Applied Science Fiction 11 Fractals 119 Oral History 13 Artificial Life 120 Listening Skills NE1WORK SOCIETIES INFORMATION CIVICS 14 Codes 121 Cassette Underground 15 Structure 69 Mail Art 122 Books on Tape 182 Copyright 16 Form 70 Postal Networks 123 Radio Archives 183 Intellectual Property 17 Design Strategies 71 Play-by-Mail Games 124 Music-by-Mail 184 Electronic Democracy 18 Memes 72 Computer Adventure Games 125 Music News 185 Media Culture 19 Computer Viruses 73 The WELL 126 Samplers 186 Demographics 74 Teleconferencing 127 Synthesizers 187 Direct Marketing THE ORDER OF 75 Notable Networks 128 Music Software 188 Promotion 76 Computer Bulletin Boards 129 Home Recording 189 Marketing LANGUAGES n Phreakers 130 Experimental Music 190 Advertising 20 Programming Languages 78 Smart Phones 131 Music Theory 191 Propaganda 21 Programming Tools 79 Voice Mail 132 Environmental Recording 192 Urban Legends 22 Software Architecture 80 On-line Activism 133 lnterspecies Communication 193 Information Bureaucracies 23 Hackers 81 Video-Teleconferencing 134 Sound Libraries 194 Censorship 24 Math 82 Global Communications 135 Sound Landscapes 195 Freedom of Information 25 Statistics 83 Information Highways 196 Counterintelligence Methods 26 Words 84 World Information Economy VISUAL KNOWLEDGE 197 Counterintelligence 27 Semantics 85 Packet Radio 136 Visual Landscape 198 Big Brother 28 Writing 86 Nomadic Networks 137 Remote Imaging 199 Countersurveillance 29 Writing Tools 87 Cellular Radio 138 Mapmaking 200 Information Takeover 30 Word Processors 88 Shortwave Radio 139 Maps 201 Information Imperialism 31 Document Processors 89 Pirate Radio 140 Visual Displays 32 Typography 90 Backyard Satellite TV 141 Graphic Design MIND CIRCUITS 33 Calligraphy 91 Global TV 142 Visual Thinking 202 Societies of Mind 34 Foreign Language Word 92 Low-Powered Broadcasting 144 Art 203 Artificial Intelligence Processors 93 Interactive Video 145 Art Supplies 204 Mind/Body 35 Foreign Languages 94 Video-by-Mail 146 Drawing 205 Ecology of Mind 36 Other Languages 95 Video Guides 147 Illustration Tools 206 Brain Tuners 37 Journals 96 Video Making 38 Screenwriting 97 Film Making 148 Computer Graphics 207 Human Biocomputer 150 CAD 208 Mind Circuits 39 Interactive Literature 98 Cinematography 151 Image Processing 209 Cognitive Enhancers 99 Animation 152 Comics 210 Mind Chemistry PUBLISHING FRONTIERS 153 Cartoons 211 Memory 40 'Zines BODILY 154 Visual History 212 Consciousness 41 Magazine Frontiers COMMUNICATION 155 Visual Dictionaries 213 Imagination 42 Reading Skills 100 Presentations 156 Art Reference 214 Creativity 43 Out-of-Print Books 101 Meetings 157 Picture Research 215 Game Playing 44 Research Techniques 102 Workshops 158 Photography Supplies 216 Dreamwork 45 Investigative Journalism 103 Conferences 159 Photography Skills 217 Dreams 46 Independent Scholarship 104 Exhibits 160 Fine Photography 47 Reference Tools 105 Theater 161 Holography GATE5ROAD 4498 CSpitaetcioianlt yIn Ldiebxrainrgie s 106 Acting 162 Fax 218 Gossip 50 Information Brokering 107 Improvisation DIGITAL THINKING 219 Business 108 Directing 51 On-line Searching 52 Clipping Services 109 Dance 163 CD-ROM 220 INDEX 164 HyperCard 53 Alternative News Sources 54 Government Databases 165 Stackware 226 Further 166 Computer Toolbox 55 International News 168 Software 169 Shareware 2 OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS PURPOSE The listings are continually revised and up outside of the envelope. Writing "mail order" dated according to the experience and sug or "catalog request" or "subscription order'' W gestions of Whole Earth Catalog users and staff. will speed your transaction. You can usually E ARE AS GODS and might as well Latest news can be found in our magazine, request free information with an inexpensive get good at it. So far remotely done Whole Earth Review (seep. 53). post card. power and glory - as via government, big business, formal education, church - has RANGE 2. Expect prices to rise. The prices shown here succeeded to the point where gross defects are accurate as of June, 1988. All prices will be obscure actual gains. In response to this di T greater if you are ordering outside of the U.S. lemma and to these gains, a realm of intimate, HIS BOOK LIMITS its investigation to JL personal power is developing - the power of all possible tools having infom1ation at 3. 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INTRODUCTION 3 A REALM WITHOUT DISTANCE INTI<~ODUCING by Stewart Brand BACK WHEN tion frontiers as one the original Whole meta-domain-intri Earth Catalog was hav cately and subver ing a heyday in the sively intercon mid-70s, two products nected. Any tool or were introduced which skill from one of we recommended them may inform or heartily. One was the transfigure any other Vermont Castings one. With over half wood stove, the other of the American was the Apple personal workforce now man computer. Both cost a aging information for few hundred dollars, a living, any appar both were made by and ent drone drudging for revolutionaries who away on mainstream wanted to de-institu information chores tionalize society and might be recruited, empower the individ via some handy out ual, both embodied law technique or clever design ideas and tool, into the holy good business sense, disorder of hacker and both became dom. A hacker takes famous successes. nothing as given, Stewart works in his boat office, a dry-docked shrimp everything as worth creatively fiddling trawler grounded in our waterfront courtyard. with, and the variety which proceeds In the summer of 1988 Vermont Castings from that enricheth the adaptivity, resil cast its last "Defiant" stove i.n response to ience, and delight of us all. increasing air-quality regulation and Society is led, Buckminster Fuller used to struggled to keep its competitive position tell us geezers, by design ideas which (Pause for an important distinction . in a static market. Apple, that summer, emerge in the "outlaw area." That be There is a subspecies of computer hacker was the design leader of America's prime carne Whole Earth's domain. Some of called "crackers" who use their skills to "meta-industry'' of personal computers, the outlaw areas we reported on, such as vandalize systems or steal information its revolution still advancing full tilt, and communes and psychedelic research, for profit. They belong in jail without a was sitting on a vast cash horde which it were inventive and significant, but short keyboard.) employed for basic research on equip lived. Some, such as solar energy and ping a learning world. environmentalist concerns, eventually A "hacker," in the emerging definition, is went mainstream. And one major area, anyone who pushes the edges of the pos Pretty obvious lesson: the Vermont Cast communication technology, simultane sible and permissible. In Signal are tech ings tool manipulated heat, the Apple ously went mainstream and expanded its niques for hacking English, music, audio tool manipulated informati.on. (So did outlaw edge. cassettes, postcards, rubber stamps, the Whole Earth Catalog, and that's why video, diagrams, robots, and the nervous we're still around too, probably.) Information technology is a self-acceler system, to name a fraction of the myriad ating fine-grained global industry that represented here. In all of these realms The Whole Earth operation in Sausalito sprints ahead of laws and diffuses be the distance to the edge is not far, and the these days is in the hands of a new gen yond them. It has done so for twenty distance from one to another is no dis eration, led by Kevin Kelly (age 36). five years and shows every sign of being tance at all. Some of the old geezers an~ still on able to keep dodging for another twenty hand-J. Baldwin, Kathleen O'Neill, Don five, if not indefinitely. Hence Whole The information world is inherently Ryan, Dick Fugett, Richard Nilsen, David Earth's abiding, and now focussed, inter global, in both senses-all-encompassing Bumor, and me (enjoying a dignified role est. and planetary. Welcome to a new whole as editor erneritus)-but the torch has de Earth, whose true-blue image in space cidedly passed to a fresh band of outlaw Kevin and crew wish to consider the full we are no longer just viewing, but begin appreciators. gamut of explosively diverging informa- ning to live. 4 SYMBOLS Man and His Number Words Symbols and Number Carl G. Jung Symbols 1964; 320 pp. (A Cultural History $5.95 of Numbers) ($7.95 postpaid) from: Karl Menninger Dell Reader Service MIT Press P.O. Box 5057 Out of print Des Plaines, IL 60017-5057 Suppose you want to help human communication or Whole Earth Access to re-understand itself. So much of that under standing is wrapped up in numbers that if you Carl Jung did a nice thing just before he died. He penetrate the one you may have a foothold to helped with a British effort to bring all of his work tweak the other one onto a new course. Invent together in one richly illustrated introduction to the language and you invent humans. breadth of his realm. This book covers his con cepts of the unconscious, myths, individuation, the This book penetrates numbers. visual arts, dreams, and analysis. Why aren't all -Stewart Brand psychology books illustrated? -stewart Brand • The 'fairy godmother" of many I vividly recall the case of a professor who had had a tales is also a sudden vision and thought he was insane. He came to symbolic see me in a state of complete panic. I simply took a 400- personification of year-old book from the shelf and showed him an old the female Self. woodcut depicting his very vision. "There's no reason for you to believe that you're insane," I said to him. "They knew about your vision 400 years ago." Whereupon he sat down entirely deflated, but once more normal. • manifestations are what I call the archetypes. They are What we properly call instincts are physiological urges, without known origin; and they reproduce themselves in and are perceived by the sense. But at the same time, any time or in any part of the world-even where they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often transmission by direct descHnt or "cross fertilization" reveal their presence only by symbolic images. These through migration must be ruled out. A bundle of Alpine number billets, small flat sticks some 20 em long on which are carved the cow-rights to which their owner is entitled; An Illustrated the owner's name or syrn bol is on the reverse side. The most ornate Encyclopaedia of these sticks, the one at the extreme right showing the number 122, of Traditional gives the total. • Symbols J.C. Cooper With Three a new element appears in the concept of 1978; 208 pp. numbers. 1-You: The I is still in a state of juxtaposition $12.95 postpaid from: toward the You, but what lies beyond them, the It, is the Thames & Hudson, Inc. Third, the Many, the Universe .... An old Sakai in 500 Fifth Avenue Malacca, on being E,sked his age, replied, "Sir, I am New York, NY 10010 three years old." To him 2 was the You, the near and 1-800-233-4830 familiar with which ~ e lives, to which he feels related and or Whole Earth Access with which he interacts, but this is no longer true of the It, the 3; for him that is the Many, the Alien, the Unknow [Above] Shou-lao, Chinese God of Often I've seen religious or ceremo Longevity, holds the peach of able. nial art and wondered what a immortality, long life and particular element stood for. This prosperity in this late 18th-century fascinating reference will, most soapstone carving. [Right]'Lady If 1~ E_'([_m_JR=_~_~~, likely, provide an answer-or with an Ermine' by Leonardo. The several. Each entry guides you from ermine stands for chastity and the symbol's generally accepted purity-but here the symbolism may have been double-edged, for Three as the plural in Egyptian: (1) flood= heaven with 3 water jugs; interpretation to its more specific the lady is thought to be the (2) water = 3 x wave; (3) 'many' plants = 3 x plant; (4) hair = 3 hairs; cultural or geographic meaning. The mistress of Lodovico il Moro, of the Sforza family, and the ermine was their emblem. (5) weep= eye with 'many·(= 3) tears; (6) fear= dead goose with 3 illustrations are rich and varied, vertical strokes, the genE!ral plural sign, next to the ideogram. crossing time and continent. The Egyptian sky -sarah Satterlee goddess Nut • bends over the world of creation, Parrot Imitation; unintelligent repetition. ordering all Chinese: Brilliance; a warning to things and unfaithful wives. Hindu: An attribute of creating them, Three as the plural in Chinese: (1) forest= 3 x tree; (2) fur = 3 x hair; Kama, god of love. An oracular and rain while maintaining (3) all= 3 x man; (4) speak endlessly ('much')= 3 x speak (mouth bringing bird. It had these qualities also her position of from which words emerge); (5) rape= 3 x woman; (6) gallop (ride in pre-Columbian America. transcendence. 'much') = 3 x horse. INFORMATION THEORY 5 Godel, Escher, Bach Grammatical Man Douglas Hofstadter (Information, Entropy, Language, 1979; 777 pp. and Life) $14.95 Jeremy Campbell ($15.95 postpaid) from: 1982; 319 pp. Vintage Books $9.95 postpaid from: Random House Simon & Schuster/Mail Order Sales 400 Hahn Road 200 Old Tappan Road Westminster, MD 21157 Old Tappan, NJ 07675 1-800-492-0782 (in MD.) 1-800-223-2348 1-800-638-6460 or Whole Earth Access In the age of information it is shocking that there is so little useful information about information - The Mind's I how it behaves, what its economics are, indeed, Douglas R. Hofstadter what it is. A good book on the subject would have and Daniel C. Dennett to talk about the primary domains of information: 1981; 501 pp. Evolution, genetics, computer programming, $12.95 Hofstadter's second volume, The Mind's I, as an entropy, whole systems, and human language. ($14.45 postpaid) from: anthology of essays he co-edits that circles This book does. It is the only one to encompass Bantam Books through the apparent paradoxes of conscious the whole natural ecology of information in a 2451 South Wolf Road ness. Round it goes through children, ant colonies, readable way. Des Plaines, IL 60018 and large computers. Parable and fiction lurk in the -Kevin Kelly 1-800-223-6834 book, about the only animals that can keep a • or Whole Earth Access tentative grip on the circulating elusiveness of self- consciousness. -Kevin Kelly There are probably more than a thousand billion synapses in the brain, and each one is a kind of coding station, where signals arrive in the form of bursts of The subject of the electrical pulses, so many a second, and are translated first book-and the into chemical signals in the form of very small, separate "equentpreoccupa packets. Only if a sufficient number of packets accumu tion of its deities, lates is a critical threshold reached and information sent across the synaptic gap. The nerve cell on the other side mathematician Kurt Godel, artist M. c. of the gap computes the frequency of the arriving packets and, if the frequency is high enough, fires off a Escher, composer signal of its own. This is the means of transmission J.S. Bach, and writer along the basic communications channels of the brain. Lewis Carroll-is The code of the message is changed from electrical to self-reference, what chemical and then back again to electrical as it moves • the author calls from one nerve cell to another. Such a procedure allows "strange loops" or ''tangled hierarchies." It is the plenty of room for chance to enter, and shows how domain of extreme paradox, wht:,re math, art, Of course, you can misleading it is to compare the essential processes of religion (lots of zen in the book, honestly em am afakme iyliaoru rlasenglf uhaegaer •the brain with those of a computer. ployed), and epistemology collid.;,_ It is the fearless as pure uninter exploration of black holes of the' mind. preted sound if you Indeed, Gregory thinks the perceptual system of the try very hard, just brain, so active in testing possible answers to a puzzle Hofstadter set out to make Godel's Incomplete as you can look at set by what the eye sees, is more "intellectually honest" ness Theorem accessible to the ray thinker, and a windowpane if than the supposedly rational parts of the cerebral cortex. happily he succeeds in that. Alor·g the way he you want; but you Faced with an ambiguous object or drawing, it will not illuminates a world of music, mathematics, can't have your fasten on one interpretation and stick to it, unlike the computer intelligence (and goss,;o), and philos cake and eat it rational mind, which will often espouse a particular too-you can't hear dogma in politics or religion and refuse to relinquish it, ophy. The book confirms the suspicion I've had for the sounds both no matter how impressive the countervailing evidence years that perhaps the most adv,gnturous and with and without may be. fruitful human frontier we have these days is the • their meanings. hall of mirrors, Lewis Carroll's looking glass. And so most of the -·-Stewart Brand time people hear "How can machines reproduce themselves?" Queen mainly meaning. Christina of Sweden asked her tutor, Descartes, after he • For those people informed her that the human body, though not the soul, who learn a could be explained in mechanical terms. Good question. Here is a short section of one of thi[J Crab's Genes, language because Three centuries after the Queen asked it, John von turning round and round. When thEt two DNA strands are of enchantment Neumann suggested an answer. He proposed that in unraveled and laid out side by side, they read this way: with its sounds, this living organisms, and even in machines, there exists a ... TTTTITTITCGAAAAAAAAA is a bit disappoint "complexity barrier.· Beyond this barrier, where systems ... AAAAAAAAAGCTITTITTIT .... ing-and yet are of a very high complexity, entirely new principles Notice that they are the same, only one goes forwards mastery of those come into play. It is possible, von Neumann said, for a while the other goes backwards. Tl'is is the defining sounds, even if one machine to make another machine more elaborate than property of the form called "crab ca ,,on" in music. It is no longer hears itself once it attains a certain level of organization--once reminiscent of, though a little different from, a palin them naively, is a beautiful. exhilarating experience. (It it breaks through the complexity barrier. Complexity is a drome, which is a sentence that reads the same would be an interesting tning to try to apply this same decisive property. Below the critical level, the power of backwards and forwards. In molecular biology, such kind of analysis to the hearing of music, where the synthesis decays, giving rise to ever simpler systems. segments of DNA are called "palindromes"-a slight distinction between hearing bare sounds and hearing Above that level, however, the synthesis of more misnomer, since "crab canon" would be more accurate. their •meanings" is far less well understood, yet seems elaborate systems, under the right conditions, becomes --Godel, Escher, Bach very real.) -The Mind's Eye explosive. 6 CYBERNETICS CybernetiC • American Society for Cybernetics, Eds. GRELLING'S PARADOX. Call an adjective •autological" $50/year for 2 issues C y B FRNET!C if it describes itself. "Short" is short, and polysyllabic" is and membership polysyllabic, so "short" and "polysyllabic" are autological. Back issues worth ordering: Let "heterological" mean "not autological". "Long and $10; Vol. 1, Issue 1; "monosyllabic" are heterological. Is "heterological" 1985; 147 pp. heterological? $15; Vol.. 2, Issue 1; 1986; 80 pp. American Society for Cybernetics c/o Department of Engineering Management Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA 23529-0248 Cybernetics is a very loose approach to an even looser subject: the understanding of whole The old epistemology implies that the system, psyche, family structure, the gene systems. The closer one comes to the core of a -what have you, contains or creates the large system, the more it appears to be a hall of problem. The new epistemology implies mirrors, vanishing into self-reference. Nothing that the problem creates the system. governs it, everything governs it. Repeat that, underline that. The problem creates the system. The problem is This infrequent magazine stalks whole understand whatever the origional distre1ss consisted ing through a path of the heart. Contributors have of, plus whatever the distress, on its merry no idea what they are hunting for, only that it is as way through the world, has managed to large and ungraspable as spirit. stick to itself. The problem is the meaning - Kevin Kelly system created by the distress, and the • treatment unit is everyone who is contributing to that meaning system. A subtle thing happens when everything is visible: the -Cybernetic II display becomes reality.- David Canfield Smith -Cybernetic I • Cybernetics of edition was brougi1t out for the Cybernetic Cybernetics Systems Program at SJSU in a reduced size The old idea of treating a psychiatric symptom was based on the medical notion of curing a part of the body. Heinz Von Foerster, Editor format but is still n?adable. The illness was in some spatially-defined, out there, unit. 1974, 1986; 523 pp. -Eiin Whitney Smith We can no longer say that it is in the family, nor is it in $17.50 [Suggested by Rodney Donaldson] • the individual. It is in the heads or nervous systems of ($20.50 postpaid) from: everyone who has a part in specifying it. Spartan Book Store Customer Service 0. What is Cyberneti:::s? San Jose State University A. I would like to call Cybernetics an offer. San Jose, CA 95191 Q. What does Cybernetics offer? 408/924-1800 A. Cybernetics offerE access to and interaction with complex systems in order that they may appear simple; This book was originally made possible through a to and with apparently simple systems in order that their grant from the Point Foundation, and like most of complexity may be revealed. (B. Rebitzer) • the things which are influenced by the Whole Earth folks it's eclectic, interesting, not as polished as it The gentleman with the bowler hat insists that he is the might be and a trifle uneven. In other words, sole reality, while evE?ry human and exciting. It started as a year long thing else appears only (1973-74) class project at the Biological Computer in his imagination. Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana. The However, he cannot students collected articles, definitions, word deny that his imaginary universe is populated pictures called "conceptu;;rl entailment structuresn with apparitions that are and lumped them together with pictures, and not unlike himself. photographs and called it a book. Articles range Hence, he has to from classics to student pieces, but the author concede that they them index reads like a who's who in information and selves may insist that cybernetics: Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, they are the sole reality and everything else is Stafford Beer, Stewart Brand, Jurgen Habermas, only a concoction of Garrett Hardin, Ivan 11/ich, John Lilly, Humberto Figure 3: The observer by stepping in the synaptic gap their imagination. In that Maturana, Warren Mcculloch, Gordon Pask, Bill defmes his or her domains of distinctions as the envi case their imaginary ionment of the nervous system. For the observer there Powers, G. Spencer-Brown, Francisco Varela, universe will be is a flower in the environment; for the dynamics of sta· Heinz Von Foerster and Norbert Wiener to name a populated with tes of the nervous· system as a closed neuronal network few. Unfortunately the students were experiment apparitions, one of there is no flower, only a synaptic gap that is not a gap. The structures of the environment that the observer sees ing and placed the Table of Contents and the which may be he, the constitute only orthogonal perturbations for the sensors, Index in the center of the book making it hard to gentleman with the not an input to the dynamics of states of the nervous bowler hat. (Heinz Von system. Arrows like in Fig. A. use. I've marked my pages with a marker which Foerster) eases but doesn't solve the problem. The new WHOLE SYSTEMS 7 B: Promise Understanding It should be no surprise, then, that the area in which artificial intelligence has had the greatest Computers difficulty is in the programming of common and Cognition sense. It has long been recognized that it is Terry Winograd and much easier to write a program to carry out Fernando Flores B: Reject abstruse formal operations than to capture the 1987; 207 pp. A: Withdraw common sense of a dog. This is an obvious $12.95 postpaid from: A: Reject consequence of Heidegger's realization that it / Addison-Wesley B: Withdraw is precisely is our "ordinary everydayness" that Publishing Co. Inc. we are immersed in readiness-to-hand. A 1 Jacob Way 8 methodology by which formally defined tasks Redding, MA 01867 can be performed with carefully designed 1-800-447-2226 Figure 5.1: The basic conversation for action representations (making things present-at hand) does not touch on the problem of What does it mean to understand :;omething? blindness. We accuse people of lacking This books tries to understand unc1erstanding. properties, and relations among them. It therefore common sense precisely when some representation of - Kevin Kelly embodies the blindness that goes with this articulation. the situation has blinded them to a space of potentially relevant actions. [Suggested by J'oel Trachtenberg] • • If we look at intelligence in a broader context, however, the inadequacies of a program with built-in permanent blindness begin to emerge. The essence of intelligence A major goal of frame formalisms was to represent Living systems are cognitive systems, and living, as a process, is a process of cognition. Thi:; statement is is to act appropriately when there is no simple pre 'defaults': the way things are typically, but not always. valid for all organisms, with and witho1.1t a nervous definition of the problem or the space of states in which For example we might want to include the fact "Dogs to search for a solution. bark" without precluding the possibility of a mute dog. system . • Systemantics understanding a colossal system-you can't, 2) If we turn to computer systems, we s•:··3 that for different realize you CAN change a system-by starting a people, engaged in different activities, the existence of (The Underground Text objects and properties emerges in diff,~rent kinds of of Systems Lore: How Systems new one, and 3) flee from starting new systems breaking down. As I sit here typing a craft on a word Really Work and How They Fail) they don't go away. processor, I think of words and they appear on my John Gall -Kevin Kelly screen. There is a network of equipm;:,nt that includes 1986; 319 pp. my arms and hands, a keyboard, and many complex $14.95 postpaid from: devices that mediate between it and a screen. None of General Systemantics Press this equipment is present for me excHpt when there is a 3200 W. Liberty Road breaking down. Ann Arbor, Ml 48103 • or Whole Earth Access Reflective thought is impossible withollt the kind of The pun in the title carries the important message abstraction that produces blindness. The program is that systems have "antics"-they act up, misbe forever limited to working within the w'lrld determined by have, and have their own mind. The author is the programmer's explicit articulation llf possible objects, having fun with a serious subject, deciding rightly that a sense of humor and paradox are the only means to approach large systems. His insights Continuing the Conversation come in the form of marvelously succinct rules of thumb, in the spirit of Murphy's Law and the Peter Greg and Pat Williams, Editors. $8/yE: 1r (4 issues) from: Principle. This book made me 1) not worry about Hortideas, Route 1, Box 302, Gravel Switch, KY 40328 606/332-7606. COMPLEX SYSTEMS EXHIBIT UNEXPECTED BEHAVIOR. Continuing the conversation begun by the late • Gregory Bateson, biologist, anthropologist, psychologist, epistemologist, and teacher. To him, We begin at the beginning, with the Fundamental these thickets of knowledge were~ sub-circuits in a Theorem: New systems mean new problems. larger loop which he helped identrfy--cybernetics. • His finished work is frozen in boo,l:s (seep. 205); his unfinished cybernetics is warmly pursued in this The system always kicks back-Systems get in the chummy, and sometimes acaden;ic, newsletter. way-or, in slightly more elegant language: Systems - Kevin Kelly tend to oppose their own proper functions . • • DOLPHINS HAVE NO HANDS. Having no hands, they Systems tend to malfunction conspicuously just after have not been able to change the wodd around them, so their greatest triumph. Toynbee explains this effect by perhaps the effort that humans being:; have put into pointing out the strong tendency to apply a previously civilization and the "taming" of the nalural world has successful strategy to the new challenge. The army is been put by dolphins into changing themselves. If now fully prepared to fight the previous war. • something is amiss the human urge t· as been to fix something else, not oneself. This is ''' lot more difficult if you have no hands to do the fixing, :;o when something A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The parallel is amiss in the dolphin world ... do cl::>lphins "fix" proposition also appears to be true: A complex system themselves instead? Might dolphin l<1.1guage provide a designed from scratch never works and cannot be made contrasting mode of communication 1'l set up against the to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working subject/predicate structure of human language? -Janie Matrisciano WHEN BIG SYSTEMS FAIL, THE FAILURE IS OFTEN BIG. simple system.