The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking / Edition 1

by Theodore Roszak

Overview

As we devote ever-increasing resources to providing, or prohibiting, access to information via computer, Theodore Roszak reminds us that voluminous information does not necessarily lead to sound thinking. "Data glut" obscures basic questions of justice and purpose and may even hinder rather than enhance our productivity.

In this revised and updated edition of The Cult of Information, Roszak reviews the disruptive role the computer has come to play in international finance and the way in which "edutainment" software and computer games degrade the literacy of children. At the same time, he finds hopeful new ways in which the library and free citizens' access to the Internet and the national data-highway can turn computer technology into a democratic and liberating force. Roszak's examination of the place of computer technology in our culture is essential reading for all those who use computers, who are intimidated by computers, or who are concerned with the appropriate role of computers in the education of our children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520085848
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/29/1994
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	267
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Theodore Roszak is Professor of History at California State University, Hayward. Among his many books are The Voice of the Earth (1992), Flicker (1991), and The Making of a Counter Culture (1969).

Table of Contents

PREFACE

IN DEFENSE OF THE NAKED MIND:
Introduction to the Second Edition
The Computer and General Ludd
How Artificial Can Intelligence Be?
Meanwhile, Back at the Carnival ...
The End of the War Machine?
The Advent of the Money Machine
Edutainment from Apple II to Metroid II
The Ideal of the On-Line Commonwealth
And Finally ... A Few Words for the Rest of Us
Selected Bibliography

1. "INFORMATION, PLEASE"
Information Old-Style
Enter UNIVAC
Cybernetics and the Secret of Life
Messages Without Meanings
The Biocomputer
2. THE DATA MERCHANTS
High Tech and the Conservative Opportunists
Sunbelt Politics and the Warfare State
Megahype
Hackers and Hucksters
Silicon and Natural Selection
Technophilia
3. THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM
The Chimera of Computer Literacy
A Solution in Search of Problems
The Computerized Campus
Power and Dependency
A Private Universe
4. THE PROGRAM WITHIN THE PROGRAM:
The Case of Logo
5. OF IDEAS AND DATA
Ideas Come First
The Master Ideas
Experience, Memory, Insight
The Empiricist Gambit
No Ideas, No Information
6. COMPUTERS AND PURE REASON
The Light in Plato's Cave
The Old Mathematical Magic
The Seductions of Software
An Alien Intelligence
The Flight from Reality
The Fifth Generation ... and Beyond
7. THE COMPUTER AND THE
COUNTERCULTURE
Big Blue and the Guerrilla Hackers
An Electronic Populism
The Heroic Age of the Microcomputer
Reversionaries and Technophiles
Domes, Data, and Dope
Decline and Fall
8. THE POLITICS OF INFORMATION
Nothing But the Facts
Data Glut
Issues Before Information
On-line Communities: The Promise of Networking
9. BEN FRANKLIN'S INFORMATION SERVICE:
Libraries, Literacy, and the Ecology of Mind
The Public Library: The Missing Link
in the Information Age
Privatizing the Public's Right to Know
The Library's High-Tech Identity Crisis
NREN and the Internet: All the World On-Line
Aladdin's Magic Digitized Lamp
Electronic Alzheimer's
Literacy Imperiled
Ecologists of Mind
10. IN THE WRONG HANDS
The Foundations of Information Technology
The Surveillance Machine
The Polling Machine
The War Machine
Machine a Gouverner
At the Limits of Sanity: The Psychotic Machine
11. DESCARTES'S ANGEL: Reflections on
the True Art of Thinking

NOTES
INDEX