Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines

Steve Talbott9780596526801, 0596526806

In this deeply thoughtful work, the author reviews our technological dreams of improvement and destruction, finding both possibilities where others see only one or the other. His tour of the technical landscape leads from Odysseus’ wonderful technological deceits to the world of the blind and mentally handicapped; from the technical marvels of the Amazonian blow-gun to the wholesale re-engineering of organisms through genetic engineering; from computers as substitutes for teachers, students, and schools, to the paradoxical role of technology in distancing us from the natural world – so that, if we are willing, we can learn to love this world and master the technology that increasingly dominates it.