EAN: 9780141982519

SKIDELSKY ROBERT THE MACHINE AGE

A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity's relationship with machines  showing how we
got here and what happens next   Faith in technological fixes for our problems is waning.
Automation  which promised relief from toil  has reactivated the long-standing fear of job
redundancy. Information technology  meant to liberate us from traditional authority  is placing
unprecedented powers of surveillance and control in the hands of a purely secular Big Brother.
And for the first time  artificial intelligence threatens anthropogenic disaster - disaster
caused by our own activities. Scientists join imaginative writers in warning us of the fate of
Icarus  whose wings melted because he flew too close to the sun.  This book tells the story of
our fractured relationship with machines from humanity's first tools down to the present and
into the future. It raises the crucial question of why some parts of the world developed a
'machine civilisation' and not others  and traces the interactions between capitalism and
technology  and between science and religion  in the making of the modern world.  Taking in the
peaks of philosophy and triumphs of science  the foundation of economics and speculations of
fiction  Robert Skidelsky embarks on a bold intellectual journey through the evolution of our
understanding of technology and what this means for our lives and politics. 'Unless we
understand technology as a system of ideas rather than as a necessity ' he writes  'we will be
powerless to choose which technology is best suited to our needs and purposes.'

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