Out of Control (Kelly book)
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (ISBN 978-0201483406) is a 1992 book by Kevin Kelly. Major themes in Out of Control are cybernetics, emergence, self-organization, complex systems, negentropy and chaos theory and it can be seen as a work of techno-utopianism.
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Summary
The central theme of the book is that several fields of contemporary science and philosophy point in the same direction: intelligence is not organized in a centralized structure but much more like a bee-hive of small simple components.[1] Kelly applies this view to bureaucratic organizations, intelligent computers as well as to the human brain.
Reception
The book was not widely reviewed when first released in 1992, but got visibly reviewed and extensively cited during the next several years.[2] Reviews often discussed Kelly's hive-mind analogy as a metaphor for the New Economy.[3]
Reviewers have called this book a "mind-expanding exploration" (Publishers Weekly)[4] and "the best of an important new genre" (Forbes ASAP).
Critics of the book have contended that its position leaves us without a critical approach to politics and social power.[5]
References
- Mitchell, Melanie (October 1995). "Mystifying the Net". Technology Review. 98 (7): 74. ProQuest 195337887.
- Turner, Fred (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 285.
- Turner, Fred (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 204.
- Stuttaford, Genevieve (June 6, 1994). "Nonfiction -- Out of Control: The Rise of NeoBiological Civilization by Kevin Kelly". Publishers Weekly. 241 (23): 53. ProQuest 196996078.
- Best, Steven; Douglas Kellner (1999-01-06). "Kevin Kelly's Complexity Theory The Politics and Ideology of Self-Organizing Systems". Organization & Environment. 12 (2): 141–162. doi:10.1177/1086026699122001. S2CID 144781438.