The Information Society: Issues and Illusions by David Lyon, and: Thinking Machines: The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence by Vernon Pratt, and: The Conquest of the Microchip by Hans Queisser

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 201 diffusion of new ideas? These complementary introductory books leave work for future scholars on the broader issues. Linnda Caporael Dr. Caporael teaches in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensse­ laer Polytechnic Institute. The Information Society: Issues and Illusions. By David Lyon. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp. xii+196; notes, bibliography, index. $39.95. Thinking Machines: The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence. By Vernon Pratt. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Pp. xii + 254; illustrations, notes, index. $19.95. The Conquest of the Microchip. By Hans Queisser. Trans, by Diane Crawford-Burkhardt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Pp. x + 200; illustrations, bibliography, index. $24.95. Presentation of the history and current state of information tech­ nology is fraught with difficulties. The subject matter encompasses such diverse areas as mathematical logic, microelectronics, and soci­ ology. Technologies are changing and have changed rapidly. This not only presents an intellectual challenge but also may blur the historic importance of individuals and companies that have been eclipsed. At the same time, present-day businesses and living individuals have a stake in the stories told, giving an author little of the tranquility of historical perspective. Historians undeterred by such challenges should read David Lyon’s The Information Society: Issues and Illusions. Lyon, a social scientist by training, argues that technological potential does not represent social destiny. As his title suggests, he raises questions about interactions between information technology and society at large. For example, he describes changes in work brought about by robotics, automatic control mechanisms, and computerized data processing. He particu­ larly notes changes in typesetting, accounting, and machine tools. Typesetters have found their skills displaced, clerks and machinists may well have more routine jobs. Lyon argues that such changes are as much a reassertion of the traditional power of industrial capitalism as harbingers of any new class divisions. He also discusses suggestions that, in addition to agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors of the economy, there is a growing “information sector.” He finds little enlightenment in placing professors, office workers, and television repairmen into a separate single category, and argues that work in general is becoming more “information intensive.” Similarly, he balances the wider polit­ ical participation made possible by interactive telecommunications (as 202 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE with televised political meetings at which citizens cast votes from their homes) against increased possibilities for government and corporate surveillance. Considering the possibility of a “computer culture,” he weighs the possibilities of burgeoning choice and a “life ethic” against the prospect of isolated workers, an overemphasis on rationality, and extreme competition. This small book resolves few issues. It does offer a British perspective, a useful bibliography, and an abundance of sensible questions. Scientists, engineers, and other scholarly folk are sometimes more interested in the intellectual than the social roots of a discipline. Those hoping to trace the evolution of artificial intelligence may now turn to the historian and philosopher of biology Vernon Pratt. His history of “thinking machines” spans the period from the 17th century to 1960. This ambitious project is structured around contri­ butions of Gottfried Leibniz, Charles Babbage, and Alan Turing. All three showed, at one time or another in their lives, a concern for reducing problem solving to algorithms; all three also envisioned computing machines. Regrettably, Pratt has relied almost entirely on anthologies and secondary sources for his account. He shows a commendable interest in computing devices, but apparently has found little of use in either archival sources or the relevant work of historians such as Michael Williams, William Aspray, and Judith Grabiner. Curiously, he finds no particular connection between at­ tempts to model the working of the human brain and mechanisms envisioned to describe other biological organs. Numerous illustrations enliven the text. As Pratt set out to explore the roots of artificial intelligence, physicist Hans Queisser examined the origins of microelectronics. His The Conquest ofthe Microchip, just translated from the German original, is a breezy history of 20th-century studies of crystals and semicon­ ductors. Queisser emphasizes the importance of sponsoring institu­ tions like Bell Laboratories in the United States and the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Japan, and suggests that European microelec...