Rise of the Machines

A Cybernetic History

By: Thomas Rid

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

As lives offline and online merge, it's easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the story of cybernetics, a control theory of man and machine. Thomas Rid delivers a portrait of our technology-enraptured era.

Springing from mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of myths about the future of machines. This vision radically transformed the postwar world, ushering in sweeping cultural change. Cybernetics triggered cults, the Whole Earth Catalog, and feminist manifestos just as it fueled martial gizmos and the air force's foray into virtual space.

As Rid shows, cybernetics proved a powerful tool for two competing factions - those who sought to make a better world and those who sought to control the one at hand. In the Bay Area, techno-libertarians embraced networked machines as the portal to a new electronic frontier. In Washington, DC, cyberspace provided the perfect theater for dominance and war. That "first cyberwar" went on for years - and indeed has never stopped. In our cybernetic future, the line between utopia and dystopia continues to be disturbingly thin.

©2016 Thomas Rid (P)2016 Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books

Seamlessly weaves a tapestry from many pieces

This book deserves to be read and not ignored as this one seems to be. To understand where we are going sometimes one must first understand how we got there.

The author uses a chronological approach by decade and seamlessly ties each of the stories together as if he is a writing a brilliant work of fiction with an overriding narrative leading to a beautiful quilt made of many different tapestries.

He starts the story within WW II and the necessity for an artillery gun to anticipate the movement of manned airplanes and takes the listener through many other excursions such as L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics (and Scientology), Ashbey's Homeostasis contraption (a complicated machine that was said to be alive because of it's innate ability to reach complex state of equilibrium after systematic perturbations, a fascinating story and well told), LSD and Timothy Leary, Psycho Cybernetics (a book in almost everyone's house for all of the 1970s), The Whole Earth Catalog, "The Monkey's Paw Story" (you can watch a version on Youtube) and the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" and how they relate to our cybernetic advancements, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy, the default standard for encryption), and many other fascinating stories all seamlessly woven together.

The author does an amazing job of weaving the stories as a coherent whole and also does a summary chapter explaining how all the pieces fit together. Not to spoil it for the listener, but his theme is along the lines that humans first use tools (such as a peg leg on a pirate or a club in the hands of the baseball player) and slowly makes the tools interact more "magically" with the human, then the next step is the machine itself became the tool, and then the "network is the computer" (not his words, but a slogan from the 90s for Sun Microsystem that seems appropriate) and finally the community itself becomes completely connected and tends towards an organic system as a whole.

Overall, a fine book and deserves to have a larger audience than what it seems to be achieving, and is more satisfying than most of the recent pop science books I've been reading lately.

Thank you, Thomas Rid!

This is the cultural historical analysis of human-machine relations I’ve been looking for. Thank you, Thomas Rid, for your clarity and depth of learning!

Outstanding

Hands down, the best intellectual history of the last 70 years of the development of computers.

Good info but beats a dead horse in places

This book has some interesting material but gets repetitive in places. Nice wholistic view of "cyber" history and first causes. Overall not a bad book.

Balanced mix of history, science, and human ambit

Rise of the Machines by Thomas Rid was a fascinating dive into the world of cybernetics—a departure from my usual reading. Rid takes us back to World War II, focusing on the bombing of London by the Luftwaffe. The challenge was how to effectively shoot down German aircraft, whether from the ground or in the air. Enter MIT mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), the mastermind behind blending human and machine capabilities to solve this problem. Wiener’s groundbreaking work in technology and computation laid the foundation for creating more accurate methods of targeting and shooting down planes.

Rid then guides readers through the technological advancements that unfolded after 1945, showing how each breakthrough built upon the last. My biggest takeaways from this book were:

The sheer ingenuity and determination behind these technological breakthroughs. Each incremental step forward was a testament to the talent and relentless work of brilliant minds.
- The often-overlooked contributions of countless individuals. Learning about these unknown heroes was both inspiring and humbling.
- The power of vision and dreaming about the future. It’s remarkable how enthusiasm for what’s possible drives so many to dedicate their lives to turning dreams into reality.
- The gap between the vision for the future and its actual implementation. Rid demonstrates how aspirations often fall short of reality but still lead to meaningful progress.

Rid’s excellent storytelling about the heroes we know, the unsung pioneers, and the charlatans and con artists who created hype and distractions, sometimes bordering on outright scams.
This book is both informative and engaging, with a balanced mix of history, science, and human ambition. I also highly recommend the audiobook—it was fantastic.