The Future Does Not Compute

Acknowledgments

This is from The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, by Stephen L. Talbott. Copyright 1995 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved. You may freely redistribute this chapter in its entirety for noncommercial purposes. For information about the author's online newsletter, NETFUTURE: Technology and Human Responsibility, see http://www.netfuture.org/.

The most difficult thing to acknowledge is all the authors I ought to have read but have not. In my extraordinarily slow and plodding program of study, I have yet to catch up with many works forming the “standard background” for the discussion I have attempted here. A good example of this bibliographic gap is Theodore Roszak's classic, The Cult of Information (re-issued with a lengthy new introduction in 1994). I have indeed read this book -- but only during the last checking of page proofs before going to press. Where I would surely have adverted to Roszak many times in these pages, I have in fact only managed a last-minute footnote. Other worthy scholars must remain altogether unnoted.

Of those who read various versions of the manuscript, in whole or in part, and gave me valuable comments (not always heeded), I mention especially David Flanagan, Rob Kling, Lowell Monke, Andy Oram, Gerald Phillips, Christian Sweningsen, Tom Talbott, Stuart Weeks, Frank Willison, and Jeff Wright.

David Sewell reviewed the entire manuscript, offering numerous helpful stylistic suggestions. His careful eye ...