Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World

My first book, Out of Control, still in print from Amazon and available online in full text since 1995, was always imperfect in my eyes. I had wanted to fill it with illustrations. But it was so large (230,000 words) and so overdue (by years), that illustrating it in detail was never feasible. Among the illustrations, I had hoped to include were photographs of the folks I interviewed, of which I had captured many. The PDF version of Out of Control is the full book, with the full annotated bibliography, redesigned with new subheads not present in the book, new Table of Contents, and lots of color photos of the scientists I spoke to. Some like Rod Brooks, Marvin Minsky, Danny Hillis, and Ted Nelson are more well known now than back then. They all look so young! I wish I could have added all the other graphic material I had on hand then but that is a job too big to redo now. Contents......Page 2 Neo-biological civilization......Page 6 The triumph of the bio-logic......Page 7 Learning to surrender our creations......Page 8 Bees do it: distributed governance......Page 9 The collective intelligence of a mob......Page 11 Asymmetrical invisible hands......Page 13 Decentralized remembering as an act of perception......Page 15 More is more than more, it’s different......Page 20 Advantages and disadvantages of swarms......Page 21 The network is the icon of the 21st century......Page 25 Entertaining machines with bodies......Page 28 Fast, cheap and out of control......Page 37 Getting smart from dumb things......Page 41 The virtues of nested hierarchies......Page 44 Using the real world to communicate......Page 46 No intelligence without bodies......Page 48 Mind/body black patch psychosis......Page 49 Biology: the future of machines......Page 55 Restoring a prairie with fire and oozy seeds......Page 58 Random paths to a stable ecosystem......Page 60 How to do everything at once......Page 62 The Humpty Dumpty challenge......Page 65 What color is a chameleon on a mirror?......Page 67 The unreasonable point of life......Page 70 Poised in the persistent state of almost falling......Page 73 Rocks are slow life......Page 75 Cooperation without friendship or foresight......Page 78 Equilibrium is death......Page 83 What came first, stability or diversity?......Page 86 Ecosystems: between a superorganism and an identity workshop......Page 89 The origins of variation......Page 90 Life immortal, ineradicable......Page 92 Negentropy......Page 95 The fourth discontinuity: the circle of becoming......Page 97 In ancient Greece the first artificial self......Page 99 Maturing of mechanical selfhood......Page 102 The toilet: archetype of tautology......Page 104 Self-causing agencies......Page 108 Bottled life, sealed with clasp......Page 112 Mail-order Gaia......Page 115 Man breathes into algae, algae breathes into man......Page 118 The very big ecotechnic terrarium......Page 120 An experiment in sustained chaos......Page 123 Another synthetic ecosystem, like California......Page 130 Co-pilots of the 100 million dollar glass ark......Page 133 Migrating to urban weed......Page 136 The deployment of intentional seasons......Page 138 A cyclotron for the life sciences......Page 143 The ultimate technology......Page 145 Pervasive round-the-clock plug in......Page 147 Invisible intelligence......Page 149 Bad-dog rooms vs. nice-dog rooms......Page 151 Programming a commonwealth......Page 154 Closed-loop manufacturing......Page 155 Technologies of adaptation......Page 158 Having your everything amputated......Page 161 Instead of crunching, connecting......Page 162 Factories of information......Page 165 Your job: managing error......Page 169 Connecting everything to everything......Page 173 Crypto-anarchy: encryption always wins......Page 176 The fax effect and the law of increasing returns......Page 182 Superdistribution......Page 184 Anything holding an electric charge w ill hold a fiscal charge......Page 189 Peer-to-peer finance with nanobucks......Page 195 Fear of underwire economies......Page 196 Electronic godhood......Page 198 Theories with an interface......Page 199 A god descends into his polygonal creationTo......Page 203 The transmission of simulacra......Page 208 Memorex warfare......Page 209 Seamless distributed armies......Page 213 A 10,000 piece hyperreality......Page 215 The consensual ascii superorganism......Page 216 Letting go to win......Page 219 An outing to the universal library......Page 221 The space of all possible pictures......Page 225 Travels in biomorph land......Page 228 Harnessing the mutator......Page 231 Sex in the library......Page 233 Breeding art masterpieces in three easy steps......Page 236 Tunnelling through randomness......Page 239 Tom Ray’s electric-powered evolution machine......Page 241 What you can’t engineer, evolution can......Page 245 Mindless acts performed in parallel......Page 247 Computational arms race......Page 251 Taming wild evolution......Page 253 Stupid scientists evolving smart molecules......Page 254 Death is the best teacher......Page 258 The algorithmic genius of ants......Page 261 The end of engineering’s hegemony......Page 264 Cartoon physics in toy worlds......Page 267 Birthing a synthespian......Page 269 Robots without hard bodies......Page 272 The agents of ethnological architecture......Page 275 Imposing destiny upon free will......Page 276 Mickey Mouse rebooted after clobbering Donald......Page 278 Searching for co-control......Page 281 To enlarge the space of being......Page 283 Primitives of visual possibilities......Page 284 How to program happy accidents......Page 285 All survive by hacking the rules......Page 288 The handy-dandy tool of evolution......Page 290 Hang-gliding into the game of life......Page 292 Life verbs......Page 294 Homesteading hyperlife territory......Page 296 The revolution of daily evolution......Page 300 Bypassing the central dogma......Page 302 The difference, if any, between learning and evololution......Page 304 The evolution of evolution......Page 307 The explanation of everything......Page 309 The incompleteness of Darwinian theory......Page 310 Natural selection is not enough......Page 312 Intersecting lines on the tree of life......Page 314 The premise of non-random mutations......Page 315 Even monsters follow rules......Page 318 When the abstract is embodied......Page 320 The essential clustering of life......Page 321 DNA can’t code for everything......Page 322 An uncertain density of biological search space......Page 324 Mathematics of natural selection......Page 325 Order for free......Page 328 Net math: A counter-intuitive style of math......Page 329 Lap games, jets, and auto-catalytic sets......Page 331 A question worth asking......Page 333 Self-tuning vivisystems......Page 337 A 4 billion year ponzi scheme......Page 340 What evolution wants......Page 343 Seven trends of hyper-evolution......Page 346 Coyote trickster self-evolver......Page 350 Brains that catch baseballs......Page 352 The flip side of chaos......Page 355 Positive myopia......Page 357 Making a fortune from the pockets of predictability......Page 358 Varieties of prediction......Page 366 Change in the service of non-change......Page 369 The many problems with global models......Page 370 We are all steering......Page 375 What ever happened to cybernetics?......Page 377 The holes in the web of scientific knowledge......Page 380 To be astonished by the trivial......Page 382 Hypertext: the end of authority......Page 385 A new thinking space......Page 389 How to make something from nothing......Page 392 Acknowledgements......Page 396 Annotated Bibliography......Page 398