B004R9Q09U EBOK (38 page)
Authors: Alex Wright
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1-9 Generalia
Sciences
A Science (General)
B Mathematics
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C Physics
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E Chemistry
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F Technology
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G Biology
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I Botany
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K Zoology
[Natural Group] [Problem]
L Medicine
[Organ] [Problem]
M Useful Arts
[Material] [Work] [Subject Device] [Utility] [Part] [Substance] [Handling] [Organ] [Operation]
Spiritual Experience and Mysticism
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Humanities
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O Literature
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P Linguistics
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R Philosophy
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W Political Science
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X Economics
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Y (Other) Social Sciences Including Sociology
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Z Law
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In a medieval scriptorium, it would have been considered the height of arrogance for a writer to put his name on the cover of a book. Making books was properly understood to be a collaborative effort, involving the combined talents of scholars, scribes, binders, and artists. While book production has long since evolved from a monastic craft to an industrial enterprise—and while we may now agree on the convenient fiction of an “author”—a book is still the product of many minds.
This book would not exist in its present form without the efforts of my editor Jeff Robbins, my agent Jeanne Fredericks, and the able team at the Joseph Henry Press. This book is also immeasurably better for the thoughtful criticism of several people who commented on various draft versions of the manuscript. For their intellectual generosity, I am especially indebted to Whit Andrews, Brent Berlin, Ed Costello, Eugene Garfield, Paul Kahn, George P. Landow, Rhodri Lewis, Peter Merholz, Thomas J. Misa, Mike Myers, Dave Pell, Nadav Savio, Rosemary Michelle Simpson, Andries van Dam, Edward O. Wilson, and Nicole Yankelovich.
During the final year I spent writing this book, I relied on the good graces of people who furnished me with places to work, and the gifts of both solitude and companionship. For their friendship and hospitality, thanks to Ann and Preston Browning, Judy DeMocker, Jennifer Kilian, Bill and Jocelyn Powning, Chris and Kassia Scott, and John Woodward.
As a onetime library worker, I would be remiss in failing to acknowledge the librarians who made it possible for me to research this book. Librarians are the anonymous heroes of scholarship, and they rarely get the praise they deserve. I am especially grateful to the staff at the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Public Library, and the University of Richmond. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my former colleagues at the Harvard College Library, who introduced me to a noble profession and helped me start asking the questions that would eventually lead me to write this book.
I would also like to thank the many dharma teachers and fellow students with whom I have had the good fortune to study over the past few years. For their encouragement, I would especially like to thank Acharya Lama Dawa and Lama Kalsang Rinpoche.
Finally, my greatest thanks go to my parents, Sarah Bird Wright and Lewis Wright, for their love.
1 Tom Wolfe,
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
(New York: Bantam, 1999).
2 Tom Wolfe, “Digibabble, Fairy Dust and the Human Anthill,”
Forbes ASAP
, vol. 164, no. 8 (1999), 212.
3 Steven Johnson,
Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
(San Francisco, CA: HarperEdge, 1997), 240.
4 Danny Hillis, “The Big Picture,”
Wired
6.01, January 1998,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.01/hillis.html
; accessed 7 December 2006.
5 Ray Kurzweil, “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” 2001,
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html
; accessed 7 December 2006.
6 H. G. Wells, “World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopedia” in
Encyclopédie Française,
August 1937,
http://sherlock.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html
; accessed 7 December 2006.
7 Teilhard de Chardin,
The Future of Man
, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 2004), 162.
8 Sven Birkerts,
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
(New York: Ballantine, 1995), 130-131.
9 Werner Künzel, quoted in Lovink, “The Archaeology of Computer Assemblage,”
Mediamatic
, vol. 7 no. 1, 1992,
http://www.mediamatic.net/article-8664-en.html
; accessed 7 December 2006.
10 Birkerts, op. cit., 123.
1 Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss,
Primitive Classification
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 43-44.
2 Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian, “How Much Information,” 2003,
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info-2003
; accessed 7 December 2006.
3 Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger,
The Cluetrain Manifesto
, 1999,
http://www.cluetrain.com
; accessed 7 December 2006.
4 Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee,
On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines
(New York: Owl Books, 2004).
5 Howard K. Bloom,
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
(New York: Wiley, 2000).
6 Stephen Jay Gould,
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin
(New York: Harmony Books, 1996), 219-220.
7 John Alcock,
The Triumph of Sociobiology
(Oxford, England; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 223.
8 Bloom, op. cit., 31.
9 Edward O. Wilson initially proposed an alternate neologism, “culturgen,” but has since embraced the now overwhelmingly popular “meme.” Wilson argues in favor of a narrow definition of meme, however, as a unit of “semantic memory” available exclusively to humans. Other biologists have embraced a wider definition that includes behavioral “implicit memes”—roughly, social customs—stretching as far back as 720-million-year-old prehistoric clams. Other scientists have sought a middle ground, suggesting the presence of memes in smaller numbers of species, including hominids, dolphins, and a few other mammals.
10 Bloom, op. cit.
11 Kevin Kelly,
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World
(New York: Perseus Books Group, 1995), 12.
12 Wilson prefers the term “sematectonic” over “stigmergy,” arguing that the latter is too clumsy a term.
13 McClamrock, quoted in Andy Clark,
Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 201.
14 Robert Wright,
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
(New York: Vintage, 2001), 292.
15 Carel Van Schaik, “Why Are Some Animals So Smart?”
Scientific American
, April 2006,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000C1E5D-B9BA-1422-B9BA83414B7F0103&ref=sciam&chanID=sa006
; accessed 7 December 2006.
16 Ibid.
17 Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker,
The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 92.
18 Ibid., 340-341.
19 Edward O. Wilson,
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
(New York: Vintage, 1999), 138.
20 Ibid., 223-224.
21 Ibid., 128.
22 Donald Brown, cited in Steven Pinker,
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
(New York: Viking, 2002), 435.
1 Brent Berlin,
Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 7.
2 Stephen Jay Gould, foreword to Lynn Margulis and Karlene V. Schwartz,
Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth
(New York: W.H. Freeman & Company, 1998).
3 Brent Berlin, personal correspondence with Alex Wright, 30 March 2006.
4 Conklin, quoted in Berlin, op. cit., 13.
5 Roger Brown, “How Shall a Thing Be Called?”
Psychology Review
, 65 (1958), 14-21.
6 Eleanor Rosch, quoted in George Lakoff,
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 44.
7 Lakoff, op. cit., 8.
8 Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss,
Primitive Classification
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 14.
9 Michael E. Hobart and Zachary Sayre Schiffman,
Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 71.
10 Durkheim and Mauss, op. cit., 82-83.
11 Ibid., 85-86.
12 Brent Berlin, personal correspondence with Alex Wright, 30 March 2006.
13 Durkheim and Mauss, op. cit., 69.
14 Ibid., 73.
15 Ibid., 78.
16 Ibid., 79.