Volume 31, Number 3 · March 1, 1984
Let Us Calculate
By Alfred J. Ayer
Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age
by J. David Bolter
University of North Carolina Press, 264 pp., $8.95 (paper)
This is the most illuminating book that has yet come my way on the topic of artificial intelligence. One of its great merits is that it does not confine itself to the sterile question whether machines can properly be said to think but provides, as its title indicates, a succinct account of the ways in which modern computers work and of the social implications of their use. Mr. Bolter is an offspring of the marriage of C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures.' A professor of classics, he also holds a master's degree in computer science. The greater part of the book is devoted to matters of technological detail, but its originality and principal interest lie in the way in which it embeds the developments of technology in their cultural setting.
Review, 2522 words
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