The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking

by Theodore Roszak

Overview

As we devote ever-increasing resources to providing, or prohibiting, access to information via computer, Theodore Roszak reminds us that voluminous information does not necessarily lead to sound thinking. "Data glut" obscures basic questions of justice and purpose and may even hinder rather than enhance our productivity. In this revised and updated edition of The Cult of Information, Roszak examines the place of computer technology in our culture in the 1990s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780394751757
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/12/1987
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Theodore Roszak was educated at UCLA and took his Ph D at Princeton. Since then he has taught at Stanford, San Francisco State University and California State University, Hayward. He has twice been nominated for America's National Book Award.

Editorial Reviews

The computer revolution has been overhyped and oversold to the American public, charges the author of The Making of a Counter-Culture, in what may be his best book. Roszak believes that the cybernetic model of the human mind as a thinking machine is fundamentally wrong; ideas have living meanings and produce convictions, something machines will never have. He debunks the information economy touted by futurologists like Toffler and Naisbitt, arguing that the home computer as an ``information center'' is a chimera. The influx of military-industrial funds into artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology research, he charges, has brought to the fore the severe limitations of these disciplines in solving real-world problems. Roszak raps the computer industry for commercial opportunism, especially in the schools, where the computer is an expensive mechanical teacher's aid; he cites evidence that most educational software has little real value. Computer manufacturers envision ``fully networked campuses'' where college students and teachers all have micros and rarely need to meet. Roszak cries foul, noting that it's time to rethink a technology that should not be merely grafted onto our culture. His humanistic counterattack on the cult of computers is devastating. (April 28)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly