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

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