Out of Control (Kelly book)

Template:Italic title Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (Template:ISBN) is a 1992 book by Kevin Kelly. Major themes in Out of Control are cybernetics, emergence, self-organization, complex systems, negentropy and chaos theory. The book can be seen as a work of techno-utopianism.Template:Citation needed

Summary

The book's central theme is that several fields of contemporary science and philosophy point in the same direction: intelligence is not organized in a centralized structure but is much more like a beehive composed of small, simple components.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Kelly applies this view to bureaucratic organizations, intelligent computers, and the human brain.

Reception

Although the book was not widely reviewed upon its initial release in 1992, it gained visibility, was reviewed, and was extensively cited in subsequent years.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Reviews often discussed Kelly's hive-mind analogy as a metaphor for the New Economy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Reviewers have called the book a "mind-expanding exploration" (Publishers Weekly)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and "the best of an important new genre" (Forbes ASAP).Template:Citation needed

Critics of the book have contended that its position precludes a critical approach to politics and social power.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Further reading

• The book's homepage (includes the complete book online)

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