Darwin Among The Machines

George B. Dyson takes his title and his outlook from Samuel Butler's 1863 piece Darwin Among the Machines, which foresaw nature's intelligence, only for a time subordinate to technology, eventually claiming machines as its own. Dyson follows the information revolution through the lives and work of thinkers who anticipated artificial intelligence, artificial life and artificial minds, a line running from Thomas Hobbes to John von Neumann. Testing the limits of Darwinian evolution, he argues that computer programs and global networks are forming an evolutionary arena where the line between nature and technology is fading. In his view a mind will inevitably emerge from today's technology, in an experiment that echoes the origins of life and the prehistory of human intelligence.

NETOPIA mobilPay founder Antonio Eram included it among the titles he recommends to young people interested in a career like his.