After Thought: The Computer Challenge To Human Intelligence

Can the habits of thought we've developed over centuries and the computers we've built to automate our thought processes help us in a world choking on data? In this sweeping examination of the history of scientific thought, James Bailey argues that our current approach to computing is crippled by our need to create computers in our own intellectual image. The solution, a parallel approach to computation, where the nature of electronic circuits rather than human nature determines the design, will produce self-modifying machines that are profoundly alien, yet have the power to extract meaning from the flow of data that surrounds us.

The author's interpretation of the history of Western science from Greek antiquity to the present is a highly personal and fits his theory almost too smoothly. But his central thesis, that our understanding of reality is strait-jacketed by the tools we've developed to describe it, is profound and well worth pondering. The book is filled with interesting historical examples based on the author's wide reading and many of his observations are pithy and thought provoking. After Thought requires a dose of corrective skepticism on the reader's part (after all, the author was an executive at Thinking Machines Corp., a manufacturer of parallel processing supercomputers), but given that caveat, it's a fascinating read.