- 254 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The Soft Machine, originally published in 1985, represents a significant contribution to the study of contemporary literature in the larger cultural and scientific context. David Porush shows how the concepts of cybernetics and artificial intelligence that have sparked our present revolution in computer and information technology have also become the source for images and techniques in our most highly sophisticated literature, postmodern fiction by Barthelme, Barth, Pynchon, Beckett, Burroughs, Vonnegut and others.
With considerable skill, Porush traces the growth of "the metaphor of the machine" as it evolves both technologically and in literature of the twentieth century. He describes the birth of cybernetics, gives one of the clearest accounts for a lay audience of its major concepts and shows the growth of philosophical resistance to the mechanical model for human intelligence and communication which cybernetics promotes, a model that had grown increasingly influential in the previous decade. The Soft Machine shows postmodern fiction synthesizing the inviting metaphors and concepts of cybernetics with the ideals of art, a synthesis that results in what Porush calls "cybernetic fiction" alive to the myths and images of a cybernetic age.
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Information
INDEX
Adams, Henry 12, 16, 94
Ancient History: A Paraphase (McElroy) 193
Apollo 17 183ā5
Arendt, Hannah 76
Arnold, Matthew 25
artificial intelligence 4, 5, 8, 19, 21, 54, 79, 136
Artificial Intelligence (Banerji) 136
Ashby, Hal 55
autonomous technology 12ā13
autopoeisis 69
Babbage, Charles 3
Bacon, Roger 4
Bad Man (Elkin) 105
Banerji, Ralph 136
Barrett, William 15, 67, 76, 88
Barth, John 3, 5, 17, 22, 99, 136ā56, 174, 180
Barthelme, Donald 3, 17, 22, 61, 65, 197ā209
Bateson, Gregory 54, 128, 134, 208
Baudelaire, Charles 10, 28
Beckett, Samuel 3, 17, 18, 22, 157ā71, 181, 191, 203
Bell Laboratories 98
Bergson, Henri 136ā7
Bertalanffy, Ludwig 71
black box 207ā9
Black, Max 128
Boltzmann, Ludwig 46
Boyle, Robert 4
Brienza, Susan 160
Brzezinski, Zbigniew 104
Burgess, Anthony 105
Burroughs, William 3, 13, 17, 22, 61, 85, 99ā104, 110ā11, 192
Butler, Samuel 12, 13, 16
calculus 126ā8
Calvino, Italo 18
Carlyle, Thomas 10
Catch-22 (Heller) 105
Chimera (Barth) 152
Chomsky, Noam...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- ONE The metaphor of the machine
- TWO Rousselās device for the perfection of fiction
- THREE Cybernetics and literature
- FOUR Counter-statement
- FIVE Cybernetics and techno-paranoia: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr and William Burroughs
- SIX Reading in the servo-mechanical loop: The machinery of metaphor in Pynchonās fictions
- SEVEN Author as artificial intelligence: John Barthās computer-generated texts
- EIGHT Deconstructing the machine: Beckettās The Lost Ones
- NINE The imp in the machine: Joseph McElroyās Plus
- CONCLUSION In the black box: Donald Barthelmeās āThe explanationā
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index