Title: The Closed World
First published: 1996
Description: The Closed World offers a radical alternative to the canonical histories of computers and cognitive science. Arguing that we can make sense of computers as tools only when we simultaneously grasp their roles as metaphors and political icons, Paul Edwards shows how Cold War social and cultural contexts shaped emerging computer technology - and were transformed, in turn, by information machines.

The Closed World explores three apparently disparate histories - the history of American global power, the history of computing machines, and the history of subjectivity in science and culture - through the lens of the American political imagination. In the process, it reveals intimate links among the military projects of the Cold War, the evolution of digital computers, and the origins of cybernetics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence.
Subjects: History, Military art and science, Data processing, Computers, United states, politics and government, 1945-1989, Computers, law and legislation, Ordinateurs, Histoire, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Anthropology, Cultural, POLITICAL SCIENCE, Public Policy, Cultural Policy, Popular Culture, Computer Science, Engineering & Applied Sciences, Military, Computers, history, Military art and science, data processing, Military art and science, history
LC classification: QA76.17 .E34 1996