my mind on books

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Stanford professor Fred Turner traces the influence of Stewart Brand from the Whole Earth Catalog to the WELL (“Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link”) to Wired Magazine.This is a compelling, if somewhat dryly academic, intellectual history of forces that have helped to create the network culture of today.

Brand seems to have played the role of Connector as described by Malcolm Gladwell in ‘The Tipping Point,’ creating networks connecting different intellectual communities, and ultimately bridging between the countercultural “New Communalists” and the later “digerati.” Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics was an early influence on Brand that, according to the book, provided a common language that enabled different disciplines to communicate and collaborate, beginning in the post-WWII research environment.

The New Communalist branch of the counterculture turned away from the political activism of the New Left, seeking social change instead through technology and the transformation of consciousness.

“Even as they decoupled computers from their dark, early 1960s association with bureaucracy, then, Brand and the Whole Earth community turned them into emblems not only of New Communalist social ideals, but of a networked mode of technocratic organization that continues to spread today. In that way, they helped transform both the cultural meanings of information and information technology and the nature of technology itself.” (p 239)

Fred Turner’s home page
Edge.org has a lengthy excerpt (Chapter 2 of the book) with an introduction by John Brockman and some photos supplied by Brand (that aren’t in the book)

Also as I mentioned in an earlier post, a Google video search turns up a series of videos of author Fred Turner discussing the book.

These are books published in 2007 or forthcoming, mostly limited to scientific or philosophical approaches. This is the third & final part (for now) that will become a cumulative list posted in the sidebar.

Early Experience, the Brain, and Consciousness: An Historical and Interdisciplinary Synthesis by Thomas Carlyle Dalton; Victor W Bergenn (Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007)

The Experimental Phenomena of Consciousness: A Brief Dictionary by T Bakhman; Bruno G Breitmeyer; Haluk Ogmen (Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007)

Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (Columbia Series in Science and Religion) by B. Alan Wallace (New York : Columbia University Press, 2007) forthcoming Aug 10

Hypnosis and Conscious States: The Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective by Graham A Jamieson (Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007)

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (New York : Basic Books, 2007)

The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The feeling behind laughter and humor (Consciousness & Emotion Book Series) by Wallace L Chafe (Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2007)

Introduction to Consciousness by Arne Dietrich (Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) forthcoming June 26, textbook

Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure (Jean Nicod Lectures) by Ray Jackendoff (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2007) forthcoming Nov. 30

Moore’s Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person ed. by Mitchell S Green; John N Williams (Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007)

Neurophilosophy at Work by Paul M Churchland (Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language by Maxwell Bennett, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, and John Searle (New York : Columbia University Press, 2007)

Ontology of Consciousness: Percipient Action (Bradford Books) ed. Helmut Wautischer (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2007) forthcoming Aug 31

Rediscovering Phenomenology: Phenomenological Essays on Mathematical Beings, Physical Reality, Perception and Consciousness (Phaenomenologica) ed. by L Boi; Pierre Kerszberg; Frédéric Patras (Dordrecht ; London : Springer, 2007) forthcoming Aug.

Self-Consciousness by Sebastian Rödl (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2007)

Transcendental Phenomenological Psychology by Jon L James (Victoria, B.C. : Trafford, 2007)

-end of list-

These are books published in 2007 or forthcoming, mostly limited to scientific or philosophical approaches. This is the second part that will become a cumulative list to be posted in the sidebar.

Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind: A Defense of Content-internalism and Semantic Externalism (Advances in Consciousness Research) by John-Michael Kuczynski (Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2007) forthcoming – expected July 2007, according to the publisher

Consciousness and Cognition: Fragments of Mind and Brain ed. by Henri Cohen, Brigitte Stemmer (London : Academic Press, 2007)

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind (Contemporary Debates in Philosophy) ed. by Brian P McLaughlin, Jonathan Cohen (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2007) forthcoming July 1

Damasio’s Error and Descartes’ Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology by Andrew Gluck (Scranton : University of Scranton Press, 2007)

Dennett and Ricoeur on the Narrative Self (Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences) by Joan McCarthy (Amherst, NY : Humanity Books, 2007) forthcoming July 3

Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic (Bradford Books) by Russell T Hurlburt; Eric Schwitzgebel (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2007) forthcoming 11/30/07

Discreteness, Continuity, & Consciousness: An Epistemological Unified Field Theory by Alan M. Laibelman (New York : Peter Lang, 2007)

The Drama of Possibility: Experience As Philosophy of Culture (American Philosophy) by John J McDermott; Douglas R Anderson (New York : Fordham University Press, 2007) forthcoming June 07

These are books published in 2007 or forthcoming, mostly limited to scientific or philosophical approaches. This is the beginning of a cumulative list to be posted in the sidebar.

Are You a Machine?: The Brain, the Mind, And What It Means to Be Human by Eliezer J Sternberg (Amherst, N.Y. : Humanity Books, 2007)

Arguing About the Mind (Arguing About Philosophy) ed. by Brie Gertler; Lawrence A Shapiro (New York ; London : Routledge, 2007)

Artificial Consciousness ed. by Antonio Chella; Riccardo Manzotti (Exeter : Imprint Academic, 2007)

Becoming Human: The Development of Language, Self and Self-Consciousness by John V. Canfield (Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.) forthcoming in October

The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness ed. by Max Velmans; Susan Schneider (Malden, MA ; Oxford : Blackwell Pub., 2007)

Blue Sky Thoughts: Colour, Consciousness and Reality by Jamie Carnie (London ; New York : Marion Boyars, 2007)

The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness ed. by Philip David Zelazo; Morris Moscovitch; Evan Thompson (Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience by Bernard J Baars; Nicole M Gage (Oxford : Academic, 2007) textbook

Consciousness, Function, and Representation: Collected Papers, Volume 1 (Bradford Books) by Ned Joel Block (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2007)

The Concepts of Consciousness: Integrating an Emerging Science ed. by J Scott Jordan; Dawn M McBride (Exeter : Imprint Academic, 2007)

BAMM! 2007 – A daylong meeting for SF Bay Area researchers on memory and cognitive control – is being planned for Saturday August 25, 2007; registration is only $25. The final schedule is not yet available. Link for more information.

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