Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1699108 in Books
• Published on: 1976-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Customer Reviews

Important book about the role of computers in our culture

This remains one of the best books about the role of computers in our society, dealing with such topics as:

(1) How computers, by doing clerical work faster than human clerks, have enabled established bureaucratic structures to endure, and therefore the "computer revolution" has really been a powerful conservative/reactionary social process.

(2) How huge incomprehensible computer systems come to tyrannize people (both end users and maintenance programmers) into submitting to the systems' irrational behavior, because the known problems cannot be fixed without risk of making things even worse.

(3) The social responsibility of technical workers, who generally are myopically focused on "efficiently" doing whatever they do, without being concerned about *what* should be being done and whether what *they* are working on is something which should be done differently or not be done at all.

This book should be *must* reading for all computer programmers, computer "scientists", et al., to help them begin to think more about the social context of technology, and begin to aspire to *wisdom* and *responsibility* commensurate with the social impact of their work.

"Computer Power and Human Reason" is also well written to be understandable by lay persons. A wide range of readers should find it enjoyable, interesting and thought-provoking. Thus it can help "Everyman" understand better the role of computers in our lives.

Perhaps the best ever book on the social meaning of computer
This is perhaps the best book ever written on issues of computer technology and modern life, in the sense that it says a lot of really important things and is also very readable by both lay persons and technical persons. People like Jacques Ellul, Arnold Gehlen et al. have written very important texts in this area, but are much less "accessible". If the truth only counts when it is absorbed by persons, Weizenbaum's book stands out as being engrossing and a pleasure to read, as well as saying what needs to be said. It is very sad that the second edition which was supposed to be out a year or so ago has not appeared. But in no way has 20 years "dated" the present text. _Computer Power and Human Understanding_ explains why we have such problems as Y2K, etc.

The Computer Programmer
I read parts of this book, thinking highly of it. I thought one particular passage from it, as quoted in Gates by Stepehen Manes and Paul Andrews, particulary stood amid the limelight: [t]he computer programmer . . . is a creator of universes for which alone is the lawgiver. . . .No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage of field a battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.