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Rare for a conference to generate readable books, but editor Peter Denning
has contrived a second from the golden jubilee conference of the Association for
Computing Machinery. In Talking back to the machine, iconoclast Bruce
Sterling tells everyone to get out and have some fun away from, as well as with,
their computers. Murray Gell-Mann urges us to work the Santa Fe way (networks
rule), and Microsoft’s guru Nathan Myhrvold says software’s a gas (it expands to
fit the container it’s in). Trained in theatre and now working in computers,
Brenda Laurel threatens the male stakes in cyberspace with her virtual worlds,
and recommends letting rip with creative impulses. Published by Copernicus,
£19/$27, ISBN 0387984135.