By Kevin Kelly, Perseus Books Group, May 1995

Amazon.com: In many ways, the 20th century has been the Age of Physics. Out of Control is an accessible and entertaining explanation of why the coming years will probably be the Age of Biology -- particularly evolution and ethology -- and what this will mean to most every aspect of our society. Kelly is an enthusiastic and well-informed guide who explains the promises and implications of this rapidly evolving revolution very well.

Forbes ASAP: ...the best of an important new genre. The book offers a pointed reminder that self organization...is the essence of innovation, progress, and life itself. These are eternal ideas -- and ideas whose time has come.

London Spectator: ...represents an attempt to comprehend the possible future evolution of everything. This is the wonderful sort of subject which can quickly transform a reader's idle curiosity into an obsessive craving for more knowledge and imaginative interpretation. Kelly offers plenty of both, with hackle-raising enthusiasm, eloquence, and even that scientific rarity, a sense of humor.

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Book Description:

Out of Control is a summary of what we know about self-sustaining systems, both living ones such as a tropical wetland, or an artificial one, such as a computer simulation of our planet. The last chapter of the book, "The Nine Laws of God," is a distillation of the nine common principles that all life-like systems share. The major themes of the book are:

• As we make our machines and institutions more complex, we have to make them more biological in order to manage them.
  
• The most potent force in technology will be artificial evolution. We are already evolving software and drugs instead of engineering them.
  
• Organic life is the ultimate technology, and all technology will improve towards biology.
  
• The main thing computers are good for is creating little worlds so that we can try out the Great Questions. Online communities let us ask the question "what is a democracy; what do you need for it?" by trying to wire a democracy up, and re-wire it if it doesn't work. Virtual reality lets us ask "what is reality?" by trying to synthesize it. And computers give us room to ask "what is life?" by providing a universe in which to create computer viruses and artificial creatures of increasing complexity. Philosophers sitting in academies used to ask the Great Questions; now they are asked by experimentalists creating worlds.
  
• As we shape technology, it shapes us. We are connecting everything to everything, and so our entire culture is migrating to a "network culture" and a new network economics.
  
• In order to harvest the power of organic machines, we have to instill in them guidelines and self-governance, and relinquish some of our total control.

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