All too human.(Devices of the Soul: Battling for Ourselves in an Age of Machines)(Book review)

DEVICES OF THE SOUL:

BATTLING FOR OUR SELVES IN AN

AGE OF MACHINES

by STEVE TALBOTT

O'Reilly, 281 pages, $22.99

As FRANCIS CRICK (he of Watson and Crick) put it, "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." According to Rodney Brooks, a robotics researcher at MIT, "We, all of us, overanthropomorphize humans, who are after all mere machines." "Man has to understand that he is a mere accident," said Jacques Monod, the Nobel-laureate biologist.

These sentiments are far from unusual among scientists, and, as Steve Talbott points out in Devices of ...

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