Machine Dreams
Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science

Machine Dreams recounts how the computer has transformed the content of American economics.

Philip Mirowski (Author)

9780521775267, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 December 2001

672 pages, 5 b/w illus. 3 tables
22.9 x 15.5 x 4 cm, 0.99 kg

'… a remarkable achievement. It is hard to imagine a historian who was not an economist (as Mirowski is) being able to encompass the economics of the second half of the 20th century in its diversity and technicality.' London Review of Books

This was the first cross-over book into the history of science written by an historian of economics. It shows how 'history of technology' can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. The analysis combines Cold War history with the history of postwar economics in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. It links the literature on 'cyborg' to economics, an element missing in literature to date. The treatment further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents, arguing that neoclassical economics has participated in the deconstruction of the integral 'self'. Finally, it argues for an alliance of computational and institutional themes, and challenges the widespread impression that there is nothing else besides American neoclassical economic theory left standing after the demise of Marxism.

Acknowledgements
1. Cyborg agonistes
2. Some cyborg genealogies
or, how the demon got its bots
3. John von Neumann and the cyborg incursion into economics
4. The military, the scientists and the revised rules of the game
5. Do cyborgs dream of efficient markets?
6. The empire strikes back
7. Core wars
8. Machines who think versus machines that sell
Envoi
References
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Impact of science & technology on society [PDR], Philosophy of science [PDA], Economics [KC]