We Are the Machine: The Computer, the Internet, and Information in Contemporary German Literature.

摘要

Among the virtues of We Are the Machine: The Computer, the Internet, and Information in Contemporary German Literature, an astute study of literary and cultural responses to information technologies, are brief chronicles of IT industries in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Each nation developed computers early—the Z3 (Germany) in 1941, the Mailüfterl (Austria) in 1958, and the ERMETH (Switzerland) in 1956—although they were subsequently marginalized by aggressive marketing of American models. As a re-such assertions, Youngman wisely notes that humans have long since been transformed by successive stages of mediation. Ambivalence is all to the good, but demystification of IT, not casting it as deterministic, is the only option.