By the time you are finished [reading 'Tuxedo Park'], you are prepared to bestow on Alfred Lee Loomis the title of Most Interesting Man I Never Knew Anything About.

... In 1917, Loomis joined the Army and, as an ordnance researcher, fell into his life's calling -- becoming a world-class tinkerer, inventor, collator and promoter of new ideas.

In 1940, with the Battle of Britain hanging in the balance, Winston Churchill's top scientists came to America bearing a gift, and a plea.

Loomis immediately convened an emergency meeting of the Establishment: his cousin Henry Stimson, the secretary of war; and Stimson's aides John McCloy, Robert Patterson and Robert Lovett. All Yale men, all Harvard Law, all Wall Streeters, all Republicans and all instrumental in starting MIT's wondrous Radiation Laboratory, the Rad Lab.

The Information Revolution is changing the world in myriad ways. But is it a change for the better? Will advances in computer technology strengthen democratic values or destroy them? Enhance personal freedom or enslave us? Contribute to the world's problems or help solve them?

Technomanifestos sets out to answer these questions by investigating the primary sources -- the seminal but seldom-read texts that form the philosophical foundation of the Digital Age. From artificial intelligence to nanotechnology, cybernetics to the World Wide Web, it charts a fascinating course through the history of ideas in the latter half of the twentieth century.

A science writer with a refreshingly humanistic point of view, Adam Brate brings his subject to life, exploring the professional triumphs and tragedies of such visionaries as Norbert Wiener, Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Richard Stallman, and K. Eric Drexler. Far from being computer geeks, they emerge as a lively group of radical thinkers, deeply committed to civil liberties, personal empowerment, and participatory democracy.

With a sure hand and an eye for the telling detail, Brate illuminates the intersections of technology and society, computers and culture, information and meaning. And he deftly places technological advances into broader social and political contexts, tracing their impact on work, education, media, and law.