"Google. Facebook. Twitter. Repeat. We live in a world unimaginable even a few decades ago, one like no other in human history. It's a parallel world where we can be on the move in the real world, yet always hooked into an alternative time and place. And although it's a two-dimensional world of sight and sound, it offers instant information, connected identities, and constant novelty. In this world, our screen technologies are increasingly where we work, where we unwind, where we relieve our boredom and where we learn. The subsequent transformation in how we live and think is a vitally important issue, perhaps even the most important issue of our time. When toddlers are given iPads, and adults spend ten hours a day staring at a screen, can we afford to assume that our brave new screen technologies are harmless tools? Blending a wide range of scientific studies, news events, and cultural criticism with brio and verve, Mind Change presents an incisive snapshot of the global 'now.' Greenfield examines how the dawn of the Digital Age has already altered our cultural landscape, fueled an epidemic of oversharing, and transformed how we learn, remember and spread information -- and how these innovations are changing our physical brains. A warning cry, a shot across the bow, and a call to action, Mind Change explores the social, cultural and physiological ramifications of our new digital lifestyle"--

In these essays Heinz von Foerster discusses some of the fundamental principles that govern how we know the world and how we process the information from which we derive that knowledge. Included are path- breaking articles concerning the principles of computation in neural nets (1967), the definition of self-organizing systems (1960), the nature of cognition (1970), as well as recent expansions on these themes (e.g. "How recursive is communication," 1993). Working with Norbert Wiener, Warren McCullough, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, von Foerster was one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, which has had profound effects both on modern systems theory and on the philosophy of cognition. At the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois he produced the first parallel computers and contributed to many other developments in the theory of computation and cognition.