This book was seriously influential to me in 1994 when a friend leant me his hard cover copy. Arguably, Out of Control, Snowcrash, (and a less well known book called Goatwalking) defined my whole early 20s aesthetic and outlook.

My favorite term from the book at the time was "hive mind."

Might the title be a reference to Brooks et. al. "Fast Cheap and Out of Control" (1989)?

https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/fast-cheap.pdf

Judging from this section in Chapter 3, I guess so :)

https://kk.org/mt-files/outofcontrol/ch3-b.html

I've had this book on my reading list for a while! Out of Control is referenced heavily in Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

(Link includes the full text)

HTML: https://kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php

PDF: https://kk.org/mt-files/books-mt/ooc-mf.pdf

Kevin Kelly also wrote What Technology Wants. It has some very interesting ideas, that seep into all other areas.

I think I'm gonna binge on his stuff. He seems like a really cool dude. I recall his optimism getting a lot of flak in the late 2010s but he seems to really care and celebrate think deeply about our culture. That techno-optimism garbage was deeply embarrassing and fascist but I think I can get behind Kelly's brand of optimism. Check out "the third culture" article that I just submitted. So much of the stuff he says in passing in that article is still verrrrry relevant today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39378589

This is a good book. Themes therein are as relevant as ever.

The acknowledgements on pp396-397 are a good example of "maximising the fringes"!

Dumb q but what does this mean?