The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind Book

Argues that ours is an age of disinformation and ignorance in which access to knowledge is becoming increasingly restricted and even criminalized. This book argues that many forces in the modern world conspire to make acquiring information a danger or even a crime.Read More

from£21.58 | RRP: £15.99
* Excludes Voucher Code Discount Also available Used from £9.37
  • Product Description

    We all agree that the free flow of ideas is essential to creativity. And we like to believe that in our modern, technological world, information is more freely available and flows faster than ever before. But according to Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin, acquiring information is becoming a danger or even a crime. Increasingly, the really valuable information is private property or a state secret, with the result that it is now easy for a flash of insight, entirely innocently, to infringe a patent or threaten national security. The public pays little attention because this vital information is “technical”—but, Laughlin argues, information is often labeled technical so it can be sequestered, not sequestered because it’s technical. The increasing restrictions on information in such fields as cryptography, biotechnology, and computer software design are creating a new Dark Age: a time characterized not by light and truth but by disinformation and ignorance. Thus we find ourselves dealing more and more with the Crime of Reason, the antisocial and sometimes outright illegal nature of certain intellectual activities.

    The Crime of Reason is a reader-friendly jeremiad, On Bullshit for the Slashdot and Creative Commons crowd: a short, fiercely argued essay on a problem of increasing concern to people at the frontiers of new ideas.

  • 0465005071
  • 9780465005079
  • Robert B. Laughlin
  • 4 September 2008
  • Basic Books
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 224
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. If you click through any of the links below and make a purchase we may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). Click here to learn more.

Would you like your name to appear with the review?

We will post your book review within a day or so as long as it meets our guidelines and terms and conditions. All reviews submitted become the licensed property of www.find-book.co.uk as written in our terms and conditions. None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.

All form fields are required.