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Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a physicist and novelist. His books include Einstein's Dreams, The Diagnosis, and Reunion.

Living with the Genie

Living with the Genie

Essays On Technology And The Quest For Human Mastery

At a time when scientific and technological breakthroughs keep our eyes focused on the latest software upgrades or the newest cell-phone wizardry, a group of today's most innovative thinkers are looking beyond the horizon to explore both the promise and the peril of our technological future.

Human ingenuity has granted us a world of unprecedented personal power -- enabling us to communicate instantaneously with anyone anywhere on the globe, to transport ourselves in both real and virtual worlds to distant places with ease, to fill our bellies with engineered commodities once avail