After a several-year stint in organic farming, Steve Talbott began working in the high-tech industry in 1981 as a technical writer and software programmer. His 1995 book, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, was named one of the ""Best Books of 1995"" by UNIX Review and was chosen by the library journal Choice for its 1996 list of ""Outstanding Academic Books."" In the years since then Steve has produced over 165 issues of the highly regarded online newsletter, NetFuture - Technology and Human Responsibility (http://netfuture.org), from which the contents of this current book are drawn. In a New York Times feature article about Steve's work, NetFuture was termed ""a largely undiscovered national treasure.""

Since 1998 Steve has been a Senior Researcher at The Nature Institute in Ghent, New York (http://natureinstitute.org). He is currently working on issues relating to the establishment of a new, qualitative science (http://qual.natureinstitute.org).