''Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World'' () is a 1992 book by Kevin Kelly. Major themes in ''Out of Control'' are

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

emergence In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central rol ...

self-organization Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components that may interact with one another. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...

negentropy In information theory and statistics, negentropy is used as a measure of distance to normality. It is also known as negative entropy or syntropy. Etymology The concept and phrase "''negative entropy''" was introduced by Erwin Schrödinger in ...

and

chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of Scientific method, scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and Deterministic system, deterministic Scientific law, laws of dynamical systems that are highly sens ...

. The book can be seen as a work of

techno-utopianism Technological utopianism (often called techno-utopianism or technoutopianism) is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ...

Summary

The book's central theme is that several fields of contemporary science and philosophy point in the same direction: intelligence is not organized in a centralized structure but is much more like a beehive composed of small, simple components. Kelly applies this view to bureaucratic organizations, intelligent computers, and the human brain.

Reception

Although the book was not widely reviewed upon its initial release in 1992, it gained visibility, was reviewed, and was extensively cited in subsequent years. Reviews often discussed Kelly's hive-mind analogy as a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

for the

New Economy The New Economy refers to the ongoing development of the American economic system. It evolved from the notions of the classical economy via the transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, and has been driven by ...

. Reviewers have called the book a "mind-expanding exploration" (''Publishers Weekly'') and "the best of an important new genre" (''Forbes ASAP''). Critics of the book have contended that its position precludes a critical approach to politics and social power.

Summary

Reception

References

Further reading