Pulse : the coming age of systems and machines inspired by living things /

In journalistic fashion, Frenay refracts what environmentally aware scientists, farmers, and economists are saying about technologies, markets, and the biosphere. Distilling their viewpoints, Frenay expounds on developments that take into account the environmental costs of industrialism and overpopulation. The array of material--artificial intelligence, organic farming, and more--tends to fragment the narrative. But the constant changes in topic will give readers interested in practical over ideological environmentalism a survey of what's happening greenwise across the board. Frenay sustains a metaphor that devices, companies, and economies will perform better if they behave like organisms and ecosystems in the biosphere, that is, as decentralized, open systems balancing flows of energy and matter. The new biology Frenay touts promises the technological mimicry of living things rather than machine-age mastery of them. His optimism, however, stands in contrast to his indignant pessimism about corporate business practices. A smorgasbord de luxe, Frenay's reportage is sustaining fare for environmentalists. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2006 Booklist

The computer HAL in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey is infamous for its dispassion, but former Audubon contributing editor Frenay tells readers that computers with emotions will arrive sooner than we may feel comfortable with. In this wide-ranging look at how biology and technology are being integrated in almost every area of human invention, Frenay writes of virtual communities and societies that are springing up online, some with economic systems that mimic those of the real world. Scientists have already created virtual life forms that have developed "sex" all by themselves and are exhibiting evolutionary traits. In the book's most original chapter, the author explains why some economists even advocate using biological metaphors to explain adaptive behaviors in our sophisticated interest rate-based economies. Occasionally the author throws his net rather wide, scooping up more topics than he can discuss adequately, and some of this material has been addressed better by other writers. Still, readers well versed in science who want to avoid future shock will encounter unusual matters on the frontiers of science that may be coming soon to a computer, merchant or medical facility near you. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Can genes trump machines? Frenay, a former contributing editor of Audubon magazine, sees a paradigm shift, with biology moving into the forefront of scientific progress. Bolstered by the use of computers, biological insights now influence human endeavors ranging from robotics to medicine to materials science, he avers. Instead of machine-age logic, with pollution as its inevitable end product, Frenay foresees industrial ecosystems in which the waste products of one manufacturing process become the raw materials of another. An introductory chapter summarizes the historical relations between mechanism and biology, leaning heavily on the Romantics' antipathy toward the analytical methods developed by Descartes and his followers. The author then looks at various areas in which the biological approach can be seen at work, drawing on interviews with leading researchers. Artificial intelligence, which began as an offshoot of behaviorist psychology, now concentrates on robots that embody the kinds of principles that appear to control simple organisms, e.g., an MIT robot that wanders around the builder's lab and collects empty soda cans. On a more downbeat note, Frenay states that industrial farming has steadily increased the role of chemical pesticides in crop production, but the bugs seem effortlessly to keep up, rapidly developing immunities to each new spray. Meanwhile, the pesticides end up in food and drinking water. A new "green revolution" hopes to end the cycle, replacing pesticides with organic methods of controlling bugs: viruses, fungi, bacteria and insects that prey on the pests. Eventually, businessmen will come to see that conservation is itself good business. At this point, the apparent conflict between environmentalism and the profit motive will disappear. In the long run, Frenay argues, that recognition will transform society. With a fair amount of utopian rhetoric, this account suggests that the new biology may well have legs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.