The electronic digital computer has become a popular metaphor for society and for the human mind. It is an immensely powerful metaphor.

Computers are essentially symbol-manipulating machines: they accept, store, rearrange, combine, and deliver vast amounts of symbolic information. Man-made computer languages permit the computer to be used to solve practical problems. So nearly universal is the computer's information-processing power that it invites comparison with the human mind's power of though. But is the mind nothing more than a superbly complex machine? Is life simply a program running on an enormous computer - a program that can be cast in the abstract symbols of modern science?

"No" writes Joseph Weizenbaum, "The individual human being, like any other organism, is defined by the problems he confronts. He must necessarily confront problems that arise from his unique biological and emotional needs ... no other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms." Yet, as this book convincingly demonstrates, many of us have tacitly accepted the view that computers and man are species of the same genus, and have then gone on to "solve problems" as if man and society were machines.

This approach, Weizenbaum argues, denies the very possibility of finding authentically human ways to deal with human dilemmas.

Computer Power and Human Reason is a distinguished computer scientist's elucidation of the impact of scientific rationality on man's self image. Weizenbaum's arguments have added force because they are accompanied by a lucid and authoritative account of the sources of power of the computer - the machine that is the very embodiment of scientific rationality. Computer Power and Human Reason is a searching examination of what computers can do, what they cannot do, and what they should not be used to do. It is, above all, an eloquent argument for the sanctity of the human spirit.