(technical evolutionism) does not necessarily result in more social morality (social evolutionism). But I do not suggest that we can blame Shurkin for not exploring this differing interpretation. After all, merging the technical and the social history of computing was not very typical for the first generation of the historiography of computing-Shurkin's generation. The title of this work comes from an essay by Samuel Butler published in 1863, which illustrates the reach of this work and the scholarship on which it is based. George Dyson collects, relates, and extends what he sees as evidence that biology and technology reveal " parallel tendencies toward collective, hierarchical processes based on information exchange " (p. 7)-an evolutionary process, hence the reference to Charles Darwin. The biological evidence collected comes from Smee and is packaged in a fairly traditional reading. This evidence is, however , melded and contrasted with materials from the writings of from the computing area, especially relating to concerns in the cognitive sciences. The objective is to illustrate that development in information processing can be explained in a Darwinian fashion similar to explanations in biology. Dyson states: As information is distributed, it tends to be represented (encoded) in increasingly economical (meaningful) forms. This evolutionary process, whereby the most economical or meaningful representation wins, leads to a hierarchy of languages , encoding meaning on levels that transcend comprehension by the system's individual components-whether genes, insects, microprocessors, or human minds (p. 8). Whether the reader concludes this is profound or bunkum depends on one's attitude toward the presupposition behind this extended essay. That presupposition is the placement of machines on a par with organic life. Acceptance of this presupposition sidesteps any need to justify areas like artificial intelligence and questioning about when machines with artificial intelligence equal or exceed human capability. Dyson is not talking about computer programs and the existence of qualities in these programs (unknown to the developers) that exhibit evolutionary steps when they are revealed, a point I have also heard argued by the late Allen Newell. His analysis is much deeper than that. He is looking to see if a principle akin to natural selection in biology is operating in the machine domain, and many of his justifications come from computing. We may be asking too much of the Darwinian principle of natural selection when we apply it to machines and nebulae. In-asmuch as Dyson includes examples from the …