"Historically astute and philosophically brilliant, this is the most ambitious, original, and important book on human-machine relations in thirty years. Bates surveys the entirety of the modern tradition since Descartes to demonstrate that there has never been a 'natural intelligence' to contrast with artificial intelligence and offers one convincing interpretation after another to force the reader to rework basic assumptions about technology, philosophy, and humanity. This is a tremendous achievement–intellectual history at its best."–Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University