Johannesson, Olof
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of Swedish plasma physicist and author Hannes Olof Gosta Alfvén (1908-1995), winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physics, which may have surprised some of his more conventional colleagues as he had been for many years thought of as a maverick. His Scientific Romance, Sagan om den stora datamaskinen (1966; trans Naomi Walford as The Big Computer: A Vision 1968; vt The Tale of the Big Computer: A Vision 1968; vt The End of Man? 1969), a Future History of Earth by a Computer (or perhaps by a human). After a period of Near Future prosperity and development, human intervention causes a great Disaster, from which a new world – run entirely by Computers in terms the remaining humans cannot comprehend (see Singularity) – eventually emerges. Drily and wittily, the book argues that humanity is merely an intermediate step in the Evolution of Machines – a chilling perspective on our ultimate purpose. [JC/PN]
see also: Automation; Cybernetics; Intelligence.
Hannes Olof Gosta Alfvén
born Norrköping, Sweden: 30 May 1908
died Djursholm, Sweden: 2 April 1995
works
- Sagan om den stora datamaskinen (Stockholm, Sweden: Albert Bonniers, 1966) [hb/]
- The Great Computer: A Vision (London: Victor Gollancz, 1968) [trans by Naomi Walford of the above: hb/Lawrence Johnson]
- The Tale of the Big Computer: A Vision (New York: Coward-McCann, 1968) [vt of the above: hb/]
- The End of Man? (New York: Award Books, 1969) [vt of the above: pb/]
- The Great Computer: A Vision (London: Victor Gollancz, 1968) [trans by Naomi Walford of the above: hb/Lawrence Johnson]
nonfiction
- Världen-spegelvärlden: Kosmologi och antimateria (Stockholm, Sweden: Albert Bonnier/Aldus, 1966) as H Alfvén [nonfiction: hb/]
- Worlds-Antiworlds: Antimatter in Cosmology (San Francisco, California: W H Freeman and Company, 1966) as H Alfvén [nonfiction: trans of the above: hb/]
links
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