Society of Mind

Marvin Minsky -- one of the fathers of computer science and cofounder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT -- gives a revolutionary answer to the age-old question: "How does the mind work?"

Minsky brilliantly portrays the mind as a "society" of tiny components that are themselves mindless. Mirroring his theory, Minsky boldly casts The Society of Mind as an intellectual puzzle whose pieces are assembled along the way. Each chapter -- on a self-contained page -- corresponds to a piece in the puzzle. As the pages turn, a unified theory of the mind emerges, like a mosaic. Ingenious, amusing, and easy to read, The Society of Mind is an adventure in imagination.

Compared to other books out there, this one is easy to read, and is deeply inspiring. Chapters are concise, and comprehendible. I would recommend this book to anybody who is new to AI and overall theories of the mind.


Amazing   March 1, 2005
Cindy Solomon (Berkeley, CA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

In this book Minsky tries, as have many scientists before him, to explain what seems unexplainable. Even though in present day, many people believe in science over magic, the majority still believes that the brain is somehow magical and cannot be replicated. Minsky asks what stops us from building a brain out of steel instead of carbon? He breaks down the mind in a way that anyone can understand how it works.

I'm almost 14 and in the 8th grade. I picked up this book for a research project on Cognitive Psychology because it was the only thing I could find that wasn't written for graduate students. Not only could I understand it, but it kept my attention (unlike most non-fiction books) and I enjoyed reading it. I liked how Minsky could take the most complex thing in the world, the brain, and describe it in easy to understand terms. There were many pictures and diagrams used to represent the text. For example, to show the basics of how the mind works using many separate agents, Minsky used the example of a child building a tower out of blocks and how the agent in the child's mind, called "builder" and all of "builder's" agents beneath it created the tower out of blocks.

I recommend this book for anyone curious about what goes on in the mind to cause people's actions as well as anyone interested in artificial intelligence.



makes you think about the process of thought   September 11, 2006
Patrick Regan (Northampton, MA USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

The Society of Mind attempts to explain how the mind works. The author considers the mind to be a society of small mental machines that do simple things by themselves but combine to perform amazingly complex tasks like the walking and talking that we take for granted. As this book was written in the 1980's I am sure that it is somewhat out of date. But the questions he asks are timeless. How does memory work? How do we sense space? How do we process conflicting ideas? How do we know when to replace a memory with a more accurate version? This book will make you think about these questions and more. The Society of Mind is worth reading just for the questions it asks.


An overlooked gem in the caverns of psychology   March 5, 1999
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

Mr. Minsky's book is a true nugget of golden wisdom. A broken-down, step-by-step guide to the elements of thought and action. Tired of self-important terminology and baroque explanation in the realm of psychology? Pick up this brilliant mind's prosaic, simply worded and lucidly illustrated work on the subject of how our minds work. He is the Bob Villa of consciousness.