The epigraph to this book is the concluding stanza of William Carlos Williams’s poem “To Elsie,” which appeared in the 1923 volume Spring and All.
I am deeply grateful to those who, as interviewees, reviewers, or correspondents, provided me with insight and assistance: Claudio Aporta, Henry Beer, Véronique Bohbot, George Dyson, Gerhard Fischer, Mark Gross, Katherine Hayles, Charles Jacobs, Joan Lowy, E. J. Meade, Raja Parasuraman, Lawrence Port, Jeff Robbins, Jeffrey Rowe, Ari Schulman, Evan Selinger, Betsy Sparrow, Tim Swan, Ben Tranel, and Christof van Nimwegen.
The Glass Cage is the third of my books to have been guided by the editorial hand of Brendan Curry at W. W. Norton. I thank Brendan and his colleagues for their work on my behalf. I am indebted as well to my agent, John Brockman, and his associates at Brockman Inc. for their wise counsel and support.
Some passages in this book appeared earlier, in different forms, in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, MIT Technology Review, and my blog, Rough Type.