From the pioneering experiments in "cybernetics" of the 1940s to the digital computers and robot prototypes developed by Carnegie Mellon University and MIT researchers to Deep Blue, and on to the most current projects involving humanoid robots and attempts to duplicate the evolution of intelligence, Mind Matters chronicles the extraordinary journey toward a scientific breakthrough that could well overshadow man's conquest of space.

Whether such a breakthrough is even possible, and what the implications - social, economic, political - for humankind will be if it is, makes Mind Matters the scientifically and philosophically provocative read of the year.