It may be said that whether or not a corporation is "alive" is a matter of definition. I find it quite easy to make the necessary adjustments. But we are still left with our doubts about the analogy. We expect a living thing to be "like" us - especially to have something we call consciousness. Consciousness is a slippery idea. For most of us, it refers to the experience we have of inhabiting the world. It is subtly connected to the phenomenon of attention . A vast amount of my behaviour is obviously controlled by my brain but not in a conscious way (I don't need to think about how to walk down the street, drive a car or decipher letter patterns while I read). Consciousness (attention) is about what I do need to "think about". This distinction is made in " The Ravenous Brain ", a very readable source for those looking for an update on the current status of research into how the brain works. In summary, the function of "attention" or ...

In  Swimming With the Sharks , Joris Lewindijk  provides a stellar inside look at the "City", London's financial industry. His work is remarkable in that he manages to tease out the differences between matters on a human scale and what happens to the system as a whole. He focuses on "perverse incentives", a key mechanism of "assimilation" whereby ordinary people surrender their humanity to the impersonal machinery of the investment banks. The book should be read with "The Real World of Technology", which describes the phenomenon of assimilation in an industrial society in general (not just banking). "Swimming" is a modern classic, to be compared with "The Corporation". At its heart we see acceptance of the fallacy: money as a proxy for value. "Swimming" presents the clearest case I know of how the "Dragon" created by the common efforts of very smart people takes on a life of its own. But the whole is s...