Wireheads
An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain
- Author: Mike Jay
- Book type: the brain and the electronic device
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- To be released: October 6, 2026
- Length: 264 pages
- Format: hardback / ebook
- Prize: $ 30.00
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Mike Jay Wireheads reviews and information
Whenever a review of Wireheads, An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain, written by Mike Jay, appears in the media, we’ll highlight it on this page.
- “If you’re interested in the nexus of science, technology, psychoanalysis, the military industrial complex, New Age cosmology, and Weird Guys, this is the book for you … A totally fascinating tour of the (often brilliant, sometimes cruel, always strange) characters who pursued brain-machine interfaces, and the experimentation, ritual, espionage, fraud, and abuse they perpetrated to free, or control, the human mind.” (Max Read, editor of Read Max)
- “Full of tales of madness, delusion and inspiration, Wireheads is the definitive account of humanity’s ambitious but misguided attempts to connect mind and machine. Thoroughly researched, entertaining and eye-opening.” (John Higgs, author)
Blurb of the book by Mike Jay
The story of the mavericks and scientists, crackpots and artistic visionaries who imagined a future where machines fuse with our minds.
As humanity and technology become ever more tightly interwoven, Wireheads explores the final and most intimate frontier: the brain, and the electronic devices, magnetic signals, implants, and computer interfaces that promise to merge it with the world of the machine. Will these technologies eventually direct our thoughts and behaviour—or are they doing so already? Will they maintain us in states of artificial bliss, or connect us to higher intelligences, or replace the world of our senses with simulated realities?
Mike Jay, acclaimed author of Psychonauts, now traces the tangled, paranoid history of these real and fantastical brain technologies. From the fictions of H. G. Wells and Philip K. Dick to The Matrix, the CIA’s Cold War experiments and Elon Musk’s Neuralink, scientists and visionaries have long chased the dream of neural enhancement and control, with wildly varying degrees of success.
Encompassing covert military operations and psychedelic art, moral philosophy and cybernetic theory, Jay has assembled a thrilling narrative out of our attempts to understand and rewire the brain—and a brilliant meditation on what it means to be human in a posthuman age.
Mike Jay is a celebrated british historian of science, medicine, and culture. He is the author of acclaimed books including Free Radicals, Mescaline, and Psychonauts, described by Michael Pollan as “easily the most interesting work of psychedelic history I’ve read in years.