Electronic sleuths who stalk Patrick Gunkel online will sooner or later—probably sooner—come across his defunct Amazon.com reviewer profile.
Typically I think this happens because one of Gunkel’s book reviews come up in the search, and then you can follow the breadcrumbs to his main profile.
Beginning on August 11, 1998, and continuing for a few years, Gunkel began to review books and several films on Amazon.com.
For example, Gunkel did not like “Die Hard with a Vengeance”:
Conversely, Gunkel liked a book about the history of the debate over extraterrestrials:
Gunkel’s reviews provide some insight into how his mind worked and hint at his aesthetic sensibilities.
Yes, I admit, it’s a bit strange to comb through the online detritus left behind by a man who has since passed away.
Honestly, though, over the last few years I’ve been driven to track down every byte of data I could find about one of the 20th century’s most unusual and unknown personalities, and Gunkel’s reviewer profile is a goldmine of information.
Gunkel never bothered to make a resumé for himself to my knowledge.
His Amazon.com profile is therefore one of just a few resumé-like objects Gunkel ever drafted.
And from my perspective as the world’s preeminent Patrick Gunkel scholar, there are a few things that strike me as notably curious about the profile and the reviews.
I hope the following deep dive will inspire others to recognize how incomplete our knowledge about Gunkel remains today; if anyone has ideas or answers, I’d love to hear them either in the comments below or in an email via our GGRP contact form.
According to Gunkel’s profile, the MIT ideonomy website has a “random 2% sample of the enormous quantity of materials which resulted” from the Ideonomy Project
When I first read this line, I was stunned.
The MIT website seems pretty comprehensive, so I had a hard time reckoning with Gunkel’s characterization and found myself wondering what the other 98% of ideonomy materials might be.
Once my shock had subsided, however, I began thinking about things logically and arrived at the following conclusion:
A 1999 capture of the ideonomy website via the waybackmachine shows that the site did not contain the large manuscripts that were later added; the site may have been even more bare-bones when Gunkel first started his Amazon.com profile in 1998.
When Gunkel characterized the site in his Amazon.com profile, he must have been referring to the site as it first existed in 1998 rather than its final state.
In fact, I believe the MIT website as it exists today contains what Gunkel considered the most important material he produced for ideonomy.
Although Gunkel definitely produced more material for the ideonomy project than is currently posted on the MIT website, the quantity is not as low as “2 percent.”
Whether the ideonomy website represents 60 percent or 80 percent of all the material Gunkel produced for ideonomy, however, I don’t have the answer, but I do know this: a large amount of materials were never publicly posted.
The history of ideonomy, in other words, remains even more incomplete than it superficially appears.
Gunkel’s infamous review of Stephen Wolfram’s book “A New Kind of Science” is missing from amazon.com
Stephen Wolfram is a big deal in the world of computer science, a child prodigy who was publishing research on applied quantum field theory and particle physics as a teenager and who went on to found his own computer software company, Wolfram Research, which makes the software Mathematica.
But although 16 of Gunkel’s reviews are still available to read via his Amazon.com profile, his infamous and brutal Amazon.com review of Wolfram’s 2002 book A New Kind of Science is not available.
How do I know about the review?
Because Wolfram mentions the review himself in a tribute to Gunkel’s friend, MIT computer scientist Ed Fredkin.
Gunkel’s review is also cited in Ted Chu’s 2014 book Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential as a critique of a reductionist metaphysical system that reduces all of reality to a single principle or purpose.
So where the hell is this infamous review?
Well, my electronic sleuthing has got you covered.
Because I found a ycombinator message board post by someone named “superobserver” on May 26, 2016, that includes Gunkel’s review.
The ycombinator post contains an Amazon.com link to the review, but the link no longer works.
In Gunkel’s review, entitled “A Pied Piper in Modern Dress,” he basically trashes Wolfram’s fixation with the concept of cellular automata as being the one and only explanation for life, the universe, and everything.
Gunkel also mentions drafting up a list called “250 Single Things People Have Tried To Reduce All of Nature To” in response to Edward Fredkin’s own interest in cellular automata.
The conspiracy-seeking side of my brain wonders whether Wolfram rang up Amazon.com and asked for the review to be removed after Gunkel’s death in 2017.
I can think of no other explanation for why 1) a link to the review exists, 2) the link does not work, and 3) many other Gunkel reviews are still available.
As for the list Gunkel mentioned regarding Fredkin’s own theories, it sounds like a wonderful list, but I’ve never been able to get my hands on it…
Gunkel served “as a consultant to the Charles Kettering Foundation”
According to Wikipedia, the Kettering Foundation “works to inspire and connect individuals and organizations to advance thriving and inclusive democracies around the globe.” It’s been in existence since 1927. I’m almost positive Gunkel would have obtained any work through the Foundation the same way he obtained much of his other work in the 1970s—through his connection with Herman Kahn.
And yet other than this single reference, I have no other knowledge of what that work might have been.
There’s evidence supporting Gunkel’s other consultancies with the Institute of the Future and the Walt Disney company, but this one remains a big unknown to me.
Gunkel provides his email address
In his reviewer profile, Gunkel lists his email address as [email protected].
I believe this is a crucially important breadcrumb for future investigators who have more digital sleuthing skills than I do, as it suggests we can excavate Gunkel posts from message boards, listserv archives, and other containers of digital memory that either already exist or have not yet been made publicly available.
Gunkel lists the titles of many unpublished books that have never been publicly shared
On the Amazon website, Gunkel states that he has written 19 books, including “A Futurism Pandect” and “For Whom All Things Are Possible: The Supremely Intelligent Child: A Mentor’s Records and Dreams.”
These and several other books mentioned by Gunkel have never been publicly shared.
I can guess what’s in them, but I don’t have copies.
So where are these books now?
Unlike some of these other issues, I DO know the answer to this question—at least I did in March 2024—but for the time being I’m not going to write about it, hoping beyond hope that a certain somebody is going to Do the Right Thing.