The Human Use of Human Beings
First UK edition
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| Author | Norbert Wiener |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher |
Houghton Mifflin (US) Eyre & Spottiswoode (UK) |
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Publication date
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1950 |
| Media type | Book |
The Human Use of Human Beings is a book by Norbert Wiener, the founding thinker of cybernetics theory and an influential advocate of automation; it was first published in 1950 and revised in 1954. The text argues for the benefits of automation to society; it analyzes the meaning of productive communication and discusses ways for humans and machines to cooperate, with the potential to amplify human power and release people from the repetitive drudgery of manual labor, in favor of more creative pursuits in knowledge work and the arts. The risk that such changes might harm society (through dehumanization or subordination of our species) is explored, and suggestions are offered on how to avoid such risk.
The word cybernetics refers to the theory of message transmission among people and machines. The thesis of the book is that
society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part. (p. 16)
Communication methods have entered a new realm, involving new technologies. Whether a transmission is between people, or between people and machines, the process is similar in that information is sent by one party and received by another, which can send a response. This is a type of feedback. People, animals, and plants all have the ability to take certain actions in response to their environments; in the same way, machines have feedback systems in order for their performances to be altered or evaluated in accordance with results. In the context of human/machine society, Wiener offers a definition of the message as "a sequence of events in time which, though in itself has a certain contingency, strives to hold back nature's tendency toward disorder by adjusting its parts to various purposive ends" (p. 27).
The physical world has a "tendency toward disorder." Entropy (although a broad concept used in somewhat different ways across disciplines) roughly describes the way that isolated systems naturally become less and less organized with the passage of time; popularly understood as meaning a gradual decline into a state of chaos, the concept more accurately refers to the diffusion of energy toward a state of equilibrium, following the second law of thermodynamics.
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Wikipedia