Results for “Norbert Wiener”

…ocalypse at the same time: Good AI versus evil AI." —John Brockman More than sixty years ago, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener published a book on the place of machines in society that ended with a warning: “we shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless...

…r age— as by their modern-sounding insights. I detect that same doubleness—the zig-zag origami folds of old and new—in Norbert Wiener’s classic The Human Use of Human Beings. First published in 1950 and revised in 1954, the book is in many ways extraordinarily prescient. Wiener,...

But Wiener failed to foresee crucial technological developments. Like pretty much all technologists of the 1950s, he failed to predict the computer revolution. Computers, he thought, would eventually fall in price from hundreds of thousands of (1950s) dollars to tens of thousands...

But Wiener failed to foresee crucial technological developments. Like pretty much all technologists of the 1950s, he failed to predict the computer revolution. Computers, he thought, would eventually fall in price from hundreds of thousands of (1950s) dollars to tens of thousands...

superintelligence. Whither Wiener Wiener noted that exponential technological progress is a relatively modern phenomenon and not all of itis good. He regarded atomic weapons and the development of missiles with nuclear warheads as a recipe for the suicide of the human species....

Indeed, Wiener gave scientific teeth to the idea that in the workings of history, politics, and society, ideas matter. Beliefs, ideologies, norms, laws, and customs, by regulating the behavior of the humans who share them, can shape a society and power the course of historical ev...

methods he and others developed for the control of missiles, for example, were later put to work in building the Saturn V moon rocket, one of the crowning engineering achievements of the 20th century. In particular, Wiener’s applications of cybernetic concepts to the brain and to...

methods he and others developed for the control of missiles, for example, were later put to work in building the Saturn V moon rocket, one of the crowning engineering achievements of the 20th century. In particular, Wiener’s applications of cybernetic concepts to the brain and to...

…artment of Mechanical Engineering, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. The Human Use of Human Beings, Norbert Wiener’s 1950 popularization of his highly influential book Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), investigates th...

…artment of Mechanical Engineering, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. The Human Use of Human Beings, Norbert Wiener’s 1950 popularization of his highly influential book Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), investigates th...

During the Festival, I received an unexpected phone call from Wiener’s colleague Arthur K. Solomon, head of Harvard’s graduate program in biophysics. Wiener had died the year before, and Solomon and Wiener’s other close colleagues at MIT and Harvard had been reading about the Exp...

…ction—energy is conserved, whereas entropy must grow—followed enormous cosmic consequences. Time must flow forward; 3° Norbert Wiener, “A Scientist Rebels,” Zhe Atlantic Monthly, January 1947. 31 Warren Weaver, “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication,”...

…plain it—the notion that the late Jerry Fodor dubbed the computational theory of mind. The touchstone for this volume, Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings, celebrated this intellectual accomplishment, of which Wiener himself was a foundational contributor. A potted hi...

…ction—energy is conserved, whereas entropy must grow—followed enormous cosmic consequences. Time must flow forward; 3° Norbert Wiener, “A Scientist Rebels,” Zhe Atlantic Monthly, January 1947. 31 Warren Weaver, “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication,”...

communicate their thoughts to one another. The aim is to present a mosaic of views which will help make sense out of this rapidly emerging field. I asked the essayists to consider: (a) The Zen-like poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” by Wallace Stevens, which he ins...