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The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society
By (Author) Norbert Wiener
Hachette Books
Da Capo Press Inc
22nd March 1988
22nd March 1988
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
306.46
Paperback
200
Width 138mm, Height 214mm, Spine 18mm
293g
Only a few books stand as landmarks in social and scientific upheaval. Norbert Wiener's classic is one in that small company. Founder of the science of cyberneticsthe study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous systemWiener was widely misunderstood as one who advocated the automation of human life. As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits. At the same time he realized the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His book examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as he anticipates the enormous impactin effect, a third industrial revolutionthat the computer has had on our lives.
Norbert Wiener received his Ph.D. from Harvard at the age of eighteen, and joined the mathematics department at M.I.T. when he was twenty-five. honoured throughout his life with numerous scientific awards, he was the author of two autobiographies, Ex-Prodogy and I Am a Mathematician, as well as several important books and basic papers on the theory and practice of cybernetics.