"It is a beautifully written book, lucid, direct, and despite its complexity, as readable by the layman as the trained scientist." -- John B. Thurston, The Saturday Review of Literature

Acclaimed one of the "seminal books . . . comparable in ultimate importance to . . . Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill", Cybernetics was judged by twenty-seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead." -- Saturday Review

Weiner's book discuses the use of feedback on virtually every type of control mechanism known... i.e., those of nature as well as those of man. It is the "basic" stuff that everyone of us uses everyday and every moment of our lives whether we are aware of it or not. Whereas Shannon's book tells us how to communicate information in an error-free (or nearly so) way, Weiner's book explains how that information is used to provide effective control of everything around us. For many decades since I first was introduced to these two works, I have used their principles in most things I do.

I very highly recommend these two books to anyone who considers themselves a "thinking person" and is seeking to understand the world around them. Both easily get 5 stars. They are major works!


Timeless work joins philosophy, computing, and mathematics   May 16, 2006
calvinnme
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

Norbert Wiener was interested in the means by which feedback could be communicated to help correct the problems that develop in an organism. In investigating this matter, Weiner investigates a number of topics that differentiate between mere computation and intelligence and the importance that information plays in both. This is the unifying theme of a book that seems to wander through many topics using philosophy, mathematics, and the theory of computation.

For example, in chapter one of the book, Wiener illustrates the basic difference between man and machine with a discussion of the concept of Newtonian versus Bergsonian time. He states that Newtonian time - that of high level physics phenomena- is reversible. Bergsonian time, the time of living organisms making their way against entropy is not reversible. Thus since Newtonian time is reversible nothing "new" happens, as opposed to the irreversible time of evolution and biology in which there is always something new.

He continues this idea in the chapter "Computing Machines and the Nervous System." In it, he defines the characteristics of computing machinery. He concludes that the brain, being irreversible, is thus an analog of a single run of a machine. Wiener also points out that many problems of human metabolism and reproduction are associated with the inability to receive and organize impulses and make them effective in the outer world. Thus Weiner ultimately concludes that to live effectively is to live with adequate information.

There are also chapters that are almost purely philisophical about the role of information in society. Then there are other chapters that present heavy-duty mathematics on such topics as representing a time series of known statistical parameters as Brownian motion in an attempt to solve communications problems in nonlinear situations. The mathematics in this book is presented with little or no background, so you are going to need other sources to understand what Wiener is trying to convey.

In summary, if you want an interesting read on the science and philosophy of artificial intelligence and the role of the machine this is one of the best out there. It still stands the test of time after nearly sixty years.


Welcome to the Machine   January 24, 2006
Gord Wilson (Bellingham, WA USA)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

Why is everything called "cyber" (cyberspace, cyberpunk)? Because of this book from 1948 in which Norbert Wiener, a prof at MIT, coined the phrase "cybernetics," from the Greek word "kybernutos" meaning "governor." If you're tired of viewing your computer as a black box (the input goes in here, the output comes out there, and something mysterious happens inside), or if you wonder if the tech world has any relation to the natural world, check out this unusual book, which is rewarding on many different levels.

Find out why robotics, neural nets and artificial intelligence (AI) predate the PC and even the mainframe computer and are not a new development. Travel back to the days of the giant ENIAC when the computer seemed to be an idea on everyone's mind, simply waiting for advances in technology to make it a reality. But this very readable book goes further, as suggested in Wiener's subtitle: "Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine." Many specialists in various fields initially opposed this book because of Wiener's interdisciplinary approach, which broke down the hard and fast walls between various disciplines.

The vocabulary of this book has now become commonplace (we ask for "feedback" and refer to "systems" on a daily basis), but many of its ideas have yet to be discovered. I couldn't keep up with the math, but you don't need to to grasp the basic ideas or to enjoy Wiener's lucid and luminous style, which ranks among the best of popular science writing. Wiener also wrote a general market book, "The Human Use of Human Beings" to present some of these ideas to a wider audience. Some fifty years after its initial publication, this book still forms an inviting welcome to the machine.


difficult read   April 18, 2010
Sida Wang (Toronto, Canada)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

it took a fairly major effort to read this one. the texts are hard enough to understand with ancient language (its hard to find people talking about "computing machine" nowadays). Lots of math appears in this book, and there certainly they are not step-by-step. This is basically for people with a good intuitive grasp of the underlying mathematics or else there is no chance you can follow it. The style of writing also seems foreign to me (21 years old). But very insightful book with good rewards, but I still feel that I spent a disproportional amount of effort for the reward that I get.