The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society

After the Second World War, philosophers were playing a bit of a game of catch up behind the scientists. The war machine had driven all sorts of advancement, but there wasn’t a lot of thought about the impacts to people or society of these advancements. Norbert Wiener’s book The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society brings a sociologists perspective to examine the impacts resulting from automation and communication.

While the examination communication has a long scholarly history, recent advances had not only changed the speed of communication but also broadened the list of potential senders and recipients to now include machines in addition to people. Machines were moving past a stage in their development of simply reacting to their environments to also learning and changing their behavior based on longer-term experience.

The book examines these changes through a number of lenses examining the impact on institutions, workplaces, professions, and society at large. Weiner is clearly excited by some of the prospects that these changes may bring, but also notes a number of potential conflicts and shortfalls which read as prescient in today’s environment.

I appreciated his discussion on change and people’s reactions to it. While some people want to opt-out of some societal changes, at the end of the day the environment is changing around them, and they are going to have to at least accommodate the change in their own lives. We are all a part of society, for better or worse, and this dictates the options available to us.

Overall I found the book to be an enjoyable, thought provoking, and quotable read; and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants to dive into the deeper background of today’s discussions of responsible AI and ethics.

Quotes

  • Any machine constructed for the purpose of making decisions, if it does not possess the power of learning, will be completely literal-minded. Woe to us if we let it decide our conduct, unless we have previously examined the laws of its action, and know fully that it’s conduct will be carried out on principles acceptable to us! On the other hand, the machine like the djinnee, which can learn and can make decisions on the basis of its learning, will in no way be obliged to make decisions as we should have made, or will be acceptable to us. For the man who is not aware of this, to throw the problem of his responsibility on the machine, whether it can learn or not, is to cast his responsibility to the winds, and to find it coming back seated on the whirlwind.

    Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society

Metadata

Title: The Human Use of Human Beings

Author: Norbert Wiener

Publication Date: 1954 (revised second edition)

Publisher: Doubleday & Company


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