Cornell College People > Leon Tabak >

Presented at a Colloquium sponsored by Buena Vista University on 10 April 1997.

The quotations below come from Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (EP:MCAY), God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (GAGI), and The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (HUHB), all by Norbert Wiener.

  1. Axioms of Cybernetics

    • “Society can only be understood through a study of the messages and communication facilities which belong to it.”

      “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.”

      (HUHB, p. 16)

  2. Predictions of Cybernetics

    • “No, the future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence. The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”

      (GAGI, p. 69)

    • “The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the result of increased communication, but also of an increased mastery over nature which, on a limited planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be an increased slavery to nature. For the more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.”

      (HUHB, p. 46)

  3. Professional Responsibility

    • “Our papers have been making a great deal of American ‘know-how’ ever since we had the misfortune to discover the atomic bomb. There is one quality more important than ’know-how’ and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it. This is ‘know-what’ by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.”

      (HUHB, p. 183)

    • “Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.”

      (HUHB, 162)

    • “We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves in order to exist in this new environment. We can no longer live in the old one. Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.”

      (HUHB, p. 46)

  4. The Nature of Progress

    • “The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belonging to acquiescence and hence to weakness.”

      (HUHB, p. 47)

    • “The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment. It is a dangerous world, in which there is no security, save the somewhat negative one of humility and restrained ambitions. It is a world in which there is a condign punishment, not only for him who sins in conscious arrogance, but for him whose sole crime is ignorance of the gods and the world around him.”

      (HUHB, p. 184)

    • “The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation in its value is false.”

      (HUHB, p. 120)

    • “To recapitulate: the individuality of the body is that of a flame rather than that of a stone, of a form rather than that of a bit of substance.”

      (HUHB, p. 102)

  5. Learning and Innovation

    • “I have chosen for the work of my later years the study of communication and communication apparatus. This is a subject with linguistic and philological sides which I have learned from my father, with engineering techniques to which I received my apprenticeship in the General Electric laboratories and at the computing table at Aberdeen Proving Ground, with mathematical techniques stemming from my days at Cambridge and Göttingen, and with the compelling need for a competent vehicle of literary expression which has proceeded from my work on the Encyclopedia and the Boston Herald. My routine task of assisting a Japanese professor has borne fruit in my teaching in the Orient and my contact with Oriental scholars. Even my exile at the University of Maine, which was a chastisement for me, has proved in the long run to be a salutary chastisement and a true discipline for a man who was to make his living as a teacher and who had the necessity of making his mistakes early when they were of no great seriousness.”

      (EP:MCAY, pp. 294-295)

    • “Information is more a matter of process than of storage. That country will have the greatest security whose informational and scientific situation is adequate to meet the demands that may be put on itthe country in which it is fully realized that information is important as a stage in the continuous process by which we observe the outer world, and act effectively upon it. In other words, no amount of scientific research, carefully recorded in books and papers, and then put into our libraries with labels of secrecy, will be adequate to protect us for any length of time in a world where the effective level of information is perpetually advancing. There is no Maginot Line of the brain.”

      (HUHB, p. 121-122)

Questions for Discussion & Review

  1. To whom did Norbert Wiener assign credit for launching physics into its modern era?
    1. Einstein
    2. Heisenberg
    3. Bohr
    4. Gibbs
    5. Hawking
  2. A thread connects the work of each of the mathematicians listed below and leads to the formulation of the ergodic theorem in 1931. Place their names in an order that corresponds to the order in which they contributed to the development of the 1931 result.
    1. Birkhoff
    2. Borel
    3. Lebesgue
    4. Leibnitz
    5. Wiener
  3. Which goal best defines cybernetics?
    1. development of improved methods of symbolic computation
    2. development of improved methods of numeric computation
    3. addition to the understanding of control and communication
    4. acceleration of the speeds with which analog signals can be combined in parallel networks of neuronal circuits
  4. What did the word ‘progress’ signify to Norbert Wiener?
    1. Progress is a corollary of evolution.
    2. Progress is a prerequisite for survival.
    3. Progress is a consequence of human nature.
    4. Progress is synonymous with the virtue that in the best instances distinguishes humanity.
  5. Norbert Wiener promoted cybernetics as a way of maximizing the choices available to the human race in the face of which constraint?
    1. impossibility of propagating signals faster than the speed of light
    2. unavoidable increase of entropy in the universe
    3. limits to the miniaturization of electronic circuitry imposed by quantum nature of matter
    4. undecidability of the halting problem
  6. How did Norbert Wiener characterize the relationship of mathematics to engineering and the natural sciences?
    1. Physical intuition and an understanding of the important problems that challenge scientists can greatly help a mathematician.
    2. All worthwhile mathematics has direct and obvious practical application.
    3. The best mathematics is the fruit of pure curiosity that originates in the playfulness of an individual mind and not in attempts to satisfy the pragmatic needs of others.
    4. While there are several equally valuable flavors of mathematics, students must choose and only the most exceptional students can hope to do good work in both pure and applied areas.
  7. How have Norbert Wiener's colleagues and students remembered him?
    1. One of the first to enthusiastically embrace ‘big science,’ he contributed first as a member and later as a leader of large research teams. By his pioneering example, he showed a younger generation skills that have become key for scientific productivity.
    2. He reached a wide audience through his books and articles. Through letters and numerous collaborations, he achieved great influence among his professional peers.
    3. He was a skilled lecturer in the classroom, noted for his personal warmth and attention to each and every student, and for his effective methods of making difficult concepts understandable.
    4. He was a solitary man known well only to a handful of devoted students and close colleagues. In the years since his death, their energetic efforts have made his complex genius known to the world.
  8. Norbert Wiener began publishing his speculations about intelligent machines just a few years before Alan Turing did the same, and less than a decade before John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and others began a program of research intended to make such machines real. Norbert Wiener and the younger mathematicians who followed him chose to emphasize different attributes when they defined intelligence in machines. Which characteristic did the founder of cybernetics think ought to count most in our assessment of future automata?
    1. ability of the machines to converse with human beings
    2. ability of the machines to compete with human beings
    3. ability of the machines to cooperate with human beings
    4. ability of the machines to deceive human beings
  9. Which possible consequence of automation did Norbert Wiener most fear?
    1. self-indulgence, hedonism, and the moral decline of an idled population
    2. increase in the power of totalitarian governments to control the social and economic activities of citizens
    3. loss of community values when instantaneous communications across all borders fuel the growth of capitalism and unrestrained competition
    4. surrender to the temptation to transfer to machines decision-making powers that human beings cannot responsibly relinquish
  10. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, mathematicians invented several models of computation. Around which model did Norbert Wiener build his science of cybernetics?
    1. a collection of states, an alphabet of input symbols, and a transition function that maps each state/symbol pair to a new state
    2. a capacity to transform input signals in arbitrary ways, together with a feedback mechanism that allows self-regulation
    3. an array of gates that combine logical values in ways that model the usual functions of ordinary arithmetic and propositional logic
    4. a control organ that sequences, selects, and repeats instructions, and a memory organ that stores both instructions and data
    5. an interpreter for a language that allows a programmer to specify the abstraction, composition, and application of functions
  11. Norbert Wiener's career intersected those of several other highly accomplished mathematicians whose researches also helped to lay a foundation for computer science. Match the names of these associates with the projects listed below: Oswald Veblen and Marston Morse, Warren Weaver, Vannevar Bush, John von Neumann.
    1. differential analyzer at MIT, U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development in World War II
    2. ballistics research at the Aberdeen Proving Ground during the two world wars
    3. Fire Control Section of the National Defense Research Committee during World War II
    4. ENIAC computer at the University of Pennsylvania and the Manhattan Project in World War II
  12. Norbert Wiener took from the subject of his mathematical researches a model for the analysis of his own life. What were the lessons he learned?
    1. Complete information is never available. Knowledge is always imperfect. Extrapolation is unavoidably risky. Error inevitably riddles every prediction.
    2. That disorder will increase is the only thing we can know for sure in an ever darker and colder universe. Our work is a race against corruption and decay.
    3. With the right formalism, it is possible to gather together disconnected points to construct an area of finite and substantial extent. The measure of the individual is zero; their union makes something significant.
    4. Order can emerge from chaos. The seemingly random twists and turns of a life can sum to significant achievement, purpose, and satisfaction.

To Learn More…

  1. “The Myth of Digital Nirvana,” David S. Bennahum, Educom Review, September/October 1996, pp. 24-26
  2. Mathematics: People, Problems, Results (Volume III), Douglas M. Campbell and John C. Higgins (editors), Wadsworth, International, Belmont, CA 1984
    • “Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation,” Norbert Wiener, pp. 59-65 (reprinted from Science 131 (1960): 1355-1358)
    • “Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation-A Refutation,” Arthur L. Samuel, pp. 66-68 (reprinted from Science 132 (1960): 741-742)
  3. The Social Impact of Cybernetics, Charles R. Dechert (editor), University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame (IN), 1966
  4. A Century of Mathematics in America, Part 1, Peter Duren, Richard A. Askey, Uta C. Merzbach (editors), American Mathematical Society, Providence (RI), 1988
    • “The Threadbare Thirties,” Ivan Niven, pp. 209-229
  5. A Century of Mathematics Through the Eyes of the Monthly, John Ewing (editor), The Mathematical Association of America 1994
    • “What is the Ergodic Theorem?,” G.D. Birkhoff, pp. 143-146 (originally published in American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 49(1942), pp. 222-226)
  6. John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Steve J. Heims, The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA), 1980
  7. “Norbert Wiener,” David Jerison and Daniel Stroock, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, April 1995 (Volume 42, Number 4), pp. 430-438
  8. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Morris Kline, Oxford University Press, New York 1972
    • Chapter 46, “Functional Analysis,” pp. 1076-1095
  9. “Mathematical Work of Norbert Wiener,” V. Mandrekar, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, June 1995 (Volume 42, Number 6), pp. 664-669
  10. Mathematics in the Modern World: Readings from Scientific American, W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, CA 1968
    • “The Mathematics of Communication,” Warren Weaver, pp. 313-317 (reprinted from July 1949 issue of Scientific American)
    • “Mathematical Machines,” Harry M. Davis, pp. 324-335 (reprinted from April 1949 issue of Scientific American)
    • “Computers,” Stanislaw M. Ulam, pp. 336-346 (reprinted from September 1964 issue of Scientific American)
    • “Cybernetics,” Norbert Wiener, pp. 378-384 (reprinted from November 1948 issue of Scientific American)
    • “Man Viewed as a Machine,” John G. Kemeny, pp. 386-393 (reprinted from April 1955 issue of Scientific American)
  11. Prisoner's Dilemma, William Poundstone, Doubleday, New York 1992
  12. Courant in Göttingen and New York: The Story of an Improbable Mathematician, Constance Reid, Springer-Verlag, New York 1976
  13. Hilbert -with an Appreciation of Hilbert's Mathematical Work by Hermann Weyl, Constance Reid, Springer-Verlag, New York 1970
  14. Science, Computers, and People: From the Tree of Mathematics, Stanislaw M. Ulam, Mark C. Reynolds, Gian-Carlo Rota (editors), Birkhäuser, Boston 1986
    • Chapter 17: “Von Neumann: The Interaction of Mathematics and Computing”
    • Chapter 18: “John von Neumann on Computers and the Brain”
    • Chapter 20: “Marian Smoluchowski and the Theory of Probabilities in Physics”
  15. Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Norbert Wiener, The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1948/1961
  16. Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth, Norbert Wiener, The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1953
  17. God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion, Norbert Wiener, The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1964
  18. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Norbert Wiener, Doubleday & Company, New York 1950/1954
  19. I am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy, Norbert Wiener, Doubleday & Company, New York 1956