Home > Work > The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
41 " But while the universe as a whole, if indeed there is a whole universe, tends to run down, there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organization to increase. Life finds its home in some of these enclaves. It is with this point of view at its core that the new science of Cybernetics began its development.1 "
― Norbert Wiener , The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
42 " Information is a name for the content of what is exchanged with the outer world as we adjust to it, and make our adjustment felt upon it. The process of receiving and of using information is the process of our adjusting to the contingencies of the outer environment, and of our living effectively within that environment. "
43 " To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man’s inner life, even as they belong to his life in society. "
44 " The place of the study of communication in the history of science is neither trivial, fortuitous, nor new. Even before Newton such problems were current in physics, especially in the work of Fermat, Huygens, and Leibnitz, each of whom shared an interest in physics whose focus was not mechanics but optics, the communication of visual images. "
45 " if we insist too strongly on the brain as a glorified digital machine, we shall be subject to some very just criticism, coming in part from the physiologists and in part from the somewhat opposite camp of those psychologists who prefer not to make use of the machine comparison. I have said that in a digital machine there is a taping, which determines the sequence of operations to be performed, and that a change in this taping on the basis of past experience corresponds to a learning process. In the brain, the clearest analogy to taping is the determination of the synaptic thresholds, of the precise combinations of the incoming neurons which will fire an outgoing neuron with which they are connected. "
46 " it is interesting to know that the sort of phenomenon which is recorded subjectively as emotion may not be merely a useless epiphenomenon of nervous action, but may control some essential stage in learning, and in other similar processes. I definitely do not say that it does, but I do say that those psychologists who draw sharp and uncrossable distinctions between man’s emotions and those of other living organisms and the responses of the modern type of automatic mechanisms, should be just as careful in their denials as I should be in my assertions. "
47 " Nevertheless, in constructing machines, it is often very important for us to extend to them certain human attributes which are not found among the lower members of the animal community. If the reader wishes to conceive this as a metaphoric extension of our human personalities, he is welcome to do so; but he should be cautioned that the new machines will not stop working as soon as we have stopped giving them human support. "
48 " the process of transmitting information may involve several consecutive stages of transmission following one another in addition to the final or effective stage; and between any two of these there will be an act of translation, capable of dissipating information. That information may be dissipated but not gained, is, as we have seen, the cybernetic form of the second law of thermodynamics. "
49 " It is quite clear that if left alone, babies will make attempts at speech. These attempts, however, show their own inclinations to utter something, and do not follow any existing form of language. It is almost equally clear that if a community of children were left out of contact with the language of their seniors through the critical speech-forming years, they would emerge with something, which crude as it might be, would be unmistakably a language. "
50 " To sum up, the human interest in language seems to be an innate interest in coding and decoding, and this seems to be as nearly specifically human as any interest can be. Speech is the greatest interest and most distinctive achievement o man. "