“ONCE in a great while a scientific book is published that sets bells jangling wildly in a dozen different sciences. Such a book is Cybernetics.” So wrote Time magazine in 1948. Besides catching the imagination of journalists around the world, the book sent shock waves through the scientific community.
Norbert Wiener, the book’s author, became an international celebrity for his warning that technology would replace human jobs and create redundancies. Now he is largely forgotten. Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman want to change that. They are convinced that Wiener’s research and warnings remain as relevant as ever today. Their biography, …
