The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society Study Guide

The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society

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

The development of worldwide communication networks suggest a new openness in the world, but the U.S. is experiencing [in 1954] a strong impetus towards secrecy. The impetus towards secrecy is driven out of a misunderstanding of the nature of information. Information is viewed as a commodity.

The patent system may have once effectively supported society when inventions were the application of mechanical ingenuity by skilled craftsmen. However, the distinction between the work of the technician and the scientist has no bright line. Patents can not be granted for the discoveries of the laws of nature. Technicians apply the information gathered by scientists ti the tools available to them to create new tools. The new tools are essentially a manifestation of information, an application of a discovery of a law of nature, not an application of mechanical ingenuity by a skilled craftsman.

Commodities follow the laws of the conservation of matter and energy. Information follows the laws of thermodynamics. Information is a stage in a continuous process of observation and action in the world. Military scientific research that is labelled scret and concealed does not keep a country safe. "... it is more important ... that we have adequate knowledge than to ensure that some potential enemy does not have it." (p. 122)

A consequence of information being part of process rather than a commodity is that time is an important aspect of the value of information. A policy of secrecy impedes the timely availability of information necessary for effective research to occur. Top down organizations of larger scientific research efforts obstruct the flow of information between scientists. The other destructive result of weapons of warfare is that "each terrifying discovery merely increases our subjection to the need of making a new discovery."(p.129)

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