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Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener The Father of Cybernetics

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DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE

Having been a Tech student during many of the years covered by "Dark hero of the Information Age" - undergraduate in physics from 1948 to 1953, graduate student in electrical engineering from 1957 to 1961, and postdoc in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) from 1961 to 1962 - I found this book fascinating to read. Norbert Wiener's portly figure waddling about the campus, popping peanuts from his jacket pocket into his open mouth, rapt in conversation, or staring blankly into middle distance was familiar to all as is well described by authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. Although aware of the "communist threat" supposed to stem from some MIT faculty members in those years, it was both interesting and chilling to read that the FBI had investigated even Wiener - interesting because his FBI dossier was a boon to his biographers, chilling to learn that our benighted federal agents had found this kindly, bumbling man a threat to the republic.

Based on many interviews with surviving friends and family members and on Wiener's own autobiographies, the authors provide a highly-readable account of his unusual childhood as a prodigy, force-fed on a diet of germanic poetry and mathematics by his obsessed father - a Harvard professor of modern languages who arrived as a penniless immigrant to the US from Russia at the age of 19. Obtaining a doctorate from Harvard at the age of 18, Norbert Wiener eventually obtained an academic position in the MIT mathematics department, where he taught and conducted research for 45 years until his death in 1964.

Wiener is widely known as the "father of cybernetics" which he famously defined as the science of "control and communication in the animal and the machine". In its heyday, cybernetics was of great interest to anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, neuroscientist Warren McCulloch, and mathematical physicist John Neumann, among others, and Wiener's popular books on the subject brought the implications of the emerging information age to the attention of the general public. In a depressing story that is particularly well told, the authors reveal how the machinations of Wiener's "emotionally-deaf" wife prevented him from interacting with an exciting cadre of cyberneticians that was brought to RLE in the early 1950s, with the aim of making MIT preeminent in the interdisciplinary area between electronics and biology.

Less well presented is the authors' evaluation of Wiener's fundamental contributions to these areas. Although his 1926 papers on Fourier transform theory may have cleared up some fine mathematical points, these papers and Wiener's subsequent writings on the subject go unnoticed by those electrical engineers who teach and study the subject at MIT. To negative feedback theory, Wiener made no fundamental contributions at all - the essential idea sprang from the brow of Harold S. Black, a young engineer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) in 1927 and was fully worked out by BTL applied mathematicians, including Henrik Bode, whose famous book "Network Analysis and Feedback Amplifier Design" we all studied. In neuroscience, Wiener seemed unaware of the truly important analysis of nerve-impulse propagation published in 1952 by Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, and of the basic theory of biological pattern formation proposed by Alan Turing in the same year. Wiener's contribution was to see the importance of feedback control systems in biology and the social sciences and to make his cautionary views known to the general public.

Despite these minor lapses, Dark Hero is highly recommended for all who would understand the birthing of the information age.

Alwyn Scott

http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/

When I first saw the title "Dark Hero of ...." I had to chuckle with the image it engendered of Norbert, dressed in a floppy Batman constume, goutee, thick glassed over his mask which of course hid his identy waddling down the corridors of Building 2, fighting crime in Tauberian Theorems.

The authors wrote a magnificent opus on a great man who, in today's environment, would have been classified as a victim of child abuse. Their facts and presentation carried me back to that era. But, I am uncomfortable with the intensionality that the term 'Dark' might leave in the reader so grant me the right to give an added facet.

As a senior at MIT during the 1959-1960 semesters I had the honor working with Weiner. Up front, my review arises from an unabashed gratitude and affection for a man whose influence and help were instrumental for all the good things that later transpired in my life over the last 45 years.

One day in the fall of 1959 I was walking near Weiner's office after having come out of Dirk Struik's office from a discussion of an item in the Advanced Tensor Analysis course I was taking from him. Just as I was passing by his office the classical Norbert Weiner yelled out " young man, can you come in and finish the calculations on the board". Honestly, I was totally naive and did not know anything about him except having seen him in the corridors.

"Sure" I said. As I entered the office he walked out. There on the dusty chalk board were a facsimile of a spread sheet, with rows of numbers scribbled across the board. I could not admit that I had no idea what the numbers represented, let alone what I was to do. Ego is a wonderful goad for creative problem solving. Seeing a number that looked like the sine of 30 degrees I quickly deciphered that the alternating lines were discrete values of the sine function, the parallel lines were filled with some varying numbers from a seemingly smooth function, and the next line looked like some multiplication/ addition of both. Norman Levinson's course in Complex Anaylsis came to the rescue. Weiner was performing a discrete fast Fourier Transform. Ten minutes later Weiner came in and saw that I had almost completed the spread sheet.

Looking over his glasses he asked "What are you doing here?". "Helping you, Professor" I responded, startled. "Can you come back tomorrow for some more work?" "Sure"

It turned out that he was perfroming a spectral analysis on a section of EEG readings Dr. John Barlow had given Weiner.

I eventually had to hand read the red graph and number the amplitudes. The picture appears in CYBERNTETICS 2nd edition.

One Saturday he directed me to "sit down and write". After a few lines I had the timerity to inquire what the heck was I doing.

His answer: "I'm dictating the upgrade to my book CYBRENETICS". My mistake was to inform him that I could touch type. Zap! Three hours later I threw in the towel. From then on, after math classes I would be sitting typing and learning more ideas and mathematical insight than any of the past 3.5 years. Note, no word processor, no electric type writer. The old fashioned finger toughening for Karate thrust kind.

My many mistaken sheets were then handed over to Weiner's secretary who produced a finished draft.

When the galleys came out I, among many others, reviewed and corrected them.

Weiner informed me that he considered "his students as colleagues" and he gave me the honor and respect that it entailed.

I noticed over the years that the truly great and self assured, including Doc Edgerton in Electric Engineering, treated with respect f those 'under' them. The not so great and their undeserved pomposity are legion in all walks of life.

A few vignettes of his Puckish sense of humor which were seen quite often are in order.

One Saturday, Weiner, who had to check his urine for sugar, came into the office to check it. "Good, all is well", he smiled, "Here, take it and dispose of it".

My response was as brash as anything I had ever done "Prof. Weiner, I have the deepest respect for you. I have had my rump fall asleep while tying your manuscript for hours. But, you take your G.. D....d sample yourelf"

Weiner burst out in laughter "Well, I tried." and waddled off. I just keeled over with laughter.

Weiner was subject to many folks who came to 'worship at his feet' and try to have him help on hair brained schemes.

Once such soul came in one day and proceded to blather. Norbert rose, took him by the elbow with a "I know someone who will really be able to help you", and dumped into Struick's office. From across the hall we heard Struik's Dutch yelling, while chasing the man out. Then, flushed faced, Dirk leaned into the office and hissed "Norbert, stop dumping your garbage into my office!" , and popped out. Norbert broke into a loud chuckle, looke at me, and just smiled.

A few years later Mrs. Weiner called and told me that Norbert was in Mass.General as he had fallen down and done serious damge to himself. I overcame my deep antipathy to hospitals and took my self over.

She informed me that the Professor was in a bad way and Prof. Lee had just left, totally depressed at seeing his mentors state. She told me not to stay too long but to see if I could get him to respond.

Entering his room, I heard Norbert moaning, leaning away from the door. How the wonderful inspiration came to me I have never figured out.

As I walked to his bed , in my most stentorian voice, I said "What 14 carat plated phoney!" He moaned, tried to turn, and went back to moaning.

"There is nothing wrong with you. I know you well enough to know that you faking it, just to avoid being drafted".

Much as he tried not to, he let out a loud laugh. I continued "I bet you are pestering all the doctors like Barlow, that Fourier Anaylysis and Tauberian Theorems can solve all medical problems. They have to listen to you!"

At that he slowly sat up, reached for his glasses and then went into a long story of how indeed he had such ideas, etc.

Mrs. Weiner was clearly taken aback at my brashness and when Norbert sat up she did not know what to do. While happily pontificating Norbert said "Margaret, light up a cigar for me". She lit up one his 'stinkies', handed it to him, and Norber was on his way. Soon after Frau Professor chased me out but I was elated beyond words.

That was the last time I ever saw Weiner but this wonderful book captured so many facets of this rare, great human,

My gratitude. I was there

John C. Kotelly MIT '60

This is really two books; a fascinating intellectual history of one of the seminal thinkers of the last century and a sometime painful personal story. I haven't made up my mind about the second book but the first is well worth reading. Did you know that Wiener anticipated Heisenberg's uncertainty theory, in a very general form? He presented the idea that the freguency of a musical note and its timing cannot both be measured with precision in a talk given in 1925 with Heisenberg in the audience. Of course, Heisenberg deserves all the credit for explaining, two years later, that this idea applies to quantum mechanics but Wiener had already seen the underlying logic. He was similarly prescient with respect to information theory in that he recognized the interconnections between ideas about probability and signalling. In at least one way, the authors explain, Wiener may still be ahead of his time: He recognized the importance of analog as well as digital computation.

The personal story may be a little one-sided. The authors are very hard on the women in Wiener's life, his mother and his wife but rather indulgent toward Leo Wiener, the father who was hell-bent on making his son into a prodigy. Maybe, the women had to be a little monstrous to protect Wiener from his dad.

Having read "Dark Hero Of The Information Age" I am now somewhat taken aback when I look around and can recognise the hand and mind of Norbert Wiener throughout much of contemporary life. Be it in learning, language, communication or use of technology Wiener's scientific vision and development of cybernetics has had significant influence over the way human beings interact with each other and with technology.

But, as the authors make the point so clearly, his vision and thinking cannot be separated from his humanity. In their book Conway and Siegelman take the reader on an intimate journey into the complex life of an extraordinary person, complete with his personal struggles and failings as well as his triumphs. It's a journey that reveals just how human Wiener really was and the degree to which his scientific genius was underpinned by his innate sense of ethics and morality.

Today, those who bring new science into the world are sometimes criticised as 'soulless' individuals who only focus on assumed benefits, without regard for unrealised consequences. But Norbert Weiner, several decades ahead of his time, is revealed as a scientist whose motivations were tempered with concern for the protection of people, from both the perspective of social cohesion and that at the level of individual well-being. His legacy, apart from all his unique mathematical and scientific contributions, is that the advance of science is not at the cost of human dignity, and is the challenge that he has left squarely in front of today's scientists and of the community at large.

He lived his life across continents in the northern hemisphere. I was saddened to learn that we in Australia missed a rare opportunity to cross paths with his genius, when an academic appointment he pursued here earlier in his career did not come to fruition. Despite this, we have no doubt indirectly benefited from his wisdom in the many and varied aspects of human endeavour to which he contributed.

The authors bring into the 21st Century a fascinating and relevant story of a 'dark hero' - but also that of someone whose life should illuminate our path ahead, if humanity is to pursue scientific progress without bringing harm to itself.

_Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener The Father of Cybernetics_ by the researchers Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, who had previously written on cults and fundamentalism, is a fascinating biography of an important figure in the history of the last century who played an important role in heralding in the coming age of information. Norbert Wiener (1894 - 1964) was a fascinating individual and a man of many talents who is perhaps best remembered as both a mathematician and the father of the science of cybernetics. Wiener was a highly eccentric individual who had been renowned as a child prodigy in his youth and studied at Tufts and Harvard from the ages of 11 to 14, eventually earning his Ph.D. at age 18. Following his early years, Wiener became an academic originally focusing on philosophy and mathematics, though taking a more applied bent towards mathematical research than some of his contemporaries such as G. H. Hardy, who routinely castigated him for this. Wiener's career took off at MIT where he developed the science of cybernetics, which was to play such an important role in furthering engineering, biological, and social sciences, as well as playing the role of an astute commentator on the role of automation. Cybernetics (a term derived from the Greek for "steersman"), the creation of Norbert Wiener, was an essential science in the understanding of feedback and control systems. Wiener continued to develop his theories following the publication of his first book on the subject and in particular examined the role of automation among workers. Wiener also was able to prove an inspiration for several important engineering projects focusing on such things as the human brain, artificial intelligence, and the development of prostheses for amputees. Wiener's ideas played an important role in the United States, but with the advent of the Cold War they also played a role in the Soviet Union, as well as in India where Wiener saw certain potential developments arising from newfound technologies. While Wiener was an agnostic throughout his life, his ancestors were Jews and he may have been related to the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, and he developed a profound interest in Indian philosophy and Hinduism ultimately leading him to accept the notion of reincarnation. Wiener's theories played an important role in paving the way for the information age to come and we see the end result of that in the information explosion in this century. This book offers a fascinating examination of the life of Norbert Wiener and is an excellent biography of this great man.

This book starts with Wiener's early life, particularly as he developed into a child prodigy. The book begins with Leo Wiener, the father of Norbert Wiener, who was an adamant proponent of the ideals of Tolstoy and vegetarianism. Leo Wiener came to the United States and eventually made his way to Cambridge, Massachusetts where Norbert's talents for languages became widely known. Norbert Wiener became known as the "most remarkable boy in the world" and would attend university at Tufts and Harvard, originally specializing in zoology, along with other child prodigies such as William James Sidis. Following his Ph.D. at Harvard at the age of 18, Wiener traveled to Europe to study logic and philosophy with such individuals as Bertrand Russell. However, upon returning home, Wiener underwent somewhat of a crisis. Wiener, who was a lifelong manic depressive and prone to absent-minded spells and depressions, would largely see his emotional turmoil as arising out of his early youth. Wiener went on to join the faculty at MIT, an engineering school which hoped to promote a new mathematics department. Wiener made several important contributions and it was here that he developed his science of cybernetics. Wiener was known to all his students for his "Wienerwegs" or "Wienerwalks", where he frequently absent-mindedly roamed about the halls and campus of MIT. Wiener married and had two daughters. He also became involved with various other individuals and prodigies who tried to advance the science of cybernetics and the logical system developed by Russell in the _Principia Mathematica_. Wiener also was active in promoting the Macy conferences, where a diverse group of intellectuals including mathematicians, economists, social scientists, and anthropologists worked out the ideas of cybernetics. Wiener was deeply concerned about the role that automation would play in the coming era and wrote an important work focusing on the "human use of human beings" to show his concern over the new role of automation and computers. Wiener also wrote some more religious and philosophical works in which he attempted to address the problem of the "golem" from Jewish mythology as it concerned man and his creations. During the Cold War, Wiener refused to participate in research for the military and this led to his being branded a "Red" by the FBI. Wiener eventually was to travel to Europe and even the Soviet Union where he attempted to advance the science of cybernetics, although he made clear that he disapproved of the role of both superpowers in the Cold War. Wiener also knew the mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash while he was at MIT. In his old age, Wiener took an interest in India and Hinduism. Wiener attempted to identify a new role for automation in India and the potentially liberating effects of such technologies. Wiener also traveled to Stockholm to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony and it was here that he died.

This book offers an interesting account of the life of an important figure in the dawn of the information age. Norbert Wiener and his science of cybernetics played a great role in giving rise to the information age and the era of computing. While Wiener was certainly a man of many talents and contradictions, he also had a darker side to him as did the technologies made possible through his advances. It is for this reason that he may be seen as the "dark hero of the information age" and the father of cybernetics.

DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE opens the doors to full understanding of the roots of our present information technology era. But beyond that, it presents, in Novel form, the fascinating and often difficult life of the Dark Hero, Norbert Wiener, who almost singlehandedly made it all possible.

The book is easy reading. The words flow and carry one along on Norbert's magnificent trip from boyhood genius to adult contributor of scientific truth: those truths and insights that have changed our world for the larger good.

One does not need an Engineering or Scientific degree to understand it. All can easily follow and appreciate this most interesting biography about a Boy Genius who did not flame out in adulthood, as have so many others with equal talent.

I highly recommend this book for all readers.

Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener

From his professorial chair at MIT, which he held for over 40 years, Norbert Wiener wrote on all kinds of subjects: mathematics, which he had studied with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge, education, which he had studied with John Dewey at Columbia, philosophy, and physics. The subject of a New York Times feature on the "Most Remarkable Boy in the World," at the age of nine. Wiener was a child prodigy. He entered college at ten, graduated at fourteen, and became Harvard's youngest PhD at 18. His father Leo, a gifted linguist, translated all of Tolstoy, knew Serbian poetry, and was fluent in dozens of languages. But he was a demanding taskmaster, subjecting his son to humiliating diatribes for simple mistakes in algebra. His mother lived in denial of her Jewish heritage and attempted to assimilate into Boston Brahmin society. Years later, in his biography of an ex-prodigy, Wiener wrote bitterly of his disciplinarian father and his father's vicarious life through his son's achievements. His nickname was "nubbin" -- 1) a kernel of corn, or 2) an undeveloped organism. How's that for a stunted over-achiever?
Wiener's precociousness would have consequences later in life. He was prone to manic-depressive excesses, suicidal ideations, and bizarre public behavior. Thus, the "Dark Hero" part of the title of this excellent biography--a biography of both a man and his times.
Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman rely extensively on Wiener's own writings, which were voluminous. His seminal work is "Cybernetics: Or the Control and the Communication in the Animal and the Machine." Written in 1948, it was followed in 1950 by "The Human Use of Human Beings." Together, they form the intellectual framework of cybernetics, which Wiener described as the control and communication systems of the human and animal mind and body. It combines control systems, mechanical engineering, biology, and neuroscience. Cybernetics was a precursor to artificial intelligence, systems analysis, robotics, computer-assisted design and engineering, and a host of other disciplines.
It had its practical beginnings in World War I, when the military needed scientific input into the control and aiming systems of anti-aircraft guns.The application of science to warfare had parallels with the Manhattan Project in the Second World War, and Wiener had serious reservations about the politicization of science that would lead to his alienation from many of his colleagues and to his relegation to an asterisk in some histories of the information age. This polarization is reminiscent of the tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who also harbored doubts about the destructive capacity of science, and paid a heavy price for it.

The enormous impact of Wiener's work in our daily lives is elegantly summarized by the authors:

"In the span of only two years, working on that obscure wartime engineering project, wiener conceived, defined, and quietly announced the coming of a new unified science of communication. He identified the new science's elementary unit, the message, made up of the statistical substance he called information; he grounded its quintessential process of feedback within a larger conceptual framework; and he linked the fundamental operations of modern telecommunications, computing, and automation to the living communication processes of the human nervous system." (Conway & Siegelman, P. 127 f)

I found "In Search of Norbert Wiener: The Father of Cybernetics" to be one of the most salient and timely biographies I've read in years. I put it in the same category with "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, reviewed earlier.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

As you might guess from my choice of review title, I'm spoofing the corny book title and scattered journalistic excesses of this otherwise solid biography. I must confess that despite reading the book cover to cover I am still unable to see the subject as a "dark hero" of anything, although like many more ordinary mortals he was quite human and capable of being angry, nasty, jealous, and spiteful when provoked (or when he thought himself provoked). Perhaps the worst that can be said of him was he broke with a fragile young protege, Walter Pitts, in an unpleasant way, and apparently sent him on a tailspin into alcoholism and early death. However, it was clearly not his intention to cause such an outcome, and Mr. Pitts' background made him particularly susceptible to such a denouement. If anyone in the book can be described as "dark" (an adjective which I find unfortunate when used as a negative), it would be Wiener's wife, whose sexual obsessions and reactionary, anti-Semitic political views are fully aired.

Wiener was obviously a brilliant thinker, a very important mathematician and engineer, a good self-promoter, and a seminal figure in the early days of information theory and computers. He did not quite grab the brass ring in either field, however: that honor goes respectively to Claude Shannon and Johnny von Neumann. What he did do was write a scientific book which somewhat inexplicably became a best seller and made him famous in a way few scientists have been. Later in his career he became increasingly concerned with the possible negative effects of computers and cybernetics on human society, and issued some warnings which we would continue to be well advised to heed.

That this biography was written by journalists rather than scientists is evident throughout. There is an annoying tendency to employ unnecessarily purplish adjectives and to be sloppy with scientific definitions (e.g. entropy is defined as the state of maximum disorder and chaos, and then a little later defined correctly as a measure of the amount of disorder). I would have preferred a more balanced assessment of Wiener's importance vis-a-vis other major figures of his time, such as Shannon and von Neumann. However, the book is nonetheless well-researched and detailed, and certainly gives the reader an excellent depiction of Wiener the man and the scientist.

I spent a few years at MIT from 1989 - 91. My only understanding of Weiner was through a few bulletin boards and pictures sprinkled around campus. So this book has shed much light on to the culture and substance of the MIT community that had remained obscured in my short time there. And, as someone working to control bouts of paralyzing depression, I was inspired by his struggle, before any decent medications were available, and his ability to continue to create, produce and build on his previous works.

There are some repetitive aspects to the book: he traveled here and there, he lectured to this one and that one. But that was his life. I would have liked to have seen greater elaboration on the personal issues that drove him and his relations with his colleagues at MIT.

The role of his wife is central to the story, but I did not feel it was teased out with sufficient detail.

Finally, even though the authors made no claim to do so, I really have no clear idea of what "cybernetics" actually is, from the mathematical or formal context, than before I started the book. But I have a far better view of the tortured genius who created it.

Charming biography of the founder of cybernetics. Norbert Weiner had a curiously unique life, as a child prodigy and then mathematician at the birth of the new information sciences. The so-called Von Neuman computer is really the Weiner-Von Neuman computer, and the book describes the eclectic birth of modern computation (Weiner was himself a considerable 'computer' in the old-fashioned sense of the term)in the tribulations of warfare research in the second world war. Weiner had a unique concern for the implications of technology, and his _Human Use of Human Beings_ is a classic of its type. The birth of Cybernetics and Information theory projected its own future, but events moved in a slightly different direction. However, as we look back the significance of this period, and of Weiner's work, is resurfacing once again, and we can see the labored birth of our digital generation in the prophecies of such as Weiner.