Word: wieners
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What Is the Brain? Wiener believes that the human brain resembles a computing machine-and vice versa. Dr. Warren McCulloch, professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, goes further: he says that the brain is actually a computer, and very like computers built...
Professor Wiener is a stormy petrel (he looks more like a stormy puffin) of mathematics and adjacent territory. A rarity among scientists, he is willing & able to talk intelligently on almost any subject. Wiener got interested in computing machines while doing war work on gun-pointing mechanisms. His wide-ranging interests (too widely ranging, some of his detractors think) saw in them qualities and possibilities that more practical men had missed...
...great new computers, cried Wiener with mingled alarm and triumph, are not mere mathematical tools. They are, he said, harbingers of a whole new science of communication and control, which he promptly named "cybernetics."* The newest machines, Wiener pointed out, already have an extraordinary resemblance to the human brain, both in structure and function. So far, they have no senses or "effectors" (arms and legs), but why shouldn't they have? There are all sorts of artificial eyes, ears and fingertips (thermometers, strain gauges, pressure indicators, photo-electric tubes) that may be hooked up to the machines. The machines...
Second Revolution. Such a development, says Wiener, is certain. When it does come, he argues, it will usher in "the second industrial revolution," which will devalue the human brain as the first industrial revolution devalued the human arm. He points out that only a few hand workers can now compete with power-driven machines. Soon, he warns, there will be wholly automatic factories with artificial brains keeping track of every process. They will order raw materials, inspect them, store them, route them through the plant. They will pay bills, blow the factory whistle and pay the help...
Many of his colleagues, while admitting that he is a great mathematician, accuse him of sensationalism. Wiener's admirers reply that such bickering is only to be expected in a field as lively as cybernetics. Peace does not reign in a science, they say, until its peaks and valleys have worn to a featureless peneplain grazed by placid ruminants...