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Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener The Father of Cybernetics
Child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician, Norbert Wiener founded the revolutionary science of cybernetics and ignited the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. His best-selling book, Cybernetics , catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism. Based on a wealth of primary sources and exclusive access to Wiener's closest family members, friends, and colleagues, Dark Hero of the Information Age reveals this eccentric genius as an extraordinarily complex figure. No one interested in the intersection of technology and culture will want to miss this epic story of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and colorful figures.
464 pages, Paperback
First published December 13, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 23, 2019
I finished this book straight using all the free today and yesterday. It is marvelous, and shows that at the beginning of information age, the science underlying it actually had an inspiring inter-disciplinary bearing: it studied both machine and mind, and cared about the social implication. THIS IS the ideal shape of the information science that I hope for that would build a good society, instead of merely an affluent society. It reminds me of the story of Nicolas Tesla, whose story did not came to light until almost 100 years later.
The story of Pitts is profoundly moving. What if Wiener had not broken up with Pitts, and its circle at RLA lab? We might have a very different information age that is more benign as it of now. And the neural network revolution may be happening decades earlier.
The story of Pitts is profoundly moving. What if Wiener had not broken up with Pitts, and its circle at RLA lab? We might have a very different information age that is more benign as it of now. And the neural network revolution may be happening decades earlier.
January 31, 2011
Norbert Wiener was an American Scientist who found the field of Cybernetics, which is basically the study of complex systems and has a lot in common with control theory. My dissertation advisor is a control theory guru and suggested this book as a way to get my feet wet so to speak. I've always admired authors like James Gleick and Richard Feynman who can turn complex subject matter into easily readable material and I'm happy to report Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman do the same with their biography on Wiener.
I think above all else, Conway and Siegelman portray Wiener as a tragic hero, a child prodigy turned into one of the most influential and prominent scientists of his day, who was haunted by self-doubt and had personal and political influences which had negative effects on his career (and in turn the course of scientific history and with that human history). In fact, based on the description of his upbringing by his father and the machinations of his wife to isolate him from his colleagues it's amazing what Wiener was able to accomplish. It is a tragedy that a lie created by his wife led to his ending his collaboration with Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, and Jerome Lettvin.
Despite these struggles (and the United States focusing on artificial intelligence concepts more than cybernetics) Wiener contributions to science cannot be overstated. Reading through the book it was amazing how many different fields benefited from his research. He was truly interdisciplinary. And beyond his scientific accomplishments and his estrangement from his daughters, he was a truly ethical and moral man who was more concerned with improving the human condition than chasing the almighty dollar. Wiener constantly spurned the defense industries and corporations after seeing the devastating effects of the atomic bomb and realizing the negative impact automation could cause humanity when motivated by sheer greed.
Wiener also had some great insights, even from an early age. Conway and Siegelman wrote that at ten, he wrote of "the impossibility of man's being certain of anything" and disputed "man's presumption in declaring that his knowledge has no limits". This brilliant insight (which I didn't accept until I was 26 and had to be pointed out to me) came to him at 10 years old. Additionally, the statement that "There is something against the grain in the ... wholesale acceptance of any creed, whether in religion, in science, or in politics. The attitude of the scholar is to reserve the right to change his opinion at any time on the basis of evidence produced" is something that I agree with one hundred percent.
I think above all else, Conway and Siegelman portray Wiener as a tragic hero, a child prodigy turned into one of the most influential and prominent scientists of his day, who was haunted by self-doubt and had personal and political influences which had negative effects on his career (and in turn the course of scientific history and with that human history). In fact, based on the description of his upbringing by his father and the machinations of his wife to isolate him from his colleagues it's amazing what Wiener was able to accomplish. It is a tragedy that a lie created by his wife led to his ending his collaboration with Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, and Jerome Lettvin.
Despite these struggles (and the United States focusing on artificial intelligence concepts more than cybernetics) Wiener contributions to science cannot be overstated. Reading through the book it was amazing how many different fields benefited from his research. He was truly interdisciplinary. And beyond his scientific accomplishments and his estrangement from his daughters, he was a truly ethical and moral man who was more concerned with improving the human condition than chasing the almighty dollar. Wiener constantly spurned the defense industries and corporations after seeing the devastating effects of the atomic bomb and realizing the negative impact automation could cause humanity when motivated by sheer greed.
Wiener also had some great insights, even from an early age. Conway and Siegelman wrote that at ten, he wrote of "the impossibility of man's being certain of anything" and disputed "man's presumption in declaring that his knowledge has no limits". This brilliant insight (which I didn't accept until I was 26 and had to be pointed out to me) came to him at 10 years old. Additionally, the statement that "There is something against the grain in the ... wholesale acceptance of any creed, whether in religion, in science, or in politics. The attitude of the scholar is to reserve the right to change his opinion at any time on the basis of evidence produced" is something that I agree with one hundred percent.
September 21, 2016
A biography of Norbert Wiener, the genius who helped to create modern computing (both digital and analog), communication as a fundamental science, and especially modern control systems through the mathematics to describe feedback, in the science he called cybernetics.
It took me quite a while to get through this book, both because I've been busy with work and family, and because I kept putting it down and feeling like picking it up again was a task. And yet, it's well researched and well written, and the underlying history is riveting. I can't quite put my finger on why picking it back up took effort, other than my physical copy is hefty, for a paperback, and I already carry around a heavy bag every day.
One trouble I did have with the book, especially in the middle, is that the authors follow a particular thread of the story to its conclusion, then leap backwards in time to pick up another thread, leaving it difficult to merge them and see the synergy between the different threads of his life, professional, personal, health, moral and even spiritual. There were also minor points in the technology and history that I felt were wrong, or at least mis-emphasized, such as the extent to which Wiener's work influenced Claude Shannon, who seems to catch short shrift in this book. (Of course, it's a bio of Wiener, not Shannon.) Notably, the von Neumann architecture comes up repeatedly, but the authors stick with a simplistic storyline about its origin. (Again, the focus is on Wiener, not von Neumann, but more accurate representation of the broader credit due to the entire EDVAC team and to other antecedents would not have hurt the flow of this book at all.)
I do recommend the book when you're in the mood to learn more about 20th century science -- Wiener's contribution is critical and under-emphasized in what we tend to learn. Part of that is due to his own voluntary withdrawal from various endeavors, due to both personal pacifist convictions and having been apparently badly manipulated, driving a wedge between him and a team of apprentices who were just beginning to hit their stride. Another part is due to the fact that some of his key ideas have simply been superseded, notably his persistent interest in analog computing. His early ideas on neurological computing probably helped inform the early study of the brain as a computer, but are certainly naive by modern standards.
One of his key interests late in life was the impact of technology on society, and especially how automation was going to displace workers. The concern about what we now call AI was certainly ahead of its time, but as I write this in 2016 seems very trenchant.
Recommended.
It took me quite a while to get through this book, both because I've been busy with work and family, and because I kept putting it down and feeling like picking it up again was a task. And yet, it's well researched and well written, and the underlying history is riveting. I can't quite put my finger on why picking it back up took effort, other than my physical copy is hefty, for a paperback, and I already carry around a heavy bag every day.
One trouble I did have with the book, especially in the middle, is that the authors follow a particular thread of the story to its conclusion, then leap backwards in time to pick up another thread, leaving it difficult to merge them and see the synergy between the different threads of his life, professional, personal, health, moral and even spiritual. There were also minor points in the technology and history that I felt were wrong, or at least mis-emphasized, such as the extent to which Wiener's work influenced Claude Shannon, who seems to catch short shrift in this book. (Of course, it's a bio of Wiener, not Shannon.) Notably, the von Neumann architecture comes up repeatedly, but the authors stick with a simplistic storyline about its origin. (Again, the focus is on Wiener, not von Neumann, but more accurate representation of the broader credit due to the entire EDVAC team and to other antecedents would not have hurt the flow of this book at all.)
I do recommend the book when you're in the mood to learn more about 20th century science -- Wiener's contribution is critical and under-emphasized in what we tend to learn. Part of that is due to his own voluntary withdrawal from various endeavors, due to both personal pacifist convictions and having been apparently badly manipulated, driving a wedge between him and a team of apprentices who were just beginning to hit their stride. Another part is due to the fact that some of his key ideas have simply been superseded, notably his persistent interest in analog computing. His early ideas on neurological computing probably helped inform the early study of the brain as a computer, but are certainly naive by modern standards.
One of his key interests late in life was the impact of technology on society, and especially how automation was going to displace workers. The concern about what we now call AI was certainly ahead of its time, but as I write this in 2016 seems very trenchant.
Recommended.
April 5, 2011
Norbert Wiener, the brilliant and tortured founder of cybernetics, has amassed a small shelf of biographical and autobiographical materials. Dark Hero, written by the prolific and thoughtful pair of Conway and Siegelman, is easily the most accessible, gripping, and breezy of the available accounts. Unlike the others, it focuses on the drama and family dynamics of Wiener's militantly academic upbringing and later mature forays into political activism and global conflict mediation. The conclusion does not hold together mostly because, I think, it tries to project Wiener as a prophet of the modern world instead of rereading him, as the rest of the book presents him, as a figure importantly engaged in the making of his own time and place in a world already in motion. Like Steve Heim's double biography John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: from Mathematics to Technologies of Life and Death, this volume sometimes misses opportunities to represent Wiener's postwar pacifism in a critical light. I think this is an important oversight, which I try to make up for that some of my own work, but really the book delivers what it promises: a popular introduction to an utterly fascinating founder of the modern digital age (an age that begins far before the PC). For the technically inclined, one should leap to Pesi Masani's richly detailed biography Norbert Wiener, 1894-1964. And the interested reader would do well to dive into the source material for much of these books, Wiener's two autobiographical accounts Ex-Prodigy: My Youth and Childhood (1953) and I am a Mathematician: The Later Years of a Prodigy (1966). For the truly committed, his papers at the MIT Institute Archives remain largely untouched. For the rest of us, I'm glad there's Dark Hero.
January 29, 2018
I think this book does a great injustice to Norbert Wiener. It captures the events of his life, but not the compelling grip of his ideas. Norbert's ideas were some of the most interesting and impactful ideas in history, and yet they seem quite boring in the way the author summarizes them. I would suggest anyone interested in this subject to read Norbert's original writing such as The Human Use of Human Beings or God and Golem to understand his ideas and his compelling writing style. Then if you are interested in the events of his life, come back to this biography.
March 7, 2018
This was a highly engrossing book about the father of cybernetics and one of the pioneers of inter disclipnary research. The book tracks Wiener being brought up as a child prodigy, his early successes right up to him mentoring the next generation. He worked tirelessly to apply cybernetics theory to varied fields as anthropology, sociology, biology etc. Over his final years he has a falling out with his fears and becomes insecure to see his field wane in to relative insignificance. This books does justice to the giant he was!
May 22, 2021
Breathless in scope and vision and understandable thanks to Conway and Siegelman's masterful writing of Wiener's complex and convoluted notions and eccentricities. Overly simplified I'm sure, and still I only caught the most basic of the ideas, or maybe something of the supersystems involved. But think of it, Wiener assembled these disparate threads into a whole, understanding and articulating what we now take for granted, that everything is connected, irrespective of the scientific discipline. And small things were astounding to me, like binary not being +/- or yes/no or 0/1 but really, binary is something known, and something unknown or partial or indistinct or random. And to think that Weiner could see that randomness is a factor in all systems: human, plant, mechanical *and* develop the mathematics to describe it. And to think he introduced the idea of feedback as a means of adjusting a cycle and that it applies to every discipline: electronics, mechanics, physiology, sociology, anthropology, economics. These are fundamental principles of everything we know and can hope to know, at least as far as we know :-). And Norbert Weiner was disdained and diminished for most of his life, likely manic depressive and unable to contain his thoughts, moods, depressions, or the ecstatic moments of understanding he experienced. And that before Weiner's era, the ivory towers of Science were silos of jealous work. So much to think of.
February 21, 2021
Wiener may seem an archetypal out of touch professor, but a more rounded character emerges from the book.
In one of the unsympathetic anecdotes, a colleague asks him for help with a calculus problem. Wiener replied that the answer was 5; the colleague said he didn’t understand; Wiener said he’d do it another way, looked at it again for a few seconds, and repeated that the answer was 5. Of course, the colleague never asked him for help again.
Nevertheless, more than most academics, Wiener was aware of the impact his field could have on society. Many people thought that his warnings about cybernetics and automation were Unamerican: “For years, Wiener had railed against the use of the new science for military purposes and he boycotted such efforts. Now, in an act of retributions by the gods, apparently by the lords of American science as well, his science was paying a tangible price for its successes on foreign soil, and, maybe, too, for its father’s defiant words and actions.” So he ended up somewhat of a prophet unhonoured in his own land.
One fact-checking quibble. The authors imply Claude Shannon did not give due credit to Wiener, and they refer to Shannon’s master’s thesis being 10 pages long. In reality it has 69 pages plus 3 of front matter (it’s on the MIT website).
In one of the unsympathetic anecdotes, a colleague asks him for help with a calculus problem. Wiener replied that the answer was 5; the colleague said he didn’t understand; Wiener said he’d do it another way, looked at it again for a few seconds, and repeated that the answer was 5. Of course, the colleague never asked him for help again.
Nevertheless, more than most academics, Wiener was aware of the impact his field could have on society. Many people thought that his warnings about cybernetics and automation were Unamerican: “For years, Wiener had railed against the use of the new science for military purposes and he boycotted such efforts. Now, in an act of retributions by the gods, apparently by the lords of American science as well, his science was paying a tangible price for its successes on foreign soil, and, maybe, too, for its father’s defiant words and actions.” So he ended up somewhat of a prophet unhonoured in his own land.
One fact-checking quibble. The authors imply Claude Shannon did not give due credit to Wiener, and they refer to Shannon’s master’s thesis being 10 pages long. In reality it has 69 pages plus 3 of front matter (it’s on the MIT website).
April 6, 2024
Fascinating story of the life and research of Norbert Wiener. I could hardly put it down. The boom had a quick pace and was engaging. Wiener had an incredible intellect and tragic life. This book nicely tells the story in *mostly* chronological order and beautifully fleshes out the story of Wiener and his peers and companions. The research is deep and well-documented. My one complaint is that some of the writing and the constant analogizing of Wiener to an elephant was somewhat fat-phobic. There were also some odd comments that seemed a little prejudiced against vegetarians. However, the book is great and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of technology or the ethics of science and technology.
March 13, 2022
I had heard of Norbert Weiner, the creator of cybernetics, but this is a very deep biography. Starting with a portrait of his years as a child prodigy (PhD from Harvard at 18), and a comprehensive account of the pre-WWII work that resulted in cybernetics, the book also digs deep into the post-war years in which he continually warned of the societal dangers of the computerized information age and became an outcast in the scientific community. An absolutely fascinating account of a life devoted to improving the human condition, with all of the challenges and handicaps of a clinically depressed genius. Thanks, Val and Chris!
Want to read
August 25, 2024Norbert Wiener’s father, Leo Wiener, claimed that he had a method to raise a genius. Leo Wiener was a professor of Slavic languages at Harvard University, and he had very strong views on education. He believed that a systematic and rigorous approach to learning, starting from a very young age, could cultivate extraordinary intellectual ability in a child. He applied this philosophy in raising his son, Norbert Wiener, who went on to become a prodigy and a pioneer in the field of cybernetics.
April 23, 2019
A touching portrait and of and inquiry into a man whose work and thoughts relate to many of the issues we have today. Gave me new thoughts about automation and technical research in general. Norbert Wiener is mow one of my favourite people in history.
June 18, 2021
Interesting bio of a man who, along with like Claude Shannon and John Von Neumann, laid the groundwork for the information age. Cybernetics was a big (huge?) deal until the 60's when it was eclipsed by AI and digital computing...
Read
February 6, 2020Thoroughly enjoyed the back story to cybernetics and it's original proponent.
October 10, 2014
This is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. It blows my mind that I had no idea who Norbert Wiener was even though I read widely and avidly follow technology. The book was profound because it fleshes out Wiener's personal life and shows how it is deeply intertwined with his philosophy and his science. It made me wonder how many other important people history has forgotten.
The main quibble I have with this book is its organization. Because it is organized by theme, sometimes it covers the same events in different chapters from different angles. This is interesting but also a little disorientating. A timeline or overview would have been helpful. Some other reviews point out that the epilogue rambles a bit--which is true--but it is also thought-provoking.
The authors argue that we cannot truly understand the Information Age without knowing Wiener's story. I agree. His ideas and concerns are still relevant today because he was so far ahead of his time and they have yet to be addressed. How do we maintain our humanity in a fast paced technological world? Is it really wise to entrust important decisions to computers that only think in terms of logic without emotions or ethics? What if the system makes an error; do we still have the capability of catching or fixing it? Highly recommended.
The main quibble I have with this book is its organization. Because it is organized by theme, sometimes it covers the same events in different chapters from different angles. This is interesting but also a little disorientating. A timeline or overview would have been helpful. Some other reviews point out that the epilogue rambles a bit--which is true--but it is also thought-provoking.
The authors argue that we cannot truly understand the Information Age without knowing Wiener's story. I agree. His ideas and concerns are still relevant today because he was so far ahead of his time and they have yet to be addressed. How do we maintain our humanity in a fast paced technological world? Is it really wise to entrust important decisions to computers that only think in terms of logic without emotions or ethics? What if the system makes an error; do we still have the capability of catching or fixing it? Highly recommended.
September 22, 2014
Norbert Wiener might not be a household name, but according to this book, he should. This book chronicles both his research and his life in a highly readable and entertaining way.
Back in the first half of the 20th Century, Norbert Wiener, a former child prodigy, created a broad theoretical framework that influenced research in everything from computers and communications to psychology and anthropology. Despite being a first rate genius, though, Wiener suffered from severe bouts of depression which strained his relationship with his family and colleagues.
While reading this book, it was particularly interesting to see how a man of Wiener's influence related to his own creation. Early on in his career, he was simply a multidisciplinary genius, but as his career grew on, his feelings of responsibility grew into an unease with that led him to leave some dire warning that are still relevant today.
If nothing else, this book is worth reading simply for it's chronicling of the field of cybernetics, which, while it is no longer a common name, continues to exert an outsized influence throughout the world.
Back in the first half of the 20th Century, Norbert Wiener, a former child prodigy, created a broad theoretical framework that influenced research in everything from computers and communications to psychology and anthropology. Despite being a first rate genius, though, Wiener suffered from severe bouts of depression which strained his relationship with his family and colleagues.
While reading this book, it was particularly interesting to see how a man of Wiener's influence related to his own creation. Early on in his career, he was simply a multidisciplinary genius, but as his career grew on, his feelings of responsibility grew into an unease with that led him to leave some dire warning that are still relevant today.
If nothing else, this book is worth reading simply for it's chronicling of the field of cybernetics, which, while it is no longer a common name, continues to exert an outsized influence throughout the world.
August 12, 2012
I knew of Norbert Wiener before I started at MIT. During my freshman year, I found out where he was teaching and stood outside his classroom listening to his lectures -- I didn't have the courage to go in. So I was excited to find this biography.
I learned a lot of new information on where he came from, what made him tick, etc. Unfortunately, like many biographers, the author did a good job of organizing the facts of Wiener's life, but didn't write with any flair. It made Wiener appear to be a very dull person, when he was anything but. That made reading the book somewhat tedious. But the information was well worth the effort.
I learned a lot of new information on where he came from, what made him tick, etc. Unfortunately, like many biographers, the author did a good job of organizing the facts of Wiener's life, but didn't write with any flair. It made Wiener appear to be a very dull person, when he was anything but. That made reading the book somewhat tedious. But the information was well worth the effort.
September 17, 2010
On the whole, Dark Hero is a thoughtful, well written biography of the scientific and personal life of Norbert Wiener. The conclusion, however, is a jumbled screed railing against laundry list of social maladies, some real (international terrorism), some sensationalized (biotechnology), and others completely incongruous (the anti-globalization movement). The rant against piracy also seems forced, especially in light of NW's documented antipathy for intellectual property.
Read
March 15, 2011For a biography of the quintessential out-of-touch professor (he often forgot where he lived according to this), it is pretty damn entertaining. This may have to do with the sheer drama with which Wiener carried himself as well as the backstabbing that he experienced throughout his life. At any rate, I thought it was good.
April 8, 2007
This is a great book on Norbert Wiener. To know all that you can about Wiener is to understand first order cybernetics and to understand the Macy's conferences that game birth to all of the great thinkers of the time.
June 5, 2010
Excellent mathematician biography. Granted, it's for a general audience and will not be sufficiently technical for math student readers, but it's very insightful and well-researched re. Wiener's life, and breaks significant new ground.
Want to read
April 9, 2008Impulsive acquisition at Borders, 2008-04-08
February 1, 2009
heavy on detail. a good lesson in why notebook dumping is something to be avoided.
November 20, 2008
Tremendous biography of a troubled and inspiring genius.
May 19, 2013
Good start off biography for another unsung hero to those foreign to Norbert.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews