Message-ID: <19991215032508.AAA7078@jubilee.ns.sympatico.ca@LOCALNAME> Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 21:04:07 -04 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: Re: The Scientist: What's Right? (5k To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Ref: _The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society_ (Houghton Mifflin (Doubleday Anchor), 1950, 1954. Paper, 199pp.)Norbert Wiener, writing 50 years ago, went to great (but quite readable) lengths to explain the concept of feedback which underlies the concept (and his coinage) of 'cybernetics' -- all of which, of course, goes without saying now, two (human) generations later:
Most of us ... prefer to live in a moderately loose social community, in which the blocks to communication among individuals and classes are not too great. (I will not say that this idea of communication is attained in the U.S. Until white supremacy ceases to belng to the creed of a large part of the country it will be an idea from which we fall short.) Yet even this modified formless democracy is too anarchic for many of those who make efficiency their first ideal. These worshippers of efficiency would like to have each man move in a social orbit meted out to him from his childhood, and perform a function to which he is bound as the serf is bound to the clod.
Within the American social picture, it is shameful to have these yearnings, and this denial of opportunities implied by an uncertain future. Accordingly, many of those who are most attached to this orderly state... would be confounded if they were forced to admit this publicly. They are only in a position to display their clear preferences through their actions.
Yet these actions stand out distinctly enough. The businessman who separates himself from his employees by a shield of yes-men, or the head of a big laboratory who assigns each subordinate a particular problem and begrudges him the privilege of thinking for himself so that he can move beyond his immediate problem and perceive its general relevance, show that the democracy to which they pay their respects is not really the order in which they would prefer to live. (pp 50-1)
It is clear that his concern is with the human social machine, and the difference between pre-configured 'rigidity' and programmable 'learning' -- but, having stated the cybernetic premise as (p 57) "the view that the structure of the organism or the machine is an index of the performance that may be expected from it," he starts with the ship's steering mechanism and the neuronal construction of a frog's leg, then with the analogous structure of the brain-machine, then the way brains 'control,' that is, communicate by language. Thus he is halfway through his book before he is able to say,
The desire to appply Cybernetics [to] semantics, as a discuipline to control the loss of meaning from language, has already resulted in certain problems. It seems necessary to make some sort of distinction between information that can be taken brutally and blunty, and that sort on which we as human beings can act effectively... In my opinion, the central distinction and difficulty here arises from the fact that it is not the quantity of information *sent that is important for action, but rather the quantity of information which can penetrate into a communication and storage apparatus [i.e., be *acknowledged] sufficiently to serve as the trigger for action. (pp 93-4, emph added)
In the second half of the book, he lays out a number of 'worked examples' -- the law, science research, industrial production -- to show that in each case the flow of information *both 'up to the 'central processor' and 'down' to the executive extensions is critical. He concludes Chapter X with:
When human atoms are knit into an organization in which they are used, not in their full right as responsible human beings, but as cogs and levers and rods, it matters little that their raw material is flesh and blood. *What is used as an element in a machine, is in fact an element in the machine.* Whether we trust our decisions to machines of metal, or to those machines of flesh and blood which are bureaus and vast laboratories and armies and corporations, we shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions. _The Monkey's Paw_ of skin and bone is quite as deadly as anything cast out of steel and iron. The djinee which is a unifying figure of speech for a whole corporation is just as fearsome as if it were a glorified conjuring trick.
The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door. (pp 185-6, orig. emph.)
=====
Review:
1. Who is he talking to by this publication 'channel'?
2. Do you think anybody 'got it' who didnt *already understand the concepts? Is there a corresponding feedback channel for it they could have used, e.g. to ask questions?
3. His awareness of the civil rights movement would let his easily see his semantic 'gender bias,' once it was *communicated to him. Would exposing it to him be an appropriate use of such feedback? Assuming he is alive and well and a subscriber to this list, how would you proceed - - by the rigid 'command language' he decries, or the 'flexible language' of learning and dynamic feedback?
4. If you were to write a preface for _The Human Use, Revisited_, what changes over 50 years would you mention? To whom would you address it, and by what means would you try to discover his or her or their understanding of it?
===== Discussion:
Would you say a. The use of language to send questions is more (or less) important than its use to receive answers? b. The use of language to 'process' questions is more (or less) important than its use to 'produce' answers?
Can you demonstrate or illustrate your answer(s) "through your actions"?
Cheers, kerry