The Human Use of Human Beings

“It presents cybernetics as a scientific theory and a social philosophy. From the latter standpoint, the writing is often brilliant and forceful.”  — New York Times“It is hardly possible to read him without being startled to furious and fruitful thinking, moved to deep and reverberating emotion. He is a Jeremiah with the taste and learning of a Renaissance humanist, the free-ranging intellectual gusto of a William James.”  — Christian Science Monitor”Norbert Weiner’s seminal 1950 book . . . investigates the interplay between human beings and machines in a world in which machines are becoming ever more computationally capable and powerful. It is a remarkably prescient book.” — Seth Lloyd, Slate”Immensely insightful and increasingly relevant.” — Maria Popova

Norbert Wiener received his Ph.D. from Harvard at the age of eighteen and joined the mathematics department at M.I.T. when he was twenty-five. Honored throughout his life with numerous scientific awards, he was the author of two autobiographies, Ex-Prodogy and I Am a Mathematician, as well as several important books and basic papers on the theory and practice of cybernetics.

Brian Christian is the bestselling author of the acclaimed books The Most Human Human, Algorithms to Live By, and The Alignment Problem, which have been translated into nineteen languages. A researcher at the University of Oxford, he lives in San Francisco.