Norbert Wiener

future intelligence struggle robot slaves

“The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

automatic machine economic slave labor robot

“Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

progress possibility restriction future

“Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

mathematics metaphor aesthetic

“Mathematics, which most of us see as the most factual of all sciences, constitutes the most colossal metaphor imaginable, and must be judged, aesthetically as well as intellectually in terms of the success of this metaphor.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

information matter energy

“Information is information, not matter or energy.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

communication engineering gauss wheatstone telegraph

“communication engineering began with Gauss, Wheatstone, and the first telegraphers.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

inventor dissolve substance container

"We are in the position of the man who has only two ambitions in life. One is to invent the universal solvent which will dissolve any solid substance, and the second is to invent the universal container which will hold any liquid. Whatever this inventor does, he will be frustrated."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

science payment profit

"Science is better paid than at any time in the past. The results of this pay have been to attract into science many of those for whom the pay is the first consideration, and who scorn to sacrifice immediate profit for the freedom of development of their own concept. Moreover, this inner development, important and indispensable as it may be to the world of science in the future, generally does not have the tendency to put a single cent into the pockets of their employers."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

science field notion name different

"There are fields of scientific work...which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology...in which every single notion receives a separate and different name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

tissue change food air flow pattern live perpetuate

"Our tissues change as we live: the food we eat and the air we breathe become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and the momentary elements of our flesh and bone pass out of our body every day with our excreta. We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

science life flourish free faith

"Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

nervous system automatic machine decision past cybernetics

"The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

progress possibility restriction entropy

"Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. It seems almost as if progress itself and our fight against the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill path from which we are trying to escape."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

live efectively adequate information

"To live effectively is to live with adequate information."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

idea information stored changing world depreciate barrel weapon

"The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with information."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

realize period history world communication debt survival

"What many of us fail to realize is that the last four hundred years are a highly special period in the history of the world. The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the results of increased communication, but also of an increased mastery over nature, which on a limited planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be an increased slavery to nature. For the more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

degradation scientist independent thinker stooge factory

"The degradation of the position of the scientist as independent worker and thinker to that of a morally irresponsible stooge in a science-factory has proceeded even more rapidly and devastatingly than I had expected."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

entropy information message cliche poem

"Just as entropy is a measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of organization. In fact, it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of its entropy, and the negative logarithm of its probability. That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

physics partial theory quantum relativity sunday praying

"Physics is at present a mass of partial theories which no man has yet been able to render truly and clearly consistent. It has been well said that the modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a student of gravitational relativity theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday he is praying... that someone will find the reconciliation between the two views."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

model material cat

"The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

science growth area neglected field discipline

"The most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences were those which had been neglected as a no-man's land between the various established fields."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

whirlpool river flow abide pattern perpetuate

"We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water... We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

courage doom civilization progress weakness

"May we have the courage to face the eventual doom of our civilization as we have the courage to face the certainty of our personal doom. The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belong to acquiescence and hence to weakness."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

scientific discovery system convenience discourage

“Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.

One of the chief duties of a mathematician in acting as an advisor to scientists is to discourage them from expecting too much of mathematicians.”

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

prevalence cliche information bullshit litterature

"The prevalence of cliches is no accident, but inherent in the nature of information. Property rights in information suffer from the necessary disadvantage that a piece of information, in order to contribute to the general information of the community, must say something substantially different from the community’s previous common stock of information. Even in the great classics of literature and art, much of the obvious informative value has gone out of them, merely by the fact that the public has become acquainted with their contents. Schoolboys do not like Shakespeare, because he seems to them nothing but a mass of familiar quotations. It is only when the study of such an author has penetrated to a layer deeper than that which has been absorbed into the superficial clichés of the time, that we can re-establish with him an informative rapport, and give him a new and fresh literary value."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

information process storage observe world exchange

"Information is more a matter of process than of storage… Information is important as a stage in the continuous process by which we observe the outer world, and act effectively upon it… To be alive is to participate in a continuous stream of influences from the outer world and acts on the outer world, in which we are merely the transitional stage. In the figurative sense, to be alive to what is happening in the world, means to participate in a continual development of knowledge and its unhampered exchange."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

immerse world thermodynamics confusion entropy

"We are immersed in a life in which the world as a whole obeys the second law of thermodynamics: confusion increases and order decreases. Yet, as we have seen, the second law of thermodynamics, while it may be a valid statement about the whole of a closed system, is definitely not valid concerning a non-isolated part of it. There are local and temporary islands of decreasing entropy in a world in which the entropy as a whole tends to increase, and the existence of these islands enables some of us to assert the existence of progress."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

industrial revolution sword benefit humanity survive destroy

"The new industrial revolution is a two-edged sword… It may be used for the benefit of humanity, but only if humanity survives long enough to enter a period in which such a benefit is possible. It may also be used to destroy humanity, and if it is not used intelligently it can go very far in that direction."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

shipwreck passenger doomed planet decency dignity

"In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

AI artificial intelligence genie bottle machine decision

"Like the genie in the bottle, machines will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made…"

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

machine learn modify experience defiance wishes

"Moreover, if we move in the direction of making machines which learn and whose behavior is modified by experience, we must face the fact that every degree of independence we give the machine is a degree of possible defiance of our wishes."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)

machines helpless human control race autocracy

"Machines, though helpless by themselves, may be used by a human being or a block of human beings to increase their control over the rest of the human race."

― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)