Norbert Wiener on Cybernetics

“Naturally there are detailed differences in messages and in problems of control, not only between a living organism and a machine, but within each narrower class of beings. It is the purpose of Cybernetics to develop a language and techniques that will enable us indeed to attack the problem of control and communication in general, but also to find the proper repertory of ideas and techniques to classify their particular manifestations under certain concepts.”

“The machines of which we are now speaking are not the dream of the sensationalist,nor the hope of some future time. They alreadyexist as thermostats, automatic gyro-compass ship-steering systems, self-propelled missiles – especially such as seek their target – anti aircraft fire-control systems, automatically controlled oil-crackingstills, ultra-rapid computing machines, and the like. They had begun to be used long before the war – indeed, the very old steam-engine governor belongs among them –but the great mechanization of the Second World War brought them into their own,and the need of handling the extremely dangerous energy of the atom will probably bring them to a still higher point of development. . .the present age is as truly the age of the servomechanisms as the nineteenth century was the age of the steam engine or the eighteenth century the age of the clock.”