The Human Use of Human Beings

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Last week, I needed to check a quotation from Wiener's classic The Human Use of Human Beings, which sounded slightly incorrect. It turned out to be an interesting but fabricated synthesis. The good thing was that I had to browse through the book, to see whether the author had actually quoted a passage from a different page. He hadn't, but I ended up re-reading the whole book. It was impossible to put it down again.

I had read Wiener as a graduate student, and had a rather distorted interpretation of his work. Or perhaps, now I can distort him more fruitfully to fit my less immature ideas.

Some of the chapters contain some ideas that are not terribly interesting, but most of the volume is a must. Don't miss it. Really. It's is far better than any philosophy I've been able to browse at Blackwell's in recent times. With the insight of sixty years of computer revolution, what Wiener was able to see and predict in the fifties is not only amazing but also very instructive and insightful. This is philosophy of technology at its best.

One surprise: there is no reference, anywhere, to Turing, either the man, the machine or the test (to have some clue about the timeline, Turing died in 1954, the same year in which the second edition of Wiener's book was published). Now Wiener was in touch with all the major scientists and reseachers of his time. How did he possibly miss Turing? It seems more a matter of intentional disregard. Some scholars will know better, and I would be curious to learn.

Philosophically, this telling absence has reinforced in me the impression that our "fourth revolution" (see previous blog) is not about computers, but about information. The whole book is about it, with machines being discussed only insofar as they are information processing artefacts. But then, didn't I say I was going to mis-read Wiener once more? I guess that's the definition of a classic: you cannot re-read and re-adapt to your intellectual needs an airport novel.

Finally, there are several editions of The Human Use of Human Beings, mostly out-of-print or poorly published. It is time to produce a proper volume, annotated and scholarly edited. I had to check the French Wikipedia to know who Dominique Dubarle was, for example. We need to find an enlightened publisher.

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