Wieners and Frankfurters
By Michael Swaine
The word "cybernetics" has all but disappeared from contemporary discussion of computers. Maybe we need to bring it back.
The word was coined by Norbert Wiener, from the Greek word for helmsman. Wiener was a contemporary colleague and rival of John von Neumann. It is von Neumann's view of computing that has dominated thinking about computers since the 1940s, but out on the Net, Wiener's views are starting to look more and more relevant. Maybe that's why cyberspace still has "cyber" in it.
Cybernetics is about communication and control. Wiener's model for the computer was the homeostatic device. Computers, he argued, are just big thermostats. A homeostatic device operates on a feedback loop. It does something, gets some feedback from the environment, and modifies its behavior on the basis of the feedback. It's not hard to fit that model onto computer input and output, but it also works for Pavlovian stimulus and response. Wiener was as happy to apply the cybernetic model to wetware as to hardware and software.
Sometimes this feedback loop can go awry, and lead to suicidal thrashing. This morning a mailing list about scripting to which I subscribe is in day three of a flame war. One of the list subscribers posted a message titled "Take a look at my page." The maintainer of the list discouraged the subscriber in strong terms, saying he wouldn't have this sort of commercial self-promotion on his list and that if the subscriber ever did it again he'd be bounced so high he'd get a nosebleed.
