Cybernetics, Second Edition: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine 2nd edition

CYBERNETICS is on virtually everyone's short list of the most important and influential nonfiction books of the last century. First published by MIT mathematics professor Norbert Wiener in 1948, and later in its Second Edition in 1961, this groundbreaking account of systems, thought processes, AI, and the use of "feedback" foreshadowed intelligent and replicating machines, complex organizational organisms, and the physiology and failure of the human nervous system. Its 1961 Second Edition is the same version republished in many paperback editions since (such as the 1965 printing by MIT Press), and represents the culmination of the author's work on this project. No small wonder this has been widely read by scientists and lay readers alike, to understand the origins and future of computers, wider communication pathways, the use of feedback to refine actions and thought processes, and the logic and math behind non-linear systems. Educated readers know the term "cybernetics"; this book coined the term and created an entire field of interdisciplinary study that resonates today, and led to the "cyber"-everything that we know. Norbert Wiener, known as the "Father of Cybernetics," has influenced such fields of study as game theory, system theory, sociology, psychology and neuroscience, modern philosophy, organizational theory, and even architecture.