What is Norbert Wiener?

Norbert Wiener was a mathematician who founded the field of cybernetics in the 1940s, defining it as the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. His work showed that feedback, the process of using information about a system's output to adjust its future behavior, applies equally to a guided missile, a living organism, and a social institution.

Wiener's cybernetics gave systems thinking much of its core vocabulary, and his warnings about the social consequences of automation and information technology, written decades before the digital era, are still cited in discussions of AI and complex sociotechnical systems today.

Related reading: Norbert wiener: the father of cybernetics.