Norbert Wiener developed cybernetics as the science of control and communication across machines and people, originating from his World War II work on antiaircraft predictive systems. He showed that systems which use the result of their last action to guide the next can adapt through feedback loops. Feedback loops allow systems to track user behavior, feed those signals back into algorithms or devices, and adjust to increase accuracy or engagement. Wiener published Cybernetics (1948) and The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), and he warned that adaptive systems would reshape human life faster than society could absorb.
This idea was born out of World War II, when Wiener worked on antiaircraft systems designed to predict and adjust to the movements of enemy pilots. The guns learned where you were going and got more accurate with each shot. It's the same principle that keeps you glued to your phone. A loop that tracks what you do, feeds it back into the system, and adapts to keep you coming back.
Wiener was a mathematician and philosopher who spent the war years at MIT, building what we now call predictive systems. His key insight was pretty simple: if a system uses the result of its last action to guide the next one, it can adapt. He called this a feedback loop. In 1948, Wiener released Cybernetics. Two years later came The Human Use of Human Beings. Together, they introduced a new science - and a warning:
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