Bionic Super-Cyborgs This Way Comes

Norbert Wiener

In a serendipitous instance of circular causality, I was recently loaned a fresh copy of Dark Hero of the Information Age by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. Detailing the life of Norbert Wiener (from youth prodigy to founding father of Cybernetics), it's an excellent introduction (for profoundly stupid people such as myself) to information technologies. Moreover, the authors make a compelling argument that the future of such technologies will perforce become increasingly analogue-based. This makes a good deal of sense considering the importance of feedback in analogue systems (as well as the limitations of purely digital systems). I'm a grunting, slobbering retard when it comes to the technical characteristics of cybernetics, but I nonetheless would encourage those that consider themselves computer nerds to read the dust jacket (and possibly the epilogue) of this slickly written biography the next time they find themselves in a bookstore with a little time to kill.