Norbert Wiener and the Counter-tradition to the Dream of Mastery

Journalist Doug Hill, drawing on more than two decades of studying technology history, situated Wiener within a "counter-tradition to the dream of mastery" that challenges the prevailing faith in technology's power to control nature. He documented Wiener's remarkably prescient warnings about resource scarcity, antibiotic resistance, nuclear accidents, and environmental degradation, issues that have only grown more urgent in the decades since his death.

Hill argued that Wiener's most crucial insight was his appreciation of uncertainty as a fundamental feature of physical reality. Wiener recognized that "chance is part of the warp and weft of physics," a perspective that stood in sharp contrast to the deterministic optimism of many of his contemporaries. This embrace of uncertainty, Hill suggested, positions Wiener as an essential voice for an era increasingly defined by complex, unpredictable systems that resist simplistic technological fixes.