Published in the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine ∕ September 2015

In the early part of 2009 I got a phone call and was offered a new filmmaking assignment that related to the history of Soviet computing. While doing research for the project, I stumbled across information about a M.I.T. professor named Norbert Wiener. Fascinated, I bought a copy of Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s amazing book, Dark Hero of the Information Age [1]. Wiener’s story touched me deeply because his work connected the dots on many questions I’d been thinking about since my days as a university student. His scientific theories, developed back in the 1930s and 1940s, open the door to understanding modern communications theory and artificial intelligence (AI). Many believe Wiener’s achievements are on par with Einstein, but for some reason his rightful position in history had been hidden from public view. Intrigued, I continued (and still continue) to do further research. (more…)

(Abridged version of the Introduction to Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics).

“So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!”

   —John Godfrey Saxe, The Blind Men and the Elephant

He is the father of the information age. His work has shaped the lives of billions of people. His discoveries have transformed the world’s economies and cultures.

He was one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, a child prodigy who became a world-class genius and visionary thinker, an absentminded professor whose eccentricities assumed mythical proportions, a best-selling author whose name was a household word during America’s first heyday of high technology.

His footprints are everywhere today, etched in silicon, wandering in cyberspace, and in every corner of daily life. Yet his words are muted echoes in the memory. This is the story of a man who has fallen through the cracks in the information age and his fight for human beings that is the stuff of legend. (more…)

Resurrecting the legacy of a man who understood, and feared, the future of automation.
Doug Hill Jun 11 2014, 3:48 PM ET
Published in ATLANTIC MONTHLY MAGAZINE, JUNE 2014

I’ve been preoccupied lately with thoughts of marauding broomsticks, genies in bottles, and monkey’s paws.

All are literary images the scientist Norbert Wiener used to make the point that we fool ourselves if we think we have our technologies firmly under control. That Wiener was instrumental in creating the technologies he warned about demonstrates the insistent obstinance of his peculiar genius. (more…)