Tag: September 2015

Machine Analytique de Charles Babbage

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

By on June 29th, 2017 in Editorial & Opinion, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Societal Impact

Wiener was far ahead of his time in recognizing that our habits of technology-fueled consumption pose significant threats to health and the environment. He predicted that within the foreseeable future we would be facing growing coal and gas shortages, growing scarcity of water with which to supply our cities, growing rates of infection due to increased air travel and antibiotic resistance, growing problems related to processed and synthetic foods, growing risks of nuclear power accidents, and growing risks of nuclear war.