“A man called Norbert Wiener published a book called Cybernetics or Communication and Control in the Animal and the Machine. About seven years later he published the second edition of a book called The Human Use of Human Beings, which is actually the book he should have published first. And an enormous amount of the misunderstanding about cybernetics and systems would not have happened if Wiener had published that book first. Cybernetics is a mathematical, technical book, which makes cybernetics look like an engineering subject. The Human Use of Human Beings shows that it’s a way of thinking and a way of being in the world, which is a quite different sort of proposition. So, Wiener was sort of at fault there.”
Reference: Ranulph Glanville (2014), How Design and Cybernetics Reflect Each Other, Keynote Speech delivered at the RSD3 Relating Systems Thinking and Design 2014 Conference, on October 15, 2014 at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Video [6:07-6:55]
