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Love him or hate him, or more likely never heard of him - a visionary
Besides his seminal work on cybernetics, a man who looked beyond the specifics of his field to the ramifications of his work.
On the First and Second Industrial Revolutions: the first devaluing simple mechanical/repetitive labor, the second devaluing simple mental/repetitive labor...
From: "The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society"
This is precisely the dynamic facing those attempting to preserve their jobs against offshoring. Wiener's focus was of course on robots, but in reality the lower wages of the 2nd and 3rd world are an even more economic method of labor competition.
Wiener, and populists such as Kurt Vonnegut in "Player Piano" - focused on machines then executing the 3rd Industrial Revolution - where even so called non-repetitive mental tasks are taken over by machines - to the detriment of the average human existence.
The issue with replacement of human labor isn't that it does not free up humans' time or is less economical, the question is what then do the 'freed up' humans do?
So much of human existence is based on the concept of value - or specifically value produced. What value then is a human who produces no value?
To excerpt from "Player Piano"
And the dystopian punch line
Palin 2012? 
Besides his seminal work on cybernetics, a man who looked beyond the specifics of his field to the ramifications of his work.
On the First and Second Industrial Revolutions: the first devaluing simple mechanical/repetitive labor, the second devaluing simple mental/repetitive labor...
Once before in history the machine had impinged upon human culture with an effect of the greatest moment. This previous impact is known as the Industrial Revolution,and it concerned the machine purely as an alternative to human muscle.
The automatic factory and the assembly line without human agents ... makes the metaphorical dominance of the machines ... a most immediate and non-metaphorical problem. It gives the human race a new and most effective collection of mechanical slaves to perform its labor. Such mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor
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However, any labor that accepts the conditions of competition with slave labor accepts the conditions of slave labor, and is essentially slave labor.
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However, any labor that accepts the conditions of competition with slave labor accepts the conditions of slave labor, and is essentially slave labor.
This is precisely the dynamic facing those attempting to preserve their jobs against offshoring. Wiener's focus was of course on robots, but in reality the lower wages of the 2nd and 3rd world are an even more economic method of labor competition.
Wiener, and populists such as Kurt Vonnegut in "Player Piano" - focused on machines then executing the 3rd Industrial Revolution - where even so called non-repetitive mental tasks are taken over by machines - to the detriment of the average human existence.
The issue with replacement of human labor isn't that it does not free up humans' time or is less economical, the question is what then do the 'freed up' humans do?
So much of human existence is based on the concept of value - or specifically value produced. What value then is a human who produces no value?
To excerpt from "Player Piano"
Now, you people have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place, and they're finding out - most of them - that what's left is just about zero. A good bit short of enough, anyway.
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For generations they've been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men - and boom! it's all yanked out from under them. They can't participate, can't be useful any more. Their whole culture's been shot to hell.
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These displaced people need something, and the clergy can't give it to them - or it's impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it's enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn't enough, and I suspect they're right.
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For generations they've been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men - and boom! it's all yanked out from under them. They can't participate, can't be useful any more. Their whole culture's been shot to hell.
...
These displaced people need something, and the clergy can't give it to them - or it's impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it's enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn't enough, and I suspect they're right.
Sooner or later someone's going to catch the imagination of these people with some new magic. At the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed on earth - hell, dignity.
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But someday, gentlemen, someone is going to give them something to sink their teeth in - probably you, and maybe me.
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But someday, gentlemen, someone is going to give them something to sink their teeth in - probably you, and maybe me.
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