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God & Golem, Inc. - A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (Paperback)
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God & Golem, Inc. - A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (Paperback)
Series: The MIT Press
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The new and rapidly growing field of communication sciences owes as
much to Norbert Wiener as to any one man. He coined the word for
it--"cybernetics," In "God & Golem, Inc.," the author concerned
himself with major points in cybernetics which are relevant to
religious issues. The first point he considers is that of the
machine which learns. While learning is a property almost
exclusively ascribed to the self-conscious living system, a
computer now exists which not only can be programmed to play a game
of checkers, but one which can "learn" from its past experience and
improve on its own game. For a time, the machine was able to beat
its inventor at checkers. "It did win," writes the author, "and it
did learn to win; "and the method of its learning was no different
in principle from that of the human being who learns to play
checkers." A second point concerns machines which have the capacity
to reproduce themselves. It is our commonly held belief that God
made man in his own image. The propagation of the race may also be
interpreted as a function in which one living being makes another
in its own image. But the author demonstrates that man has made
machines which are "very well able to make other machines in their
own image," and these machine images are not merely "pictorial"
representations but "operative" images. Can we then say: God is to
Golem as man is to Machines? in Jewish legend, "golem" is an embryo
Adam, shapeless and not fully created, hence a monster, an
automation. The third point considered is that of the relation
between man and machine. The concern here is ethical. "render unto
man the things which are man's and unto the computer the things
which are the computer's,"warns the author. In this section of the
book, Dr. Wiener considers systems involving elements of man "and"
machine. The book is written for the intellectually alert public
and does not involve any highly technical knowledge. It is based on
lectures given at Yale, at the Societe Philosophique de Royaumont,
and elsewhere.
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