Translated material
Georgy Dalidovich. Norbert Wiener: First cyber transparen
Indeed, living means to live, having the right information.
This is not a biographical essay, but rather an attempt to reconstruct the inner world of a person on the basis of the data we have about it. And we know a lot about Norbert Winer. But first, just objective information.
Norbert Wiener was born on November 26, 1894 in the city of Colombia, Missouri, in the family of a Jewish immigrant, a native of Russia. According to family legend, the roots of the genus of the Winers go to Moses Maimonid from Cordoba - the Life Medican of the Sultan Saladin Egyptian, a well -known scientist and theologian. Noro Wiener’s father, a native of Bialystok, studied in Germany in his youth and spent a rather stormy, complete adventure, youth. He was a convinced follower of Tolstoy and one of his first translators into English. By the time of the birth of Norbert, he had already become a professor of modern languages at the University of Missuri. A few years later, the Winter family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here Leo Wiener taught Slavic languages at Harvard University. He was distinguished by wide erudition and non -standard views, which most affected the education of his own son. Under the leadership of his father, Norbert at the age of seven read Darwin and Dante, at eleven he graduated from secondary school, at fourteen - a higher educational institution - Tafts College and received the first degree in his life - a bachelor of arts.
Norbert was well prepared for a brilliant academic career. At eighteen, he becomes a doctor of philosophy of Harvard University. In 1913, the young Wiener began his journey through Europe, listens to lectures in Cambridge and Gettingen. After the outbreak of war, he returns to America.
Since 1919 and for the rest of the long life, Wiener has become a teacher of the Department of Mathematics of the Massachusetts Technological Institute. In the 20-30 years, he again visits Europe. In science, his name becomes known. In the theory of radiation equilibrium of stars, the equation "Winner-Hopf" appears. He gives a lecture course at the Tsinhua University of Beijing. Among his acquaintances is N. Bor, M. Born, J. Adamar and other famous scientists.
During the Second World War, he works on a mathematical apparatus for anti -aircraft guidance systems. In this tense environment, the first drafts arise that over time will become a new science. Here, Wiener first encounters the fact that the machine should perform complex actions to predict the behavior of the target, replacing the gunner, and draws attention to the role of feedback in technology and living organisms. His acquaintance with the Mexican physiologist Dr. Artur Rosenbet is very productive. A comparison of knowledge from the field of medicine, physiology and mathematics and allowed Norbert Wineer to formulate a project of new science. The appearance of the book instantly turned it "from a pipe scientist who enjoys a certain authority in his special field, in something like a figure of social significance." In 1953, he made a lecture tour in India, in 1960, Wiener came to the Soviet Union. He highly appreciates the level of development of Soviet science: "They lag behind us in equipment - not hopeless, but a little. They are ahead of us in the development of the theory of automation." Wiener acts in a polytechnic with a lecture on brain waves. Ahead of a few more years of hard work ...
"We are like millproof wheels in an eternally current river. We are not material creatures, but always repeating the scheme themselves. The scheme is a message and can be transmitted as a message."
Often our attention is attracted not by the Epistle itself (and each person is a message that “opposes chaos, destruction and death, as a message - the effects of noise” ), but its carrier, that is, a human being in its interaction with the environment.
Here are a few sketches that allow you to imagine what Norbert Wiener was.
Who are you, Professor Wiener?
"My nonsense is a specific mixture of depression and anxiety, concern, the logical state of my work. I cannot share the sensations of pain and difficulty breathing, feelings caused by curtains in the wind and separate, not yet solved points in the task that I am currently working on. I cannot say that the pain manifests itself as a mathematical stress or that the tension of the mind or that the tension of the mind symbolizes itself symbolizes They just merge that such a comparison was important, although I thought about this topic later, I realized that almost any life experience can personify the mathematical task, which has not yet been solved and completely clear that one of the main motivation for mathematics was a feeling of discomfort or even pain from undeveloped mathematical contradictions To realize the need to information such a contradiction to less stringent and understandable restrictions in order to free himself from him and go to anything else. "
By his own admission, in his youth, Wiener possessed a "collection of clinical manifestations of neurosis and mental ailments." In 1915, he tried to get to the front, but did not pass the medical board due to poor vision. Within five years after that he was haunted by a continuous series of failures. He tried to engage in teaching at the University of Man, wrote articles for the encyclopedia, worked as an assistant engineer, was engaged in journalism, but every time a new type of activity ended in failure. This continued until 1919, when he received, not without the help of his father, the position of teacher of the Massachusetts Technological Institute. Forever.
A few years later, in 1926, there were great changes in his life, after a long courtship period, he married Margaret Engerman. Forever.
Two daughters were born in the family of vinkers. We must pay tribute to Margaret. She was a reliable friend, a nurse and a mistress in the house of her husband not easy in life together. They almost did not part. During numerous and long trips to Europe and China, the family accompanied the professor. Communication in the family took place on a strange mixture of English and German, and the professor often used "children's" endings, and he respectfully called his wife the full name of Margarita (Marguerita) - not in English at all. There are no witnesses to this, it was something inner, protected from external views, almost intimate, but letters were preserved. Neuroses were manifested to a lesser extent, but the phrase "The house begins to look empty, and the weather is becoming more and more autumn ..." (New Gampshire, September 7, 1931) says a lot.
With age, the instability of the psyche partially passed and, according to many contemporaries, was transformed into a protective reaction expressed in vanity and arrogance. We must pay tribute, there were more than enough grounds for arrogance.
Wiener was constantly in the cycle of depression, repeated every three weeks. He found a way out of him in a kind of humor. What are his phrases: "A professor is a person who can speak on any topic - about fifty minutes." Or: "The best material model of a cat is another, but preferably, the same cat." But if we talk about humor in relation to the Professor Winee, then you can not bypass a series of jokes, which were based on real situations. Here are some of them, backed up by the evidence of specific people who knew Winner.
The Chinese physicist K. Gen (CKJEN) , who studied in the Massachusetts Technological, writes: “Remembering the life in the MTI, it is impossible not to tell about a wonderful person, Norbert Winer, whose vicinity witnessed to be. I remember that Professor Viner always came to the audience without a lecture notes. He almost did not pay attention to the audience and rarely announced the subject of the lecture, standing very close to it because of his very strong myopia. It is wrong. "At the same time, he quickly erased everything that was written. Then he started all over again, muttering to himself:" So far it seems to be correct. "And after a minute:" However, it cannot be right, "and washed everything again. This process was repeated again and again until the call from the lecture rang. Professor Winer left the audience without even looking at his listeners. "
Robert K. Weatherall, director of the graduates employment service, reports the story of one of the students, who "on the way to New Hampshire stopped to help a person who was helplessly standing near a car with a piercing tire," in which he recognized Norbert Winer. Wiener checked the test from him, and said that he could accept help from him, since the offset has already been received.
Another MTI employee, the administrator of the Faculty of Mathematics L. Block) recalls: “He often visited me in the office and talked to me. When, a few years later, my office moved to another room, Winer came to me and get acquainted. He did not remember that I was often communicated with a different room and he took me For someone else. "
That was Professor Wiener. One of the largest minds of the 20th century, which created the appearance of civilization in which we live with his works, and completely helpless and childishly vulnerable in everyday life, which found protection for his inner world in the family, an arrogant alienation that hid the concentration of consciousness on the problem being solved, and as a result of a non-reasonable character of student folklore.
And students of Massachusetts Technological still tell the freshmen anecdotes about the scattered professor Winer, who could forget their own name ... What, in fact, is the difference, what is your name if you are Norbert Wiener ...
In search of meaning
A scientific study is to interpret for the convenience of our understanding of the structure of the world, which was created without taking into account our amenities, and even its very existence.
"The meaning of this tragedy is that the world is not a small cozy nest created for safe existence, but a huge and often hostile space in which we can achieve a lot only by determining the gods for ourselves; and the introduction of this definition contains an inevitable punishment."
Each person includes three entities, manifested to varying degrees, depending on the level of personality development. Firstly, it is a biological animal entity, controlled by the simplest instincts and easily simulated by cybernetic means, and secondly, it is a social being, which lives among itself in an artificial environment called human society. The laws of behavior at this level are more complex, but are still available for analysis using statistical methods. And finally, this is what we feel in ourselves, left alone with the starry sky or at the moment of awakening, when everyday worries have not yet managed to fill consciousness. It was this condition that was the main one for Wiener.
The god of Professor Winer
Modern Western society is little religious in the bulk, although many continue to observe the formal ritual side, giving tribute to tradition. However, the word "atheist" has a negative shade, and almost no one applies it to himself. Basically, people related to religion issues in the same way as most representatives of what until recently was called the "Soviet people" call themselves "agnostics" in the sense of a literal translation of this term - "unknown." In principle, even a believer is an agnostic, since he believes, but does not know. However, Wiener seemed to know. He himself created the image of his God, with whom it was possible to communicate almost by comradely.
"The modern physicist is a follower of quantum theory on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - he is engaged in the gravitational theory of relativity. On Sundays - neither those nor the other, but simply prays to his God, so that he himself, he himself, can tie both approaches together." This God should be a adherent of order and clear laws, because "in the world, controlled by the irrational god, subject to unexpected bizarns, we would be forced to expect every new catastrophe in a state of preoccupied passivity" - and this option did not suit the professor.
But if there is a god who personifies the laws of the universe, then where does everything that seem to us as a violation of these laws come from? The "enemy of the human race" for Wiener is an increasing entropy or disorder. Moreover, this enemy, in contrast to the Manichaean Devil, distinguished by ingenuity, is simply a process that is not a power in itself, but reflecting the measure of our weakness, ” personifies the passive resistance of the environment and stupidly erasing the information with a stream of thermal noise. Cybernetics becomes a moral and ethical teaching. "In the most literal sense, we are suffering the shipwreck by passengers on a doomed planet. But even during shipwreck, human decency and human values do not have to disappear, and we must maintain them while at least some opportunity remains, but it is better if this happens with the consciousness of their dignity." Here the theme from the Titanic may sound. It seems to me that in those short periods when depression retreated and was replaced by a state with elements of mania of greatness; Then, when the professor thought about cybersist systems that could study and reproduce themselves, the question arose in his mind - would they create God for themselves and who would they choose for this role?
The professor did not like to talk about religion, although he regarded consistent atheism as one of the options for religious error. But think about the following lines - is this a cybernetic definition of the soul? "At least one thing is completely clear - the physical individuality of the personality is not related to the material carrier ... The biological individuality of the body seems to be hidden in some long -term process and in the body's memory of the events of previous development ... In terms of computing technology, the individuality of the mind is determined by preserved records and memories and its continuing development according to the predetermined program ."
Or more: "Individuality is a flame, not a stone; form, not material content. This form can be transmitted through communication channels, changed or copied." This is not about the realized cloning of biological organisms, but about something more than the simple repetition of the information matrix. Too much of the "cybernetic delirium" of the scattered professor has already materialized in our world. So this is a project to relocate the soul? "The fact that we still cannot telegraph a person’s scheme from one place to another is mainly associated with technical difficulties." However, how many of them have already been overcome! Moreover, "the difference between the transmission of the message and the transfer of the material object, in the theoretical, is not insurmountable." Although such a task "affects the deep issues of human individuality and requires the definition of the barrier that separates one person from another, which is the oldest issue facing humanity." Then the next step becomes logical: "Thus, the car can generate a message, and the message can generate the car." Винер поясняет: "Я говорю здесь о машине, но не только о машине из меди и железа... нет особой разницы, если эта машина изготовлена из плоти и костей" . Таким образом, в кибернетическом толковании, Бог становится сервером, размещающим человеческие души в биологических самовоспроизводящихся машинах, причем обладающим атрибутом всемогущества, так как "насколько простирается возможность сбора и восприятие информации, настолько распространяется, в некотором смысле, и физическое присутствие. Наблюдать и отдавать команды всему миру - это почти то же самое, что и быть везде" .
Здесь мы прервемся в нашем процессе реконструкции мира идей профессора Винера, чтоб осмыслить полученные выводы. Во второй части статьи мы рассмотрим его взгляды на роль информации в человеческом обществе.
В статье приведены цитаты из работ Норберта Винера:
"Кибернетика" (по изданию М.: Советское радио, 1968, предисловие Г.Н.Поварова).
"Ex-Prodigy, My Childhood and Youth" ("Бывший вундеркинд").
"I am a Mathematician" ("Я - математик"); перевод - М.: Наука, 1964.
"God & Golem, Inc." ("АО Бог и Голем"); перевод: "Творец и робот" - М.: Прогресс 1966.
"The Human Use of Human Beings" ("Человеческое использование человеческих существ"); перевод: "Кибернетика и общество" - М.: ИЛ, 1958.
"The Tempter" ("Искуситель").
Автор выражает специальную благодарность профессору Виргинского технологического института (Virginia Tech.) Antonio A. Trani ; Jenny O'Neil и, особенно, Deborah G. Douglas из MIT Museum, а также RLE и MIT Historical Collections , JAN Lee , VPI&SU Annals of the History of Computing и Moore School of Electrical Engineering за предоставленные фотографии и материалы.