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Subj: Re: Last Call for Launch Page Submissions

Date: 9/14/2000 5:03:10 PM Central Daylight Time

From: Newmedia

To: Nmherman

Who Cares About GENIUS?

Mark D. Stahlman

In 1950 one the greatest living American mathematicians, Norbert Wiener, published his most important work, "The Human Use of Human Beings" (HUoHB).

Commonly considered to be the "popular" version of his formula-laden 1948 book, "Cybernetics," HUoHB was actually something quite different. It was a MANIFESTO around which he would spend the next four years of his life organizing.

Organizing for what?

For the very survival of HUMANITY.

There was little hint of this campaign in "Cybernetics," although Wiener did signal in the introduction that he had been contacted by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson for an important "mission." At the time Mead and Bateson -- both of whom had served in high positions in the OSS -- were spearheading a broadscale effort to try to "control" what they considered "dangerous" aspects of society using "social science."

According to Wiener in this introduction, "On this basis [that social systems exhibit control and feedback dynamics], Drs. Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead have urged me, in the view of the intensely pressing nature of the sociological and economic problems of the present age of confusion, to devote a large part of my energies to the discussion of this side of cybernetics."

"Much as as I sympathize with their sense of urgency of the situation, and much as I hope that they and other competent workers will take up problems of this sort, which I shall discuss in a later chapter of this book, I can share neither their feeling that this field has the first claim on my attention, nor their hopefulness that sufficient progress can be registered in this direction to have an appreciable therapeutic effect in the present diseases of society."

Wiener did touch on these issues in the penultimate chapter of "Cybernetics," "Cybernetics and Psychopathology," which he closes with "The human brain may be as far along on its road to this destructive specialization as the great nose horns of the last of the titanotheres."

But, the real follow up on these TITANIC issues took two more years to produce. Wiener's response is in the powerfully polemical 1950 HUoHB and in the hundreds of lectures and articles and letters he gave and wrote from 1950 to 1954.

What is their theme?

That ANY repetitive task can be better performed by an "arbitrarily complex feedback mechanism" than they can be by humans.

That assembly line work and then administrative work and then managerial work will become the domain of these "mechanisms" -- computers -- and that humans will be progressively pushed towards the sidelines to install, upgrade and maintain these machines . . . until the machines figure out how to do all that "themselves," at which point, humans will NO LONGER be needed.

That there was a raging battle between man and machine in which the machine held ALL the trump cards . . . except one . . . "moral judgment."

That unless society devoted all of its energies to educating each of its members in higher and higher skills of "moral judgment" . . . humanity was DOOMED to be replaced by its own inventions.

Then, in 1954, Wiener totally re-wrote HUoHB.

The new "Second Edition" is really another book altogether.

The new "Human Use of Human Beings" had no polemics, no battles, no struggles, no warnings, no crusades.

This "edition" was the one that was translated into dozens of languages and later reprinted in the paperback version that may people living today have read.

Why this dramatic change?

Why did Wiener stop his public lectures and speeches?

Why did Wiener end his campaign of letter writing to everyone of influence that he could contact?

Because he came to understand that it was too late. That the "machines" had already WON.

That HUMANITY had already "dis-appeared."

So, what did he do now? Jump out a window? Shoot himself in the temple? Jump in front of a speeding train?

No, Wiener went to work.

He started to examine the question of "genius."

If "humanity" had already "dis-appeared," then the logical question which follows is "Can humanity re-appear?"

And, being a deeply educated historian who was surrounded by some of the best historians of his age, he asked them the question, "Has humanity ever produced a GENIUS who by virtue of their superior knowledge has led humanity back from its ignorant 'non-human' condition?"

He believed that the answer to this question was yes.

He was convinced that the best example of a GENIUS in history was probably the Greek-Egyptian polymath PTOLEMY . . . because PTOLEMY appeared to innovate in every field of human knowledge without having anyone else's shoulders on which to stand.

It was as if he appeared out of nowhere . . . which is the true mark of a GENIUS . . . to point "humanity" back towards its own HUMANITY.

He assigned some of those in his group to thoroughly research PTOLEMY in order to help explicate the process by which GENIUS could appear in an otherwise "non-human" society. (Just like ours . . .)

He directed that this research should be published in books and in other formats.

This effort was cut short by Wiener's death in 1963.

One of the principle books to emerge from this effort was published in 1969. Its title is "Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time." Its authors are Giorgio deSantillana and Hertha vonDechend. Its frontispiece illustrates "God creating the stars, with the planetary spheres shown inside, according to the Ptolemaic order."

Giorgio was my godfather.

The principle researcher into the life and work of PTOLEMY in this group was my father, William D. Stahlman.