Dark hero of the information age : in search of Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics / Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 399-411) and index.

Prologue: Time past, time present -- Pt. 1: The elephant's child. The most remarkable boy in the world -- Young Wiener -- The Wunderkind and the Frau-Professor -- Weak currents, light computers -- Wienerwalks -- Birth of a science. -- Pt. 2: In the court of cybernetics. The knights of circular causality -- Breakfast at Macy's -- The big bang : cybernetics -- Wienerwalks II -- Breach and betrayal. -- Pt. 3: Aftermath. A scientist rebels -- A government reacts -- Wienerwalks III -- Homage to the elephant's child : The 'satiable soul of Norbert Wiener -- Childhood's end. -- Epilogue: Time future: surviving the global society.

In the middle of the last century, Norbert Wiener--ex-child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician--founded the science of cybernetics, igniting the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. Wiener was the first to articulate the modern notion of "feedback," and his ideas informed the work of computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, and anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. His best-selling book, Cybernetics, catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism. So why is his work virtually unknown today? And what, in fact, is his legacy? In this book, award-winning journalists Conway and Siegelman set out to rescue Wiener's genius from obscurity and to explore the many ways in which his groundbreaking ideas continue to shape our lives.