Norbert Winer Biography briefly

A brief biography: the son of a professor of Slavic, a native of Russia, Norbert Wiener received a degree of philosophy doctor at Harvard University at the age of 18. At the end of the First World War, Wiener began to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the MTI, where he performed a number of mathematical research. Here he has a long -term friendship with Vaninev Bush.

It was V. Bush with the outbreak of World War II attracted Wiener to solve mathematical problems related to anti -aircraft fire management on the basis of information received from radar stations. Thus, Winer became a member of the battle for England, thanks to which he was able to get acquainted with Alan Turing. Of great importance for the formation of Winner's views on the “man and computer” problem was a joint activity with a Mexican psychologist and cardiologist, Arturo Rosenbet, it was he who was dedicated to the book “Cybernetics”.

Norbert Wiener turned to the problem of "man and computer" for a number of reasons. First of all, because he was interested in the issues of communications in technology, in living nature and in society. In addition, the scientist wanted to get away from the military theme, which occupied him for several years of his life.

In the context of the history of the Internet, it is important to understand that a researcher with a tremendous scientific potential dealt with the problem of interaction between a person and a computer. In the area that we call information technologies today, a scientist has come, who has a classic university and academic culture, I believe that this culture is now lost, and forever.

Do not be surprised that there is no practical work related to computers behind the wine, at that time he was engaged in more serious things. Wiener became the founder of cybernetic philosophy, the founder of his own school, and his merit is that this philosophy was transferred to students and followers. It is the Viner school that belongs to a number of works, which, ultimately, led to the birth of the Internet.

Perhaps Wiener was the first to realize that the appearance of a digital computer raises the question of a qualitatively new level of human interaction with the machine. Today, when each personal computer is equipped with various interactive devices, we can say that much has already been achieved. But then, in the X and X years, the diametrically opposite views on the role of computing machines coexisted: some scientists saw in them just a tool for calculations, while others have read the fate of a certain superhuman mind.

Wiener considered both these points of view to be erroneous. He did not agree with the common opinion that computers can independently give rise to useful results. Wiener gave them the function of only tools, data processing tools, and a person - the function of extracting useful results. But how to find a solution at that time when there was no keyboard, mouse, no screen, when there was a colossal gap between the philosophical understanding of the problem and its technological embodiment?

It was clear that it was somewhere at the interdisciplinary level, so Wiener came to the need to organize a weekly seminar in the MTI with the involvement of various specialists. The seminar began to work in the spring of G. Its participants recall that at first it resembled the construction of the Babylonian tower, since scientists were involved in different, sometimes distant specialties - mathematicians, engineers, psychologists, philosophers, doctors, biologists, etc.

Despite the fact that a considerable time took the formation of a general language of the new science, the seminar turned out to be very effective. Ultimately, it was possible to develop several fundamental concepts, which can be considered as the first fundamental ideas of the future network. Firstly, at the seminar, in the process of discussion, it was suggested that the computer should become one of the most important means of communication, although it was not easy to imagine a computer as a communication device at the beginning of X.

Note that before the first computer network the appearance of at least 15 years remained. Robert Metkalf, the inventor of the Ethernet protocol, aphoristicly defined the purpose of the computer: “Communication is the most important for cometers can do is the most important of what the computer can do, but this happened much later. Secondly, it was obvious from the point of view of the day of today's conclusion that the computer should provide an interactive interaction mode.

At that time, there were only devices for entering from perfume or punch and primitive printers from peripheral devices. In embryo form, the interactive mode was partially embodied in the Ugrican Whirlwind, unique for its time, built in the MTI in the year in its creation was actively participated in the members of the Vinerian seminar. It was to this computer that the alphabetical-civilian keyboard was first connected.So, the two obvious components of cyberspace - a computer as a means of communication and an interactive mode - were applied to the cradle of the seminar, led by the vine: "Each tool has its own pedigree." But no less important for the history of the Internet is another circumstance.

Viner's seminar became a school where many chain creators came from. In the last years of his life, Nobert Wiener went deeper into philosophical and ethical problems, they were reflected in his last book “God and Golem”, he is also the author of the two memoir books “I am a mathematician” and “Former Wunderkind”. Publications of the life and activity of persons:.