God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion

In God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion, Norbert Wiener lays down his ideas on machine learning, machine reproduction and the place of machines in society, on a background of religious references. The provocative title sums up the confrontation of technical, mathematical and imaginative boldness with cultural prejudice.

He mentions other concerns of his, like sensory feedback in artificial limbs, the problems of human responsibility in relation with technology, the limits of machine game-playing, Darwinism, Marxism, the Cold War, the rigidity of ideological thinking, and a critic of economy as a science.

In the conclusion, he brings the burden of ethics to politics, away from religion.