This is one of the fundamental documents of our time, a period epitomized by the concepts of ‘information’ and ‘communications’. Norbert Wiener, a child prodigy and a great mathematician, coined the term ‘cybernetics’ to characterize a very general science of ‘control and communication in the animal and machine’. It brought together ideas from engineering, the study of the nervous system and statistical mechanics (e.g. entropy). From these he developed concepts that have become pervasive through science (especially biology and computing) and common parlance: ‘information’, ‘message’, feedback’ and ‘control’. He wrote, ‘The thought of every age is reflected in its technique…If the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries are the age of clocks, and the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries constitute the age of steam engines, the present time is the age of communication and control.’ In this volume Norbert Wiener spells out his theories for th