Preface
- This random element, this organic incompleteness, is one which without too violent a figure of speech we consider evil.
- As entropy increases, the universe, and all closed systems in the universe, tend naturally to deteriorate and lose their distinctiveness, to move from the least to the most probable state, from a state of organization and differentiation in which distinctions and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness. In Gibbs universe order is least probable, chaos most probable.
- But while the universe as a whole, if indeed there is a whole universe, tends to run down, there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organization to increase. Life finds its home in some of these enclaves. It is with this point of view at its core that the new science of Cybernetics began its development.
Cybernetics and History
Progress and Entropy
Rigidity and Learning: Two Patterns of Communicative Behavior
The Mechanism and History of Language
Organization as the Message
Law and Communication
Communication, Secrecy, and Social Policy
Role of the Intellectual and the Scientist
The First and the Second Industrial Revolution
Some Communication Machines and Their Future
Language, Confusion, and Jam
