Cybernetics and Society

Cybernetics and Society

I found the article on cybernetics and society to be an interesting article. All of this cybernetics and other talk is a foreign concept to me and at times completely and totally confusing. What I got out of this article was the importance of communication, but not just any communication, the importance of feedback. Everything from this article seemed to revolve around feedback. Whether the feedback was that which we receive from a communication interaction or that of a reaction associated with Parkinsonianism. Wiener writes a lot about the feedback and Parkinsonianism and how we can use the information that we observe from brain feedback in Parkinsonianism to help create a device like his moth and bedbug contraption to obtain a better understanding of the importance of feedback.
I found it interesting how Wiener was using his moth and bedbug device as a potential to create advancements in human development of artificial limbs and hearing devices. The way in which Wiener explained the progress that was being made in hearing devices to help deaf people was intriguing. Wiener states that there are three parts to hearing, first there are the acoustic symbols which are the vibrations in the air. Second is the various phenomena that occur in the inner ear. Finally there is the semantic stage which includes the transfer of symbols into experience of meaning. Wiener points out that in deaf people the first and third stage are still present and the second stage is what is missing. It was interesting how he pointed out that it would be possible to create an alternate second stage for deaf people requiring them to use their eyes which would be very difficult task on their most important sense, or they could use their sense of touch to create a modified second stage to help in the overall communication process. I don’t know exactly what he is referring to when he talks about using the sense of touch but I think it is probably pretty similar to how Braille is used by blind people to help them read. The fact that studying the feedback that results from the brain in something like Parkinsonianism and using that to help someone interpret other feedback from the brain to help deaf people to be able to “hear” in a sense is an amazing topic to me.
I think that the best way I can relate this reading to the other topics in this class is just through the vast importance of technology. Being able to help deaf people hear is a tremendous achievement that is still not perfected although we do have ways in which to improve the chances. With the constant advancing nature of technology it seems to me like progress is being made to help people with any sort of disability. Helping deaf people to “hear” and thus be a part of communication interactions is a monumental achievement but I think that this is only the beginning of where technology can take us in terms furthering the communication process. From helping deaf people hear to maybe helping blind people to see the boundaries of potential technological help seem endless to me and hopefully can continue to develop and evolve as time goes on.