Cobre e estanho em Wiener (1989 [1950])

At the end of the book, in both editions, Wiener compares the Catholic Church with the Communist Party, and both with cold war government activities in capitalist America. The criticisms of America in these last few pages of the first edition (see Appendix to this Introduction) are, in spite of one brief pointed reference to McCarthyism, largely absent in the [xix] second edition. There are other differences in the two editions. The chapter ‘Progress and Entropy’, for example, is much longer in the first edition. The section on the history of inventions within that chapter is more detailed. The chapter also deals with such topics as the depletion of resources and American dependence on other nations for oil, copper and tin, and the possibility of an energy-crisis unless new inventions obviate it. It reviews vividly the progress in medicine and anticipates new problems, such as the increasing use of synthetic foods that may contain minute quantities of carcinogens. These and other discursive excursions, peripheral to the main line of argument of the book, are omitted in the present edition. (Steve J. Heims, in: Wiener 1989:xviii-xix)

WIENER, Norbert. 1989 [1950]. The human use of human beings: cybernetics and society. London: Free Association Books.