Epstein Secrets

Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Venki Ramakrishnan is a scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University; recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009); current president of the Royal Society; and the author of Gene Machine: The Race to Discover the S

ocess of control via feedback. (“Cybernetics,” from the ancient Greek for “helmsman,” is the etymological basis of our word “governor,” which is what James Watt called his pathbreaking feedback control device that transformed the use of steam engines.) Because he was immersed in problems of control, Wiener sa

OMPUTERS BECOME OUR OVERLORDS? Venki Ramakrishnan Venki Ramakrishnan is a scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University; recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009); current president of the Royal Society; and the author of Gene Machine: The Race to Discover the S

ntury. 174 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016977 from kuber- to guber—the root of “gubernatorial” and “governor,” another term for masculine control, deployed by James Watt to describe his 19th-century device for modulating a runaway steam engine. Cybernetics thus took ideas that had long analogized people and devices an

Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Venki Ramakrishnan is a scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University; recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009); current president of the Royal Society; and the author of Gene Machine: The Race to Discover the S

ocess of control via feedback. (“Cybernetics,” from the ancient Greek for “helmsman,” is the etymological basis of our word “governor,” which is what James Watt called his pathbreaking feedback control device that transformed the use of steam engines.) Because he was immersed in problems of control, Wiener sa

OMPUTERS BECOME OUR OVERLORDS? Venki Ramakrishnan Venki Ramakrishnan is a scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University; recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009); current president of the Royal Society; and the author of Gene Machine: The Race to Discover the S

ntury. 174 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016394 from kuber- to guber—the root of “gubernatorial” and “governor,” another term for masculine control, deployed by James Watt to describe his 19th-century device for modulating a runaway steam engine. Cybernetics thus took ideas that had long analogized people and devices an