Claim · 1948 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Wiener’s Cybernetics (1948, read in the 2019 reissue) says that the new development makes the metaphorical dominance of the machines, as imagined by Samuel Butler, a most immediate and non-metaphorical problem.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine → bears on → Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence

Where it appears

Machine succession, scale and acceleration: propositions in located texts, 1863–2026 →

Claim and evidence

Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machinebears on ↓Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1948 · publication Records dated 1948 →
Wording attested: 2019. Read in the MIT Press reissue (2019) of the second edition of 1961; the 1948 and 1961 printings were not compared.
Role: Context
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Missing element: Succession as the leading intelligence: the next sentences describe the problem as machines doing human labour as ‘mechanical slaves’, not as machines replacing people as the dominant intelligence.

Scope and limitsThe passage also names Samuel Butler; a naming of a person is not recorded as a link yet.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (reissue of the 1961 second edition)

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019 (open access, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0); Internet Archive item mit_press_book_9780262355902 · 1948

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“it makes the metaphorical dominance of the machines, as imagined by Samuel Butler, a most immediate and non-metaphorical problem.”

Location in source Introduction, reissue pp. 39–40

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-04

Source details and check notes

Authors: Norbert Wiener
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-11-02 (SHA-256 88c80833e096c562e62d6519b677966b05d439c00e00cf6fb7dfd8eddb0cbe54) and again at admission on 2026-11-04 (same file). The MIT Press reissue of 2019, catalogued as ‘Reissue of the 1961 second edition’, read in its Internet Archive OCR text. Its contents divide the book into ‘Part I. Original Edition (1948)’ and ‘Part II. Supplementary Chapters (1961)’. The 1961 preface says the first edition had typographical errors and ‘a few errors of content’; the 1948 printing was not compared, so Part I’s wording is attested here from the 2019 reissue only.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-11-04
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Norbert Wiener, “Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (reissue of the 1961 second edition)”, 1948.
Reuse: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as the MIT Press reissue states. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). The quotation (19 words) matched a fresh retrieval of 2026-11-04 (SHA-256 88c80833e096…, the file the candidate pack read). Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes, line-break hyphens and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. A page break (running head ‘Introduction’, p. 40) falls after ‘Samuel’. Matched with the page break’s running head and download stamp skipped. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Machine-checked. Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document bears on the proposition without meeting its criterion; the record names the missing element. It is not an articulation and implies no influence.

Date. Part I of the reissue is headed “Original Edition (1948)”; the 1948 printing was not read.

Record ID pre-w01-wiener-1948-cybernetics-context