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"So if you zoom ahead to the 1950s or so, Norbert Wiener, one of
the founders of computer science after Alan Turing and Jon van
Neumann, wrote a book called 'The Human Use of Human Beings,' and
in that book he points out that a computer (which at that time
was a very new and exotic device that only existed in a few
laboratories) could take the role of the human researcher in one
of these experiments. So, if you had a computer that was reading
information about what a person did and then providing stimulus,
you could condition that person and change their behavior in a
predictable way. He was saying that computers could turn out to
have incredible social consequences. There’s an astonishing
passage at the end of 'The Human Use of Human Beings' in which he
says, “The thing about this book is that this hypothetical might
seem scary, but in order for it to happen, there'd have to be
some sort of global computing capacity with wireless links to
every single person on earth who keeps some kind of device on
their person all the time and obviously this is impossible.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/jaron-lanier-interview-on-silicon-valley-culture-metoo-backlash-ai-and-the-future-2017-12
the founders of computer science after Alan Turing and Jon van
Neumann, wrote a book called 'The Human Use of Human Beings,' and
in that book he points out that a computer (which at that time
was a very new and exotic device that only existed in a few
laboratories) could take the role of the human researcher in one
of these experiments. So, if you had a computer that was reading
information about what a person did and then providing stimulus,
you could condition that person and change their behavior in a
predictable way. He was saying that computers could turn out to
have incredible social consequences. There’s an astonishing
passage at the end of 'The Human Use of Human Beings' in which he
says, “The thing about this book is that this hypothetical might
seem scary, but in order for it to happen, there'd have to be
some sort of global computing capacity with wireless links to
every single person on earth who keeps some kind of device on
their person all the time and obviously this is impossible.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/jaron-lanier-interview-on-silicon-valley-culture-metoo-backlash-ai-and-the-future-2017-12
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