“When I say that any system is in control, I mean that it is ultra-stable: capable of adapting smoothly to unpredicted changes. It has within its structure a proper deployment of requisite variety.”
“当我说任何系统都处于控制中时，我的意思是它非常稳定:能够平稳地适应不可预测的变化。它在其结构内适当部署了必要的多样性。”
It’s this thing that we were warned about. It’s this thing that we knew could happen. Norbert Wiener, who coined the term cybernetics, warned about it as a possibility. And despite all the warnings, and despite all of the cautions, we just walked right into it, and we created mass behavior-modification regimes out of our digital networks. We did it out of this desire to be both cool socialists and cool libertarians at the same time.
有人警告过我们。这是我们知道可能会发生的事情。控制论一词的创造者诺伯特 · 维纳(Norbert Wiener)对这种可能性发出了警告。尽管有这么多的警告，我们还是一头扎进去了， 我们用我们的数字网络，创造了大规模的行为矫正系统。我们这样做是出于同时成为酷的社会主义者和酷的自由主义者的愿望。