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Books : reviews

Larry S. Skurnik, Frank Honywill George.
Psychology for Everyman: 2nd edn.
Pelican. 1967

No one, it has been said, can claim to be educated in the twentieth century if he has not at least a nodding acquaintance with psychology. Few scientific subjects have made such rapid strides and become at the same time a main focus of public interest. Psychology for Everyman offers a broad introduction to the ideas and applications of this twentieth-century science. The central concepts of perception, thinking, learning, remembering, and language are carefully analysed and then related to all the activities of our modern industrial society.

Separate treatment is given to business, education, personality, and intelligence, and the controversial field of abnormal behaviour. Throughout the book the authors bring out the exciting relevance of the findings of psychology to everyday life at home and at work.

Frank Honywill George.
Cybernetics in Management.
Pan. 1970

Science is changing our business life and cybernetics is the science responsible for changing it most of all. This is natural since cybernetics is the science of management—the science of control and communication.

Managers for the future need to understand the principles of mathematics, statistics, psychology and the computer sciences. Their views must be philosophically based and scientifically orientated.

F. H. George is uniquely qualified to supply this lucid, straightforward guide to the ideas and methods used by cyberneticians in modern business and modern Government.

• Domestic automation
• The development of automation
• Digital computers & their function
• Cybernation
• Decision processing
• Heuristic methods
• Natural language programming
• Inference making on a digital computer
• Programmed instruction

Frank Honywill George.
Cybernetics.
Teach Yourself Books. 1971

Cybernetics is a science concerned with all matters of control and communication and this book is a general introduction to the subject covering both the theory and its application.

Basic Ideas in Cybernetics—Self-Adapting Systems—Development of Cybernetic Models—Logic and Automata Theory—Neural nets—Digital Computers and Cybernetics—Information Theory and Cybernetics—Human Behaviour and Cybernetics—Biocybernetics—Management Cybernetics—Cybernetics and Education—The Future of Cybernetics

Frank Honywill George.
Man the Machine.
Paladin. 1979

‘Machines that behave like men can be manufactured and can in the end set up their own machine-controlled society.’

Such machines, and such a society, far from being a Science Fiction dream, are not only conceivable, but – as Professor George argues – are growing closer to becoming reality day by day.

Computers are already widely used by society – factories are automated, huge data banks store all kinds of private information. Soon, perhaps, all society’s chores will be performed by a new super-breed of mechanical drones. Meanwhile, the storing and control of information will be entrusted more and more to electronic brains. Two of the most crucial areas of power will be controlled by machines. What if the machines fall into the wrong hands? What if the machines themselves take over?

The new machines will be capable of sensing, perceiving, thinking, even of reproducing. They will be able to communicate in their own language.

Weare on the brink of a social transformation potentially greater than the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The intelligent machine means that our definition of Man himself has to be changed.