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POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH
New Year is the time when 'the Past is like a funeral gone by, the Future comes like an, un- welcome guest,' to quote my cousin, Edmund Gosse. Your political correspondent has never been convinced that he possesses any excep- tional powers of clairvoyance. He believes that we are all certain to die at some stage, and he rather fancies that at least some of us will go hell. But there is a government soothsayer, mloyed at a far greater wage than he re- -elves, and no doubt better versed in the traditional art of saying what his patrons wish to hear as mysteriously as possible. New Year is as good a time as any to take another glance
at Mr Wedgwood Benn, as he capers in top hat, roll-collar shirt and purposive work- man's trousers across the centre of the stage. Behind the curtains' mystic fold the glowing future lies unrolled: CYBERNETICS! Ra, Ra, Ra.
This word was invented a few years ago by someone called Professor Wiener of the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology (motto: Arise ye sons of mrr) to describe something or other which was worrying him at the time. It clearly derives from the Greek word for helms- man, but this gives very little insight into its current usage.
If it merely meant the theory of control and communication in the animal and the machine, ag an addendum to the Oxford English Dic- tionary of 1966 suggests, then there would be nothing for Mr Benn to get excited about, or for us to dread. Such things are easily explained. I,.et us take horses. If you want a horse to go forward, you kick it lightly on the flanks, and may, if you wish, say 'Gee Up.' To stop it, you pull on the reins, saying 'Whoa.' With a car, you engage bottom gear and let out the clutch to advance, and to stop you apply the brakes— there is no need to say anything. A future which was dedicated to experimental permuta- tions on the present methods—kicking can and feeding them with hay, calling cats to heel and stroking computers to see if they purr—might not be totally unendurable at any rate until vameone taught the Minister of Technology a new long word. (Next week: Wedgbenn of Mintech on Hallucinogerrics and Society; Living with Psychedelic Change.) Of course, he means nothing to do with this. Nor, I fancy, would he accept the Penguin Dictionary's definition that cybernetics is the study of communications mechanisms in elec- tronic calculating machines and the human brain. No doubt that comes into it, and jolly interesting, too, but cybernetics is something much bigger than that. Cybernetics, through the activity of his hot young imagination, has become a single gigantic Machine in which every scrap of information known to man is stored in readily available form; it is able to draw inferences from information already pos- sessed, thereby creating new information and eliminating mistakes, and also to make decisions in the light of this information which will con- trol our lives. The Machine will give to each of us according to its estimate of our needs, and exact from us according to its estimate of our abilities. Anything which might seem to con- tribute towards this end is cybernetical and therefore good: more efficient computer machines; `geo-stationary satellites'; super-
sonic aeroplanes; vertical take-off aeroplanes, high-speed trains; tracked hovercraft; ry re- cording machines; the Channel tunnel; stan- dardised containers. These are only the things he mentions but no doubt there are others: aerosol tooth-paste powders, chocolate- flavoured potato crisps, etc etc. Anything which looked like preventing or delaying this end would be uncybernetical and therefore bad, but he gives no indication that such things exist. Everything is 'absolutely irresistible.' Bless his heart.
`If we want to do better in the future,' he says, 'we had better start now. Excluding pure science fiction—which may not mature until the 1980s—the outlines of the developments we shall have to live with in Britain in the 1970s are already clear . . .' Now of course one is much relieved to hear that Mr Benn does not intend to spring any twelve-legged, green, scaly Martians on us until the 1980s; but what if we are among those who are quite happy not to do any better in the future, most especially if it involves the tiniest risk to our already ex- tremely comfortable way of life? I am sure that there are many like this, except that succeeding governments have successfully blinded us with our own gluttony. So if we -do not want to do better in the future we had better start now.
`Cybernetics is a science that cuts across all others. There is not a single aspect of life that will not be deeply touched by it,' says our Min- benn Wedgtech ('Living with technological change'). All_ that is required for this touching in depth to begin is more information: 'No computer can be used until it has been pro- grammed with the information it needs to per- form its job. . . . To meet this need we have to have more information. These demands will become absolutely irresistible if rational de- cisions are to be made about anything' (Wennman Bedgtich, ibid).
Now since the Machine can only act on information it is given, our only hope of beat- ing it, poor naked mortals that we are, is to give false information. Christians are forbidden to tell lies to other human beings, but there can be nothing wrong in lying to a machine. Lying can be fun, of course, but it is a question of finding enough people prepared to join in. Help may come from unexpected quarters, like customs and immigration officers. Techbenn writes (op cii) that new transport developments (high-speed trains, standardised containers, etc) will bring about an 'intermeshing of com- munities' which will 'ultimately swallow up political frontiers, overwhelming customs and immigration officers.' And are these customs and immigration officers going to sit around waiting to be overwhelmed? Cyberneticised without a murmur? I will canvass the acs if someone
else can get the customs and _ immigration officers interested.
Now to misinform the machine. By co- incidence a 440-page document arrived on my desk this morning, being the breakdown of answers to a few questions in the mini-census of 1966, and relating to the south-east only. Similar volumes have already appeared for the same questions, in eight other regions. They are all part of cybernetics, although the Wed- gister of Bennology hopes that full, computer- ised cybernetication will come 'just in time to save us all from drowning in a mass of paper.' The questions concern the migration of labour within Britain (Sample Census 1966— Migration Report, South East Region. HMSO £5). The insight which the volume affords on the matter is, of course, riveting. To take the London Borough of Westminster, one notices immediately that sixty farmers, foresters or fishermen left it in 1966. This is scarcely sur- prising, since opportunities for the really keen farmer or forester are very poor in Westminster these days, and the fishing is notoriously bad. Much more surprising is the fact that ten farmers, fishermen or foresters moved into Westminster. They must be mad, of course; Is Westminster safe these days with so many in- sane farmers, fishermen or foresters prowling the streets? No fewer than thirty have moved in during the last five years, although it is only right to point out that 210 have left.
Another extraordinary revelation is the fact that whereas male drivers of stationary engines are constantly on the move-160 of them left Westminster during the period, while eighty came in and a further one hundred moved around inside the area—female drivers of stationary engines appear almost totally im- mobile, at any rate in the south-east. Not one of them moved an inch inside Westminster. and the same story is repeated in borough after borough, county after county. You have to go to somewhere outlandish like Basingstoke to find ten of them even moving around inside the area. The ten who left Andover plainly went to Havering, but why?
That is not the point, of course. The great point is how easy it will be to deceive the Machine. A census form is appended to the volume, reminding everyone that the penalty for giving false information is £10. Such a paltry sum means nothing to us, of course, and if they checked the entries there would be no point in asking the questions in the first place. I am a Pakistani immigrant living in a three- room house with my unmarried bride of twelve and our fourteen children, aged eighteen to thirty-two. All of the rooms are outside toilets, which we refuse to share with anyone, although I. as head of the family, have the exclusive use of one sink. We take our breakfasts in each of the toilets alternately, although I usually have mine brought to me as I sit alone in my sink. By trade I am The driver of stationary engines, and so is my unmarried wife, although she travels around the country so fast that she can seldom drive the same stationary en- gine for long. Last year, I was a deep-sea trawlerman in Birmingham and before that a coalminer in Chelsea. My children are all en- gaged in inadequately described occupations. We have a bath, but it is by no means fixed. Indeed, my unmarried wife often takes it with her on her travels from stationary engine to stationary engine.
Let Wedgeman Techbinn stuff that informa- tion up his process control and see if it will give him any feedback.
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