Ethical Reasoning in a Cybernetic World

Lawrence Richards organized Wiener's ethical concerns into three distinct categories: the implications of computing and automation, the dangers of autonomous decision-making machines, and the "soft technologies" of organizational design and social systems. He argued that Wiener's ethical framework was far more nuanced than a simple set of prohibitions, encompassing a systemic understanding of how technology reshapes human relationships and institutions.

Richards proposed that ethics should be embedded implicitly in the structures of society rather than imposed as external rules. Drawing on cybernetic principles, he argued that living systems resist entropy through homeostasis and that social structures should be designed to support similar self-regulating dynamics. He warned against hierarchical, reward-oriented organizational arrangements, suggesting that such structures inevitably produce the very pathologies Wiener feared most.