Analog computing as an antidote to autonomous algorithms [1]

[ED. NOTE: George Dyson, Kafka, Heidegger, Pirsig, Arendt, Wiener, and EDGE…] 

George Dyson dedicates an interesting essay [5] in Edge to explore digital evolution from a human system to an algorithm that no longer depends on human programmers, and the worrying implications of this phenomenon. But Dyson does not settle for the diagnosis and explores an original proposal for a solution: returning cybernetics to its analogue heart.

For Dyson, what we know today as a digital revolution has not ended, but it has mutated into something very different, abandoning the possibility of the first years and leaving behind its "childhood". For a long time, computer science has not responded to the old paradigm of machines controlled by instructions that, in turn, have been designed by humans, who supervise execution. . . .