People, animals, and plants all have the ability to take certain actions in response to their environments; in the same way, machines have feedback systems in order for their performances to be altered or evaluated in accordance with results.

There are two kinds of possible disorganizational forces, passive and active:"Nature offers resistance to decoding, but it does not show ingenuity in finding new and undecipherable methods for jamming our communication with the outer world" (pp.

The feedback systems of an organism and those of a machine (informational organization in machines does not necessarily constitute "vitality" or a "soul") function in a similar way, allowing either to make assessments and act on the actual effectiveness of previous actions; when such feedback modifies not just a discrete action but an entire set of behaviors, Wiener calls this learning.

According to Wiener, the "progress" of human society as we conceive it today did not exist until four hundred years ago, but now we have entered "a special period in the history of the world" (p. 46).

The progress of recent centuries has changed our world so dramatically that humans are being forced to adapt to the new environmental order or disorder that we are still creating.

Wiener believes the quickness and range of our adaptability has always been the strong point of the human species, which distinguishes us from even the most intelligent of other living creatures.

This type of machine will be most useful in factory assembly lines, giving humans the freedom to supervise and use their creative abilities constructively.

People could be free to expand their minds, pursue artistic careers, while automatons take over assembly line production to create necessary commodities.

Numerous books have been published in relation to cybernetics theory which explore alternative concepts and models of feedback, human/machine relationships, systems science, and industrial advancement.