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The United States is fortunate in having such Foundations and men of imagination and means to bring them into being.
This Foundation has at least thirteen conference groups, of which cybernetics is one. On account of the wide ramifications of the subject, experts from many different fields constitute the group. The proceedings are informal. Nothing was printed from the first five meetings. But the discussions at the sixth and seventh were recorded and are published in these two volumes. The topics discussed in the sixth were: 'Psychological Moment in Perception'; 'Neurotic Potential and Human Adaptation'; 'Quantum Theory of Memory'; 'Possible Mechanisms of Recall and Recognition'; 'Sensory Prothesises'. The seventh opened with 'Some of the Problems concerning Digital Notions in the Central Nervous System', and then devoted all the other discussions to aspects of language, the relation of which to cybernetics is not clear.
It is impossible to review the content of such work. The books make interesting reading and they continually stimulate. Their great value is that they enable us to feel present at the discussions of some very distinguished thinkers of another continent. We are presented not with the polished product of a piece of research but with ideas in the making, so that we can see what ideas are in the minds of these researchers and what aspects of problems are troubling them. Though privileged to be present, we are debarred from one thing—asking questions like the others. But with the growth of communication engineering this defect may disappear.