CONCEPT
The Steersman
From the Greek <em>kybernetes</em>: the figure whose hand stays on the tiller, reading the water, making continuous small corrections. Wiener's chosen image for the human role in any purposive system containing both humans and machines.
The steersman is Wiener's founding metaphor for the human role in a human-machine system. The word kybernetes — from which 'cybernetics,' 'government,' and 'governor' all descend — named the figure on an ancient Greek ship whose function was neither rowing nor building nor choosing the destination but reading the water and adjusting the tiller. The steersman does not produce the ship's motion; the rowers do. The steersman does not design the vessel or decide where it is going. The steersman's function is narrower and more essential: to keep the ship oriented toward its destination against every force that would push it off course. The hand must stay on the tiller. The moment the hand lets go, the ship does not stop. It drifts.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Wiener chose the image with precision because it captured a relationship that the emerging field of AI would systematically deny. The steersman and the ship are not in competition; they do