Down the rabbit hole: Tracking the humanizing effect of John Dewey´s pragmatism on Norbert Wiener

Echoes of pragmatism have long been noted in the Cold War era and, specifically, Norbert Wiener´s cybernetics, which comes from the Greek kybernetes or “steersman,” and offers a science of feedback, human behavior, and information. Increasingly, Wiener´s work is revisited in the pursuit of “big data” in education. Yet, scholars ignore the influence of pragmatism-and John Dewey, in particularon cybernetics and its reach into education. This paper reveals how Dewey played a role in Wiener´s philosophical underpinning and views on education. With the research methods of textual analysis and archival material, it enables a demonstration that pragmatism made for a humanizing effect on Wiener´s efforts and, ultimately, his ongoing and increasing impact in technology and education.