Cybernetics
Wiener gathered control, communication and feedback into one discipline and gave it a name.
Why it matters
The field had a name and boundaries seven years before the term artificial intelligence, and that shaped how it was discussed.
The book ties control and communication to statistical mechanics, "whether in the machine or in living tissue", and extends the same view to society, which Wiener describes as bound together by a system of communication. He discusses the consequences of automation for labour directly: as the first industrial revolution devalued the human arm, the modern one "is similarly bound to devalue the human brain", and he says he took the warning to the labour unions. The term artificial intelligence appears only in 1955, in the Dartmouth proposal.