In 1950, Wiener published The Human Use of Human Beings in which he decisively described the fundamental role of communication in modern life:

It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part.