Podcasts about cyberneticians

Public Lecture Jon Agar and Jacob Ward (University College London) 'Communications, control and cybernetics in post-war British systems: rail, post and telecoms' Discussant: Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge) Convenors Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (University of Cambridge) Poornima Paidipaty (University of Cambridge) Egle Rindzeviciute (Kingston University) Summary As more and more of our collective activities (education, pension planning, health management, environmental protection) are mediated by rapidly moving markets and computerized technologies, uncertainties abound. Such visions of a technologically mediated — and seemingly limitless — future are not new. They echo the technological futurism popularized in the middle of the twentieth century by cybernetics. Beginning with the 1948 publication of Norbert Wiener’s book, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, cybernetics inaugurated path-breaking scientific explorations of feedback and self-regulation in biological and mechanical systems. It initiated an ambitious set of technoscientific discussions that provocatively transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries. Cyberneticians argued that patterns of feedback and self-regulation were key to understanding the operation of anti-aircraft guns, the erratic movements of victims of brain injury, the dynamics of group psychology, the relationship of human societies to their natural environment and much more. These insights furnished profound reassessments of notions of agency, of distinctions between the human and the non-human and of models of learning and memory. The scholarship on cybernetics has, however, only recently began to trace the legacies of this movement beyond the Cold War era. By providing insights into the enduring impact of mid-century techno-science on our contemporary information landscape, 'The Afterlives of Cybernetics' conference will contribute to a more thorough history of the present by helping us understand the antagonisms and synergies that animate the multiple offshoots of cybernetic thought, including operations research, AI, rational choice theory, predictive analysis, design thinking, behavioural economics and risk management. This in turn will lay the foundations for a better understanding of how these knowledge practices allow us to project, imagine and engage with uncertain and unbounded futures.

The lecture by Jon Agar and Jacob Ward (University College London) will be open to all free of charge. Further information, including an abstract, is available here. Convenors Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (University of Cambridge) Poornima Paidipaty (University of Cambridge) Egle Rindzeviciute (Kingston University) Summary As more and more of our collective activities (education, pension planning, health management, environmental protection) are mediated by rapidly moving markets and computerized technologies, uncertainties abound. Such visions of a technologically mediated — and seemingly limitless — future are not new. They echo the technological futurism popularized in the middle of the twentieth century by cybernetics. Beginning with the 1948 publication of Norbert Wiener’s book, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, cybernetics inaugurated path-breaking scientific explorations of feedback and self-regulation in biological and mechanical systems. It initiated an ambitious set of technoscientific discussions that provocatively transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries. Cyberneticians argued that patterns of feedback and self-regulation were key to understanding the operation of anti-aircraft guns, the erratic movements of victims of brain injury, the dynamics of group psychology, the relationship of human societies to their natural environment and much more. These insights furnished profound reassessments of notions of agency, of distinctions between the human and the non-human and of models of learning and memory. The scholarship on cybernetics has, however, only recently began to trace the legacies of this movement beyond the Cold War era. By providing insights into the enduring impact of mid-century techno-science on our contemporary information landscape, 'The Afterlives of Cybernetics' conference will contribute to a more thorough history of the present by helping us understand the antagonisms and synergies that animate the multiple offshoots of cybernetic thought, including operations research, AI, rational choice theory, predictive analysis, design thinking, behavioural economics and risk management. This in turn will lay the foundations for a better understanding of how these knowledge practices allow us to project, imagine and engage with uncertain and unbounded futures.

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. – Richard Brautigan, 1967 By the time Richard Brautigan distributed his fifth collection of poetry, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, on the streets of San Francisco, his reference to “a cybernetic ecology” was not an obscurantist metaphor so much as a direct nod to a pervasive and generative intellectual discourse. In The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015), historian of technology Ron Kline traces the emergence of this protean discourse, along with the shifting demarcations occurring within and around it as cybernetics worked its way between technology and theorization of the social world. In doing so, he provides perhaps the most comprehensive and incisive history to date of American cybernetics and information theory. While cybernetics began as a distinctly postwar science of communication and control, Kline shows how it was linked to but split off from discussions of the physical definition of information. Cyberneticians’ emphasis on circular causality was a major influence on mid-century social science, and cybernetic theory was a common frame through which electronic computers were discussed in the media. As the subtitle suggests, Kline also grapples with the coherence of the term ‘information age,’ whose advocates departed from cybernetics yet, as he argues, remained under its shadow. Through historicizing cybernetics as a ‘moment,’ Kline characterizes the activities of its larger-than-life adherents with a sociologist’s eye, while unearthing both the material and conceptual artifacts left in its wake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. – Richard Brautigan, 1967 By the time Richard Brautigan distributed his fifth collection of poetry, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, on the streets of San Francisco, his reference to “a cybernetic ecology” was not an obscurantist metaphor so much as a direct nod to a pervasive and generative intellectual discourse. In The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015), historian of technology Ron Kline traces the emergence of this protean discourse, along with the shifting demarcations occurring within and around it as cybernetics worked its way between technology and theorization of the social world. In doing so, he provides perhaps the most comprehensive and incisive history to date of American cybernetics and information theory. While cybernetics began as a distinctly postwar science of communication and control, Kline shows how it was linked to but split off from discussions of the physical definition of information. Cyberneticians’ emphasis on circular causality was a major influence on mid-century social science, and cybernetic theory was a common frame through which electronic computers were discussed in the media. As the subtitle suggests, Kline also grapples with the coherence of the term ‘information age,’ whose advocates departed from cybernetics yet, as he argues, remained under its shadow. Through historicizing cybernetics as a ‘moment,’ Kline characterizes the activities of its larger-than-life adherents with a sociologist’s eye, while unearthing both the material and conceptual artifacts left in its wake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. – Richard Brautigan, 1967 By the time Richard Brautigan distributed his fifth collection of poetry, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, on the streets of San Francisco, his reference to “a cybernetic ecology” was not an obscurantist metaphor so much as a direct nod to a pervasive and generative intellectual discourse. In The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015), historian of technology Ron Kline traces the emergence of this protean discourse, along with the shifting demarcations occurring within and around it as cybernetics worked its way between technology and theorization of the social world. In doing so, he provides perhaps the most comprehensive and incisive history to date of American cybernetics and information theory. While cybernetics began as a distinctly postwar science of communication and control, Kline shows how it was linked to but split off from discussions of the physical definition of information. Cyberneticians’ emphasis on circular causality was a major influence on mid-century social science, and cybernetic theory was a common frame through which electronic computers were discussed in the media. As the subtitle suggests, Kline also grapples with the coherence of the term ‘information age,’ whose advocates departed from cybernetics yet, as he argues, remained under its shadow. Through historicizing cybernetics as a ‘moment,’ Kline characterizes the activities of its larger-than-life adherents with a sociologist’s eye, while unearthing both the material and conceptual artifacts left in its wake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. – Richard Brautigan, 1967 By the time Richard Brautigan distributed his fifth collection of poetry, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, on the streets of San Francisco, his reference to “a cybernetic ecology” was not an obscurantist metaphor so much as a direct nod to a pervasive and generative intellectual discourse. In The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015), historian of technology Ron Kline traces the emergence of this protean discourse, along with the shifting demarcations occurring within and around it as cybernetics worked its way between technology and theorization of the social world. In doing so, he provides perhaps the most comprehensive and incisive history to date of American cybernetics and information theory. While cybernetics began as a distinctly postwar science of communication and control, Kline shows how it was linked to but split off from discussions of the physical definition of information. Cyberneticians’ emphasis on circular causality was a major influence on mid-century social science, and cybernetic theory was a common frame through which electronic computers were discussed in the media. As the subtitle suggests, Kline also grapples with the coherence of the term ‘information age,’ whose advocates departed from cybernetics yet, as he argues, remained under its shadow. Through historicizing cybernetics as a ‘moment,’ Kline characterizes the activities of its larger-than-life adherents with a sociologist’s eye, while unearthing both the material and conceptual artifacts left in its wake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. – Richard Brautigan, 1967 By the time Richard Brautigan distributed his fifth collection of poetry, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, on the streets of San Francisco, his reference to “a cybernetic ecology” was not an obscurantist metaphor so much as a direct nod to a pervasive and generative intellectual discourse. In The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015), historian of technology Ron Kline traces the emergence of this protean discourse, along with the shifting demarcations occurring within and around it as cybernetics worked its way between technology and theorization of the social world. In doing so, he provides perhaps the most comprehensive and incisive history to date of American cybernetics and information theory. While cybernetics began as a distinctly postwar science of communication and control, Kline shows how it was linked to but split off from discussions of the physical definition of information. Cyberneticians’ emphasis on circular causality was a major influence on mid-century social science, and cybernetic theory was a common frame through which electronic computers were discussed in the media. As the subtitle suggests, Kline also grapples with the coherence of the term ‘information age,’ whose advocates departed from cybernetics yet, as he argues, remained under its shadow. Through historicizing cybernetics as a ‘moment,’ Kline characterizes the activities of its larger-than-life adherents with a sociologist’s eye, while unearthing both the material and conceptual artifacts left in its wake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices