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Home , Buckminster Fuller, Gordon Pask, Heinz von Foerster, Homeostat, Macy conferences, Nicholas Negroponte

Walker Art Center — Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia — Exhibit Catalog — October 2015 How connects computing, counterculture, and design

Hugh Dubberly — Dubberly Design Office — [email protected] Paul Pangaro — College for Creative Studies — [email protected]

“Man is always aiming to achieve some goal language, and sharing descriptions creates a .[2] and he is always looking for new goals.” Suddenly, serious scientists were talking seriously —[1] about subjectivity—about language, conversation, and —and their relation to and to design. Serious scientists were collaborating to study Beginning in the decade before World War II and . accelerating through the war and after, scientists This turn away from the mainstream of designed increasingly sophisticated mechanical and became a turn toward —and toward electrical systems that acted as if they had a purpose. counterculture. This work intersected other work on in Two of these scientists, and animals as well as early work on computing. What Gordon Pask, took an interest in design, even as design emerged was a new way of looking at systems—not just was absorbing the lessons of cybernetics. Another mechanical and electrical systems, but also biological member of the group, , caught the and social systems: a unifying of systems and attention of , systems thinker, designer, their relation to their . This turn toward and publisher of the . Bateson “whole systems” and “systems thinking” became introduced Brand to von Foerster.[3] Brand’s Whole Earth known as cybernetics. Cybernetics frames the world in Catalog spawned a do-it-yourself publishing revolution, terms of systems and their goals. including von Foerster’s 500-page The Cybernetics of Cybernetics, futurist ’s Lib / Dream This approach led to unexpected outcomes. Machines, and designers Don Koberg and Jim Bagnal’s Universal Traveler: A Soft-Systems Guide to Creativity, Systems achieve goals through iterative processes, Problem Solving and the Process of Reaching Goals—as or “” loops. Suddenly, serious scientists were well as several other books about design in this genre talking seriously about circular causality. (A causes B, of visual and topical collage. In addition to being icons and B causes C, and C causes A.) Looking more closely, of counterculture, these works are also early (printed) scientists saw the difficulty of separating the observer examples of hypertext, a term coined by Nelson. In a from the . Indeed, the system appeared to be a sense, they anticipate the interconnectedness of the construction of the observer. The role of the observer World Wide Web. Nelson’s work on hypertext intersects is to provide a description of the system, which is Pask’s work on conversation theory, and both lay provided to another observer. The description requires foundations for the future of -computer language. And the process of observing, creating interaction.

1 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design Social Graph SRI, NLS ARPA Internet of Cybernetics Douglas Engelbart Ted Nelson Tim Berners-Lee and how it connects computing, counterculture, and design

MIT Univ. of Utah PARC Apple Vannevar Bush Gregory Bateson R.D. Laing Ivan Sutherland Bob Taylor Bill Atkinson J.C.R. Licklider John Warnock (founded Adobe) Larry Tesler Warren McCulloch, Chair Jim Blinn Ed Catmull (founded Pixar) James Clark (founded Netscape) Heinz von Foerster BCL Whole Earth Catalog Media Lab WiReD Arturo Rosenblueth Ross Ashby Stewart Brand Nicholas Negroponte Barbara Kuhr John Plunkett Gordon Pask

Merry Pranksters Brunel University Charles Eames Usman Haque Hugh Dubberly Paul Pangaro

Design Methods IIT Institute of Design J. Willard Gibbs Grey Walter Timothy Leary Conference Chuck Owen

UC Berkeley Soft Rationale Marshall McLuhan Gene Youngblood Christopher Alexander Jim Bagnall Don Koberg

Key HfG Ulm Design Scientists Serge Chermayeff Bruce Archer Fernando Flores Lou Danziger Designers and Architects Gui Bonsiepe Terry Winograd Design Theorists and Critics Computer Pioneers Horst Rittel Counterculture Leaders

Personal Connections Google (usually ) William Burroughs Brian Eno John Rheinfrank Sergey Brin Larry Page Influences (usually publications)

Interactive version at http://cybergraph.dubberly.com/

2 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design Social Graph SRI, NLS ARPA Internet of Cybernetics Cedric Price Douglas Engelbart Ted Nelson Tim Berners-Lee and how it connects computing, counterculture, and design

MIT Macy Conferences Univ. of Utah PARC Apple Vannevar Bush Gregory Bateson R.D. Laing Ivan Sutherland Alan Kay Bob Taylor Bill Atkinson Julian Bigelow J.C.R. Licklider John Warnock (founded Adobe) Larry Tesler Warren McCulloch, Chair Jim Blinn Margaret Mead Ed Catmull (founded Pixar) Walter Pitts James Clark (founded Netscape) Claude Shannon Heinz von Foerster BCL Whole Earth Catalog Media Lab WiReD Arturo Rosenblueth John von Neumann Ross Ashby Stewart Brand Nicholas Negroponte Kevin Kelly Norbert Wiener Barbara Kuhr Humberto Maturana John Plunkett Gordon Pask

Merry Pranksters Brunel University Bertrand Russell Charles Eames Ken Kesey Usman Haque Ranulph Glanville Hugh Dubberly Paul Pangaro

Design Methods IIT Institute of Design Design Thinking J. Willard Gibbs Grey Walter Buckminster Fuller Timothy Leary London Conference Chuck Owen

UC Berkeley Soft Systems Design Rationale James Clerk Maxwell Marshall McLuhan Gene Youngblood Christopher Alexander Jim Bagnall Stafford Beer Don Koberg

Key HfG Ulm Design Patterns Scientists Serge Chermayeff Bruce Archer Fernando Flores Lou Danziger Designers and Architects Gui Bonsiepe Terry Winograd Design Theorists and Critics Computer Pioneers Horst Rittel Counterculture Leaders

Personal Connections Google (usually collaborations) William Burroughs Brian Eno Francisco Varela John Rheinfrank Sergey Brin Larry Page Influences (usually publications)

Interactive version at http://cybergraph.dubberly.com/

3 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design Cybernetics is “deeply inter-twingled” (to borrow From 1946 to 1953, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation Nelson’s magical phrase) with the early development of organized a series of ten conferences “on the workings personal , the 1960’s counterculture, and the of the human ,” originally titled “Feedback rise of the design methods movement, which has Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems in Biological enjoyed a recent rebranding as “design thinking.” and Social Systems” and later titled “Cybernetics.” A trending topic in the 1960s, cybernetics peaked The conferences brought together participants from about 1970 and crashed—its ideas absorbed into many many fields: “physicists, mathematicians, electrical fields, the origins of those ideas largely forgotten or engineers, physiologists, neurologists, experimental ignored. Today, cybernetics is at once everywhere and psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, and cultural nowhere—a science with no home of its own—one anthropologists.”[6] More than twenty-five people effect of a successful multidisciplinary approach. participated, including Gregory Bateson, J.C.R. Licklider, Nevertheless, other effects of cybernetics live on— Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, Claude Shannon, perhaps most visibly in continuing discourse about the Heinz von Foerster, John von Neumann, and Norbert of knowledge and cognition; about the repre- Wiener. sentation and embodiment of knowledge and cognition In 1948, partly as a result of the early Macy in computers; and about how we interact with Conferences, Wiener published Cybernetics: or Control computers and how we design for interaction. In part, and in the Animal and the Machine. whatever optimism we have for the future of Wiener had been a child prodigy, graduating from high computing—and whatever utopian visions we may still school at age eleven, graduating from college at age hold for organizing all the world’s and fourteen; and earning an MA and then a PhD in making it universally accessible[4]—have roots in mathematical from Harvard at age nineteen. cybernetics. A historical review may help us understand As Wiener later noted, his book was “more or less better where we are, how we got here, and where we technical.”[7] Despite that, Cybernetics caught the might go. attention of the general public, making Wiener famous and resulting in two more popular books about the subject as well as a two-volume autobiography. Cybernetics Wiener used “cybernetics” to describe a new science that “combines under one heading the study Physicists tend to see the world in terms of matter and of what in a human context is sometimes loosely . In contrast, the cybernetics community began described as thinking and in is known as by viewing the world in a new way—through the lens control and communication. In other words, cybernetics of information, channels, and their attempts to find the common elements in the . In this way, cybernetics came into functioning of automatic machines and of the human existence at the dawn of the information age, in pre- , and to develop a theory which will digital communications and media, by bridging the way cover the entire field….” Wiener noted that as “there interact with machines, systems, and each was no existing word for this complex of ideas…. I felt other. Cybernetics focuses on the use of feedback to constrained to invent one. Hence, ‘cybernetics,’ which I correct errors and attain goals. It has roots in neuro- derived from the Greek word kubernetes, or ‘steersman,’ and found practical application during World the same Greek word from which we get our word War II in the development of automatic controls for ‘governor.’”[8] piloting ships, airplanes, and artillery shells. A steersman reacts to wind, tide, and other Historian Fred Turner points out that cybernetics disturbances, correcting these “errors” to keep his ship did not arise “out of thin air.”[5] It began as a multi- on course. Mechanical and electrical governors do disciplinary activity. The 1943 founding paper, “Behavior, much the same thing. In fact, governors are so Purpose, and ,” was co-written by an engineer, successful, they have become ubiquitous—the Julian Bigelow; a physiologist, Arturo Rosenblueth; and thermostat’s bimetallic coil contracts and expands to a mathematician, Norbert Wiener; and was published in switch on and off a furnace, maintaining temperature in of Science. a room; the toilet’s float-valve maintains the water level After World War II, the enjoyed a in a cistern; the automobile’s cruise-control system -induced euphoria where anything seemed maintains a nearly constant speed up hill and down. possible, including putting a man on the moon, creating These mechanical and electrical governors are similar to , and ending poverty. The Allied their political counterparts—governors who keep the Powers had met the challenge of fascism and ship-of-state on course, steering as Odysseus did prevailed—through, it seemed, superior science, between Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place. technology, and planning, (for example, radar, code Wiener focused on the relationship between breaking, and the atomic bomb) and also through message and response as the key element, whether in “systems thinking,” as exemplified by operations humans or machines: research and cybernetics.

4 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design “When I communicate with another person, I impart regulate themselves, reproduce themselves, evolve and a message to him, and when he communicates back learn.” Taking an interdisciplinary view, Pask argues that with me he returns a related message which contains cybernetics’ “high spot is the question of how they information primarily accessible to him and not to me…. [systems] organise themselves.”[13] When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not Turner concludes that the effect of such essentially different from that which arises when I give interdisciplinary discussions and their development of an order to a person. In other words, as far as my shared cybernetic models “sent participants consciousness goes I am aware of the order that has back to their home disciplines with a deep systems gone out and of the of compliance that has come orientation toward their work and a habit of deploying back. To me personally, the fact that the signal in its information and systems metaphors. In this way, the intermediate stages has gone through a machine rather Macy meetings helped transform cybernetics into one than through a person is irrelevant and does not in any of the dominant intellectual of the postwar case greatly change my relation to the signal. Thus the era.”[14] theory of control in engineering, whether human or As discussions matured, the goals of the cybernetics animal or mechanical, is a chapter in the theory of community expanded. By 1968, Margaret Mead was messages.”[9] contemplating the application of cybernetics to social Also in 1948, Claude Shannon published a related problems: work, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” “As the world scene broadens, there is continuing Shannon’s theory of communication gives us our possibility of using cybernetics as a form of modern notions of “information” and “noise.”[10] communication in a world of increasing scientific His of a message as information is similar specialization … we ought to look very seriously at the to Wiener’s concept of message. current state of American society within which we hope In 1945, Shannon’s former teacher Vannevar Bush to be able to develop these very sophisticated ways of (who had become President Roosevelt’s National handling systems that are, indeed, in dire need of Science Advisor) published “As We May Think,” a attention. Problems of metropolitan areas, … The seminal article in the history of human-computer interrelations between different levels of government, interaction. Bush’s article is famous for describing the the redistribution of income, … the linkages necessary “Memex,” a machine for “building trails” through among parts of large industrial complexes….”[15] information, which foreshadowed hypertext and the At heart, though, there may have been the promise World Wide Web. However, Bush wrote the article of an even grander purpose. Gregory Bateson, Mead’s because of his concern that through the growing first husband, reported that what excited him about the specialization of knowledge and of work, the “inves- early discussions of cybernetics was that, “It was a tigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions solution to the problem of purpose. From on, of thousands of other workers—conclusions which the final cause has always been the mystery…. We he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember.” didn’t realize then (at least I didn’t realize it, though Adding, the danger is that “… truly significant [Macy Conference chair] McCulloch might have) that the attainments become lost in the mass of the whole of logic would have to be reconstructed for inconsequential.”[11] recursiveness.”[16] While Bush’s Memex conceptualized ways of exploring interrelated data through machine means, the problem of communication and understanding Second-Order Cybernetics among researchers across intellectual fields remained. The Macy Conference participants shared Bush’s Heinz von Foerster edited the official record of the concern; they also believed as von Foerster relates, Macy Conferences on cybernetics. In the introduction, “that one can and must attempt communication across he playfully noted, “… the unifying effects of certain key the boundaries, and often chasms, which separate the problems with which all members [of the conferences] various .” Thus, they were drawn together by are concerned: the problems of communication and of “more than the mere belief in the worthwhileness of self-integrating mechanisms. Revolving around these interdisciplinary discussion.” If shared conceptual was communication about communication.” models applicable to solving problems in many [Italics added.][17] sciences could be found, then “by agreeing on the In an early draft, von Foerster also stated that, usefulness of these models, we get glimpses of a new with the new “conceptual models” of cybernetics, lingua franca of science….”[12] “entities of a higher order of can be In such a universalizing theory, shared conceptual penetrated. Processes like stabilization, , models would force a reconsideration of disciplinary , recall and recognition, prediction, perspectives, as Gordon Pask argued, when cybernetics, information, learning—to give only a short list—can be “considers economy not as an economist, biology not successfully studied.”[18] Already, in 1952, von Foerster as a biologist, engines not as an engineer. In each case was laying the groundwork for a “second-order” its theme remains the same, namely, how systems cybernetics—meta-cybernetics, self-cybernetics, or the cybernetics of cybernetics.

5 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design The idea of applying cybernetics to itself first is, we exist in the flow of living together in the recursive appears in print in a story Margaret Mead told about coordinations of behavior that language is…. I call the attending the 1955 meeting of the Society for General consensual braiding of language and emotions, . “I suggested that, instead of founding conversation.” [24] just another society, they give a little thought to how Maturana’s interest in humans “living in they could use their theory to predict the kind and size conversation” is not unique in the cybernetics of society they wanted, what its laws of growth and community. For instance, Gordon Pask developed his articulation with other parts of the scientific community “Theory of Conversations” to consider how humans should be.” In 1968, she repeated her suggestion, this and machines learn. Conversation is clearly a circular time to the American Society for Cybernetics, “Why process with feedback, correction, and ; can’t we look at this society systematically as a conversations can also be about conversation— system…?”[19] a second-order framing. Bernard Scott writes, In a 1972 interview with Stewart Brand, Mead added, “second order cybernetics seeks to explain the “I went up at the end of [the GST meeting] and talked to observer to herself. This is indeed the goal of [Ross] Ashby, and he said, ‘You mean we should apply conversation theory.”[25] our principles to ourselves?’” In the same interview, Von Foerster, Maturana, and Pask draw a line from Bateson explained, “ is input-output. subjective observers to ethics. As von Foerster notes, You’ve got a box … the science is the science of these Pask distinguishes two orders: “one in which the boxes. Now, the essence of Wiener’s cybernetics was observer enters the system by stipulating the system’s that the science is the science of the whole circuit … purpose” and the other, “by stipulating his own essentially your , your organism-plus- purpose.” And because he can stipulate his own environment, is to be considered as a single circuit … purpose “he is autonomous … [responsible for] his and you are part of the bigger circuit.” Brand sums it own actions.”[26] up—the engineer is outside the system, and Wiener is Maturana echoes the same theme: “if we know that inside the system. In other words, Bateson’s engineer the reality that we live arises through our emotioning, imagines the observer can stand apart from the system, and we know that we know, we shall be able to act while cybernetics had begun to see the observer as part according to our of our liking or not liking of the system.[20] the reality that we are bringing forth with our living. Von Foerster later encapsulated the shift in this way: That is, we shall become responsible [for] what first-order cybernetics is “the science of observed we do.”[27] systems,” while second-order cybernetics is “the Maturana extends that idea of agency, placing science of observing systems.”[21] In 1975, Brand’s Point responsibility for our desires, our emotions, our Foundation used proceeds from the Whole Earth language, our conversations, and our technology Catalog to fund publication of von Foerster’s The squarely on us. “We human beings can do whatever Cybernetics of Cybernetics.[22] we imagine…. But we do not have to do all that we In characterizing this new, “second-order” imagine, we can choose, and it is there where our cybernetics, von Foerster forefronts the dynamism of behavior as socially conscious human beings observation, which calls into question the traditional matters.”[28] We are responsible for the world in which model of science as “objective.” Humberto Maturana, we live. We are responsible for what we design. the Chilean biologist whose early career deeply influenced both biology and cybernetics and whose later career is now influencing our understanding of Cybernetics and Computing human social systems, says, “Anything said is said by an observer.”[23] Maturana’s starting point is deceptively One of the roots of cybernetics was neurobiology, obvious: Anything that is said must come from a person and the Macy Conferences were first organized to saying it. This means that what the person says can only explore “the workings of the human mind.” According come from the person’s point-of-view, namely, to Scott, Ashby noted in 1961 that it was up to the an inherently subjective position from which she second generation of cybernetics to answer the formulates and communicates what she “sees.” question “What is mind?” as the first generation had Maturana’s statement embodies the stance of answered the question, “What is a brain?”[29] The brain second-order cybernetics, namely, that all is deeply interested scientists in the cybernetics subject to the particularities of a person. The statement community. Four wrote books on the subject: Ross grounds a logical argument leading inevitably to Ashby’s Design for a Brain, Stafford Beer’s Brain of the conclude that there is only subjectivity, and that Firm, John von Neumann’s The Computer and the Brain, “objectivity” is itself a construction. and Grey Walter’s The Living Brain. All four were His emphasis on what the observer says—on the interested in making machines that acted as brains. role of language—is an enduring theme of second-order These devices “computed”—though not all of them cybernetics. In his essay “,” Maturana says, were computers as we commonly imagine computers “We human beings … exist as such in language…. That today. Instead, many of the cybernetic machines

6 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design pointed to another path in computing not taken, even Another link between cybernetics and computing as cybernetics influenced the mainstream. was the Biological Computing Laboratory (BCL) at the Ashby makes a critical distinction between the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. The BCL approaches of traditional Artificial Intelligence (AI) and stood in contrast to the university’s more traditional cybernetics, “To some, the critical test of whether a Digital Computing Laboratory. Von Foerster, a professor machine is or is not a ‘brain’ would be whether it can or of , founded the BCL in 1958; cannot ‘think.’ But to the biologist the brain is not a it operated until 1974 drawing many of cybernetics’ thinking machine, it is an acting machine; it gets leading thinkers: Ashby was a professor at the BCL from information and then it does something about it.”[30] 1961 to 1972; Pask was a visiting professor in 1960-61; Sociologist Andrew Pickering describes this distinction and Maturana visited in 1967-68. The BCL conducted in terms of two ways of knowing: the dominant research in “cybernetics, systems theory, , … “modern” philosophy of knowledge based on parallel computing, , bio-logic, artificial representation and a “non-modern” way of knowing intelligence, symbolic computing, … and self-organizing based on performance (acting in the world), which is a systems.”[35] central aspect of cybernetics.[31] The idea of biological computing was not merely a If cybernetics was born at the Macy Conferences, metaphor. Beer, Pask, and others attempted to “grow” it was conceived at the Radiation Laboratory at the computers. Their approach had a practical basis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where They realized that some problems are too complex to Wiener worked. The Rad Lab, as it was called, had been represent; they thought natural systems might be set up by Vannevar Bush. In his early years at MIT, induced to embody that complexity. According to Wiener had collaborated closely with Bush as did Pickering, “Beer thought that are smarter Shannon, who did graduate work on the differential than we are—not in their representational cognitive analyzer in Bush’s lab from 1936 to 1940. abilities, which one might think are nonexistent, but in The Macy Conferences included computer pioneers their performative ability to solve problems that exceed Claude Shannon, J.C.R. Licklider, and John von our cognitive ones.”[36] Neumann, who invented the basic computer archi- In the 1960s, the BCL built several prototypes tecture still used today and launched the fields that “could be described as ‘perception machines.’”[37] of and cellular automata. Prototyping was common in the cybernetics Shannon’s 1937 master’s thesis showed how community—something Turner calls “a rhetorical tactic,” Boolean logic—the binary positing of all values as either a method of increasing awareness and spreading true or false—could be embodied in switches and laid influence. Perhaps the first cybernetic prototype was the groundwork for digital computers. Shannon later Wiener and Bigelow’s anti-aircraft predictor, which supervised Ivan Sutherland’s 1962 doctoral thesis, “modeled not only the behavior of aircraft but also the which resulted in Sketchpad, an early computer-based probabilistic nature of biological, mechanical, and for drawing and one of the first real-time systems of all sorts. Ashby’s modeled interactive computer systems. Sketchpad influenced processes of self- that could be observed in Alan Kay who did his PhD work at University of Utah biological and social domains as well.”[38] Grey Walter with Sutherland and around 1972 developed the built light-seeking robot “tortoises.” Pask built a series Dynabook concept—a portable computer tablet of “chemical computers,” Musicolour (a device that “for children of all ages.” Later, at Stanford’s Artificial created a light show in conversation with a human Intelligence Laboratory, Kay became friends with musician), Colloquy of Mobiles (a light-seeking, Stewart Brand and went on to work at digital pioneers interactive installation), and a series of interactive Xerox PARC and Apple. devices for teaching.[39] Licklider became a professor at MIT in 1950. He was Pask spent another year in Illinois—this time at instrumental in establishing U.S. government funding Chicago Circle—where he had an office on the same for research on computing, which ultimately led to the floor as Ted Nelson, where the two began a dialog.[40] Internet. His 1960 paper, “Man-Computer Symbiosis” Nelson was working on his 1974 book, Computer Lib / imagines interactive computers. “It will involve very Dream Machines, in which he lays out an egalitarian close coupling between the human and the electronic vision of the future of computing built around new members of the partnership. The main aims are 1) to let forms of reading and writing. Nelson wrote, “Pask is computers facilitate formulative thinking … and 2) to reducing a field to an extremely formal structure of enable men and computers to cooperate in making relations.” Nelson concludes, “… this exactly decisions and controlling complex situations.”[32] PARC complements the notion of hypertext as I have been founder Bob Taylor noted that Licklider’s paper promulgating it lo these many years.”[41] “provided a guide for decades of computer research to Pask also collaborated with Nicholas Negroponte follow.”[33] In 1968, Licklider published, “The Computer on his architecture machine project and contributed as a Communication Device.” Its first sentence sets the an introduction to Negroponte’s 1975 book, The Soft tone: “In a few years, men will be able to communicate Architecture Machine. Negroponte’s Architecture more effectively through a machine than face to face.”[34] Machine Group later became the Media Lab—a space

7 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design for prototyping human-computer interaction. Brand’s introduction to bohemian culture began Stewart Brand spent three months in residence and earlier, while he was in the Army working as a “military wrote a book about the Lab and its prototypes. photographer.” On his time-off, he got to know the New Brand, of course, was not new to computing. York art scene, and he became involved with USCO In 1968 at the Joint Computer Conference, he offered (an artists collaborative, where he also worked as a advice about staging and operated a video camera photographer). Brand notes, “The artists I worked during Douglas Engelbart’s demo of the Online System, with in City in 1961-64 were reading Wiener which introduced many of the interface constructs that closely.”[46] became central to personal computing. In 1972, the Cybernetics became popular just as computers were same year Brand published his interview with Mead beginning to be used to make images. Two exhibits and Bateson, he published “Space Wars” in Rolling featured related work. First Cybernetic Serendipity: The Stone, predicting the personal computer revolution. Computer and the Arts at the ICA in London in 1968[47] In 1985, he co-founded the WELL, an early online included Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles as well as Beer’s community. And in 1995, he published “We Owe It All analog machine (SAM), and a few months to the Hippies” in Time magazine, crediting the rise of later The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical personal computers to the counterculture. Age at MoMA in New York featured works from Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), including a piece by Jeff Raskin—later a founding member of Cybernetics and Counterculture Apple’s Macintosh computer team. Also in 1968, Stewart Brand published his first Cybernetics connected with counterculture on several Whole Earth Catalog—a bible for the counterculture— levels. Perhaps the most obvious was an interest in the a collection of reviews and recommendations, brain and the mind, which led to experiments in the providing “access to tools,” promising “intimate, effects of strobes and bio-feedback. At another level, personal power … power of the individual to conduct cybernetics was, as Pickering notes, simply “odd”—with his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his its chemical and biological computers, synthetic brains, own environment, and share his adventure with and interactive art pieces—developed largely outside whoever is interested.”[48] Decades later, Steve Jobs traditional academic and corporate sponsorship, on an famously summed up the Whole Earth Catalog as, “… “amateur” basis in their practitioner’s free time. Yet, at a one of the bibles of my generation … it was all made more fundamental level, cybernetics also questioned with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was basic assumptions about how we organize the world. sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before As Pickering notes, cybernetics challenged conventional Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing dualism with experiments that “threaten the modern with neat tools and great notions.”[49] Like the search boundary between mind and matter, creating a breach engine giant, the Whole Earth Catalog acted as a kind in which engineering, say, can spill over into psych- of text-based browser or window onto an aggregated ology, and vice versa.”[42] Pickering further argues that world of products, books, devices, and ideas that were cybernetics presents an alternative to the dominant not for sale through the catalog directly, but would in reductive and “enframing” culture, an alternative that is effect create a community or a network of subscribers— holistic and “revealing” in its stance—a stance that is likeminded members of the counterculture.[50] “open to possibility.” Turner notes, “Brand came to appreciate cybernetics as an intellectual framework and as a social practice; Cybernetics and Design he associated both with alternative forms of communal organization.”[43] Brand traveled between—and In addition to being a utopian counterculture toolkit and connected—several communities: cybernetics (Bateson, a self-published manifesto for a do-it-yourself lifestyle, Mead, and von Foerster), computing (Engelbart, Kay, the Whole Earth Catalog is also an introduction to Nelson, and Negroponte), and, of course, counter- systems thinking and design. culture (Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and other The catalog’s first section “Understanding Whole communards). Systems” juxtaposes Buckminster Fuller and von John Markoff has chronicled “how the sixties Foerster’s review of mathematician Spencer Brown’s counter-culture shaped the personal computer —followed quickly by biologist D’Arcy industry”—focusing on use of LSD in Silicon Valley, Thompson’s On Growth and Form side-by-side with where he describes Brand and Engelbart experimenting architect Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the with it.[44] Ted Nelson reports that acid guru Timothy Synthesis of Form, with a sidebar on von Foerster’s Leary introduced him to Heinz von Foerster.[45] Pask also Purposive Systems thrown in. And then, cheek-by-jowl, appears to have had a serious amphetamine habit. And are reviews of artificial intelligence pioneer Herbert von Foerster was a nudist (one reason he and his wife Simon’s Sciences of the Artificial and Ludwig von lived in the woods near Pescadero). Bertalanffy’s Yearbook. On the next the page is a review of Wiener’s, The Human Use of Human Beings. And that’s just in the first few pages.

8 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design A bibliographic tour-de-force, the Whole Earth In 1964, Christopher Alexander published his Catalog also reviews other classics of design and Harvard PhD dissertation in architecture as Notes on cybernetics, including works by John Chris Jones, the Synthesis of Form. According to Pickering, Victor Papanek, Ross Ashby, Warren McCulloch, Alexander made Ashby’s Design for a Brain (which he Nicholas Negroponte, Lawrence Halprin, Gyorgy Polya, repeatedly references) “the basis for” his dissertation[54] George Miller, and many more. Today, it would still be a “The key concept he takes there from Ashby is precisely good reading list for a graduate seminar on both design the notion of adaptation, and his argument is that theory and systems theory. unselfconscious buildings are well adapted buildings in several senses: in the relation of their internal parts How did this happen? to one another, to their material environment, and to the social being of their inhabitants … in the field of Brand says, “As an undergraduate I saw a talk by self-conscious design, attempts to fix misfits ramify Charles Eames that got me.” Brand had studied endlessly.”[55] magazine design at Stanford in 1959 and graphic design In turn, Alexander’s work was the basis for Charles at San Francisco Art Institute in 1960.[51] Turner argues Owen’s famous “structured planning” courses at Illinois that Buckminster Fuller’s notion of a “comprehensive Institute of Technology’s (IIT) Institute of Design (ID), designer” captivated Brand. For Fuller the compre- which for more than thirty years formed the backbone hensive designer was “an emerging synthesis of artist, of ID’s uniquely systematic approach to design. Owen inventor, mechanic, objective economist and reports that he “obtained Alexander’s computer evolutionary strategist.”[52] By this definition, Brand’s programs on punched cards from MIT. After a month of ’s work may be about as good an example of work, we got the programs running on IIT Research comprehensive design as one can find. Institute’s mainframe computer.” Owen also attended The idea of multidisciplinary design was in the American Society for Cybernetics meetings.[56] air—at the Eames Office (1941), George Nelson Conversely, Pask and von Foerster attended meetings Associates (1947), Total Design (1963), Unimark (1965), of the design community. Pentagram (1972), and with other practitioners. At the Von Foerster gave several presentations to design Ulm School of Design (HfG) in postwar Germany, where groups, including the Industrial Design Education Wiener lectured in 1955, they called this holistic or Association (IDEA) in 1962 and the International Design universal approach “environmental design.” Schools in Conference at Aspen, also in 1962, as well as an address the United States imported the idea and nomenclature, at State University, titled “Cybernetics of most notably University of , Berkeley, which Design” in 1963. Design critic Ralph Caplan, who also transformed its Beaux-Arts School of Architecture into a spoke at the IDEA conference, reports, “Far and away modernist School of Environmental Design. In 1963, as the best thing to remember about the conference was part of the transformation, Dean William Wurster hired von Foerster’s brilliant speech, which I loved but two of the founders of the design methods movement, probably didn’t understand. As for what he was doing Horst Rittel and Christopher Alexander. at an IDEA meeting, that was not such an oddity. Von Rittel had taught classes in Foerster knew plenty about design and everything else.” and cybernetics at Ulm. His first published work was As Caplan notes, Serge Chermayeff—who had been a series of lectures titled “Kommunikationstheorie in Director of the Institute of Design, taught architecture at der Soziologie (Kybernetik)” [“Communication Theory Harvard, and collaborated with Alexander—also spoke in (Cybernetics)”] in 1958. At Berkeley, Rittel’s at the same IDEA conference, and he and von Foerster design methods courses explicitly included concepts became “close friends over the years.”[57] from cybernetics. His writings link cybernetics and design, and he describes design as a cybernetic process. What’s more, Rittel saw this process as an argumen- Design as Cybernetics tative conversation, and his work on scaffolding this conversation launched a field of on-going research Ashby and, in turn, Alexander framed design in terms known as design rationale (processes for making of adaptation, fit, and evolution—that is, as a process of design decisions and software systems to support these feedback. However, design is not just steering towards processes and document them). Rittel’s “design a goal (as in first-order cybernetics); design is also a methods of the second generation” echoes second- process of discovering goals, a process of learning what order cybernetics.[53] Beer’s ideas about exceedingly matters (as in second-order cybernetics). Pickering complex systems, their continuously shifting nature, contrasts design as problem solving with Ashby’s and their ultimate unknowability are remarkably similar evolutionary and performative approach: “I have always to Rittel’s ideas about “wicked problems,” or those that thought of design along the lines of rational planning— resist resolution because of their complexity and the formulation of a goal and then some sort of because stakeholders do not share a common frame intellectual calculation of how to achieve it. Cybernetics, of reference. in contrast, points us to a notion of design in the thick of things, plunged into a lively world that we cannot

9 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design control and that will always surprise us … cybernetics As Pask has noted, “architects are first and foremost serves both to foreground these exigencies (rather than systems designers,” but they lack “an underpinning and treating them as unfortunate side effects) and to make a unifying theory…. Cybernetics is a discipline which fills virtue of them, to enjoy them!”[58] the bill.”[60] Ranulph Glanville, a student of Pask, argued In 1962, both Alexander and Pask attended the first cybernetics as both theory and praxis, “We can consider design methods conference at the Imperial College design as a practical expression of cybernetics, in London. Pask also had a visiting position at the cybernetics as a theoretical study sustaining design.”[61] Architecture Association in London, where he collab- And Glanville’s student Usman Haque adds a coda and orated with architect Cedric Price on the Fun Palace, a contemporary interpretation: “Architectural systems an unbuilt but highly influential design for a flexible constructed with Paskian strategies allow us to space—a megastructure he and theater director Joan challenge the traditional architectural model of Littlewood created. In 1969, Pask published “The production and consumption that places firm Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics,” explicitly distinctions between designer, builder, client, owner framing design as cybernetics. He anticipates Donald and mere occupant…. It is about designing tools that Schön’s notion of design as conversation (described people themselves may use to construct—in the widest in his 1983 book The Reflective Practitioner) and goes sense of the word—their environments and as a result further than Rittel and others who described design build their own sense of agency.”[62] as a cybernetic process. With its systems-based approach, cybernetics integrated context and relationships, pushing design A Language for the Future beyond its object-based approach. The original cybernetic frame of systems and goals and then the With their “monster” prototypes and their Frankenstein second-order cybernetic frame of subjectivity and publications, many of the cybernetics folks were more conversation give rise to a view of design as concerned than scientists. They were designers and hackers. with much more than the form of objects. Pask noted, Do-it-yourself pranksters. Drug-taking dreamers. “a building cannot be viewed simply in isolation. It is Hypertext hipsters—moving us from Memex to Mosaic. only meaningful as a human environment. It perpetually They hastened desktop publishing. They laid the interacts with its inhabitants, on the one hand serving foundation for human-computer interaction, and they them and on the other hand controlling their behavior. paved the way for interaction design. In other words structures make sense as parts of larger As they turned their focus to second-order systems that include human components and the cybernetics and conversation, they created existence architect is primarily concerned with these larger proofs for “comprehensive design”—a still emerging systems; they (not just the bricks and mortar part) are approach to design concerned with interaction between what the architect designs.”[59] What Pask said about humans. By doing so, they gave us hope for the architecture also applies to design for human-computer future—hope that we might work together to save the interaction. A software program interacts with its whole earth. “users,” serving them and yet also constraining their In the past twenty years, design has begun to catch behavior. Software, too, only makes sense when framed up with cybernetics. Design practice has become as part of larger systems that include humans. These enmeshed in systems and . Collaboration larger systems are what interaction designers design. and have become key themes. While Turner connected the early development of What’s more, we now recognize that the major issues cybernetics to the development of personal computers the world faces—the issues that really matter—are all and the Internet, he largely ignored what cybernetics systems issues. They are wicked problems, which meant (and continues to mean) for the design of means they are essentially political in nature and software. In many ways, the story of cybernetics is the cannot be “solved” by experts. We are, in Rittel’s phrase, pre-history or back-story of interaction design (and thus enmeshed in a “symmetry of ignorance.”[63] The only its successors like and experience way forward is through conversation. These facts make design). Wiener’s notion of feedback is the very cybernetics newly relevant, because it offers tools and foundation of interaction design and thus is the models, as it did at the Macy Conferences—for foundation of any framing of design as engaging grappling with systems issues and the unknowable people rather than as simply giving form to objects. “messes” that confront us—a lingua franca of design. Bush, Engelbart, Sutherland, Licklider, Kay, and Nelson As Pask noted: “Human interaction is a major source of contributed articles, books, and prototypes, which set difficulties which can only be overcome by cybernetic the agenda for interaction design and which remain thinking.”[64] required reading (and viewing) for students and practitioners. One could add Ashby, Beer, Maturana, Pask, and von Foerster to this list as well.

10 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design Endnotes

1 7 23 Gordon Pask, “A Comment, a Case History, Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Humberto Maturana, “The Neurophysiology of and a ,” in Cybernetics, Art and Ideas, ed. Beings: Cybernetics and Society (New York: Cognition,” in Cognition: A Multiple View, ed. P. Jasia Reichardt (Greenwich, CT: New York Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 15. Gavin (New York: Spartan Books, 1969), 4. Graphics Society, 1971), 76. 8 24 2 Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control Humberto Maturana, “Metadesign,” (paper Heinz von Foerster, “Cybernetics of and Communication in the Animal and the presented at Institutuo de Terapia Cognitiva Cybernetics,” in Understanding Machine (New York: Wiley, 1948), 11. (INTECO), Santiago, Chile, August 1, 1997), Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and n.p., accessed April 12, 2015, http://www. Cognition, (New York: Springer, 2003), 283-287. 9 inteco.cl/articulos/006/texto_ing.htm. Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 16. 3 25 Stewart Brand, correspondence with author 10 Bernard Scott, “The Cybernetics of Gordon Hugh Dubberly, January 31, 2015. Claude Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Pask,” in Gordon Pask, Philosopher Mechanic: Communications,” The Bell System Technical An Introduction to the Cybernetician’s Historian Bruce Clarke points out that von Journal, 27 (July-October 1948), 379-423, Cybernetician, ed. Ranulph Glanville and Karl Foerster sent a copy of the Whole University 623-656. H. Müller, (: Edition Echoraum, Catalogue (1969) to Brand, initiating a WISDOM), 41. correspondence leading to Brand asking von 11 Foerster to contribute to the Whole Earth Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” Atlantic 26 Catalogue. (Bruce Clarke, correspondence with Monthly, (July 1945): 2, accessed April 12, 2015, von Foerster, “Cybernetics of Cybernetics”, author Paul Pangaro, August 5, 2015.) http://www.theatlantic.com/ideastour/ in Purposive Systems, 266. technology/bush-full.html. Clarke also points out that the Whole 27 University Catalogue (1969), Ecological Source 12 Maturana, “Metadesign.” Book (1970), and Metagames (1972) were von Foerster, “A Note from the Editors,” precursors to Cybernetics of Cybernetics in Cybernetics, 322. 28 (1974). Von Foerster co-created all four books Ibid. with students in a series of courses at 13 University of Illinois on “Heuristics.” In a sense, Gordon Pask, An Approach to Cybernetics, 29 von Foerster began to teach design, not just (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 6. Scott, “The Cybernetics of Gordon Pask,” 41. publication design but design grappling with wicked problems, what today might be seen 14 30 as an early form of design for social Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Ross Ashby, “Design for a Brain,” innovation. “von Foerster explained the 2 7. Electrical Engineering, 20 (1948), 379. purpose of the class is ‘to find solutions to problems with constraints. If you want to 15 31 regulate a system you must understand it,’ he Margaret Mead, “Cybernetics of Cybernetics,” Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: said. ‘Students are concerned with the deep in Purposive Systems: Proceedings of the First Sketches of Another Future, (Chicago: problems of society.’” (Clarke quoting a Annual Symposium of the American Society Press, 2010), 19. newspaper report from the time, quoting von for Cybernetics, ed. in Heinz von Foerster et al, Foerster.) (New York: Spartan Books, 1968), 4-5. 32 J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” The publications von Foerster and his students 16 Transactions on Human Factors in , created reflect his turn to “the systems Stewart Brand, “For God’s Sake, Margaret,” a (March, 1960), 4. counterculture.” Clarke notes, “The systems conversation with Margaret Mead and Gregory counterculture’s broad cultural effect has been Bateson, CoEvolutionary Quarterly, 10. No. 33 to detoxify the notion of ‘system’ of its military, 21(June 1976), 32-44, accessed April 12, 2015, Robert W. Taylor, In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider: industrial, and corporate connotations of http://www.oikos.org/forgod.htm. 1915-1990, “Preface,” (Palo Alto: Digital command and control and to redeploy it in the Equipment Corporation, Systems Research pursuit of holistic ideals and ecological values.” 17 Center, August 7, 1990), 5. (Bruce Clarke, “From Information to Cognition: von Foerster, ed., “A Note from the Editors,” The Systems Counterculture, Heinz von in Cybernetics, 321. 34 Foerster’s Pedagogy, and Second-Order J.C.R. Licklider, “The Computer as a Cybernetics,” Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 7, 18 Communication Device,” Science and No. 3, 2012, 197.) Heinz von Foerster, original manuscript Technology, (April 1968), 21. (December 12, 1951) supplied by Albert Müller 4 of the von Foerster Archive, was published in 35 “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s edited form and referenced in note 6. Albert Müller, “A Brief History of the BCL, information and make it universally accessible Heinz von Foerster and the Biological and useful,” accessed May 10, 2015, http:// 19 Computing Laboratory,” in An Unfinished www.google.com/about/. Mead, “Cybernetics of Cybernetics,” Revolution? (Vienna: Edition Echoraum, 2007), in Purposive Systems, 10. 279. 5 Fred Turner, From Counterculture to 20 36 Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Brand, “For God’s Sake, Margaret,” 12-13. Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain, 237. Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 21 37 24. Heinz von Foerster, “Ethics and Second-order Müller, “A Brief History of the BCL: Heinz von Cybernetics,” in Understanding Understanding, Foerster and the Biological Computing 6 Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, (New Laboratory,” 294. Heinz von Foerster, ed., “A Note from the York: Springer-Verlag, 2003), 316. Editors,” in Cybernetics: Circular Causal and 38 Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social 22 Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Systems, Transactions of the Eighth Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 26. Conference (New York: Josiah Macy Jr. 120. Foundation, 1952), 321.

11 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design 39 Haight-Ashbury and other beacons of 58 Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain, 6-7. counter-culture. This began a long history of Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain, 382. public exhibitions that amplified curiosity and 40 encouraged the trial-and-error, cybernetic 59 Ted Nelson, correspondence with author approach that Oppenheimer championed. Gordon Pask, “The Architectural Relevance of Hugh Dubberly, March 21, 2015. His vision was a new type of learning for an Cybernetics,” Architectural Design, (1969) 494. age of social experimentation, bringing 41 together art and science to foster an 60 Theodore H. Nelson, Dream Machines / experiential understanding of phenomena Ibid. Computer Lib, (1974), 82 (DM 47). in the world through interaction. 61 42 48 Ranulph Glanville, “A (Cybernetic) Musing: Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain, 18. Stewart Brand, The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Design and Cybernetics,” Cybernetics and Access to Tools, (Menlo Park, CA: Portola Human Knowing, (Vol. 16: 3-4, 2009), 175. 43 Institute, 1973), 1. Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 62 43. 49 Usman Haque, “The Architectural Relevance of Steve Jobs, Gordon Pask,” Architectural Design, 77, no. 4 44 Commencement Address, June 14, 2005, (July/August 2007), 54-61. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: accessed April 12, 2015, http://news.stanford. How the Sixties Counter-culture Shaped the edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html. 63 Personal Computer Industry, (London: Horst Rittel, “On the Planning Crisis: Systems Penguin, 2003). 50 Analysis of the ‘First and Second Generations’.” Turner has chronicled the influence of Bedrifts Økonomen. 8 (1972), 394. 45 cybernetics on Brand, Fuller, and McLuhan, Ted Nelson, correspondence with author and how it led to “cyberculture.” For example, 64 Hugh Dubberly, March 21, 2015. Alan Kay took the PARC librarian to the Whole Pask, “The Architectural Relevance of Earth Truck Store, and “they bought a copy of Cybernetics,” 494. 46 every book there.” See Fred Turner, From Stewart Brand, correspondence with author Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, Hugh Dubberly, January 31, 2015. the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, (Chicago: University of Louise Sandhaus brought our attention to Chicago Press, 2006), 112. an example of Wiener’s influence on the arts. In his 1970 book Expanded Cinema, Gene 51 Youngblood writes about the “cybernetic Stewart Brand, correspondence with author movie studio” and the “transition from the Hugh Dubberly, January 31, 2015. Industrial Age to the Cybernetic Age,” which he calls “Paleocybernetic”—combing “the 52 primitive potential associated with Paleolithic Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: and the transcendental integrities of ‘practical A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure utopianism’ associated with Cybernetic … (New York: Macmillan, 1969). an image of a hairy, buckskinned, barefooted atomic physicist with a brain full of mescaline 53 and logarithms…. It’s the dawn of man: for the Chanpory Rith and Hugh Dubberly, first time in history we’ll soon be free enough “Why Horst W.J. Rittel Matters,” Design Issues, to discover who we are.” (See Gene vol. 23, no. 4, (Autumn 2006), 72-91. Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970, 41.) Buckminster Fuller wrote the 54 introduction, and Stewart Brand included a Ashby’s work is particularly important for its review in the Whole Earth Catalog. comprehensiveness and rigor. In addition to Design for a Brain, his Introduction to Later, Youngblood met members of the Cybernetics (London: Chapman & Hall, 1956) “second generation” of cybernetics and began is important because it defined the concept of a book (never completed) on Humberto “” as a measure of the degree of a Maturana and Francisco Varela. Youngblood system’s ability to respond to disturbances. reports, “Their theory of and the By extension, a system has “requisite variety” second-order cybernetics that Heinz [von (RV) if it can maintain in the face Foerster] derived from it, changed my life. of a range of disturbances. RV is an important At last, I felt, here was biological (not just contribution with many implications— philosophical) proof of the impossibility of for systems theory and modeling directly, objectivity, the foundation of the mass media’s and also for design and ethics. For design, bogus legitimacy. Later, I became more RV provides a way to rationally frame the interested in autopoiesis as a framework for questions: What is “good enough?” talking about autonomy, which Maturana/ And who needs to be involved? For ethics, Varela explicitly acknowledged, and which I RV is a foundation for von Foerster’s use to this day.” (Gene Youngblood “ethical imperative.” correspondence with author Paul Pangaro, July 27, 2015.) 55 Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain, 157. 47 In 1969, Frank Oppenheimer imported 56 Cybernetic Serendipity to San Francisco as the Chuck Owen, correspondence with author opening exhibition of his ground-breaking Hugh Dubberly, April 1, 2015. interactive learning environment, the Exploratorium. Its cavernous, unfinished 57 interior created an appropriately immersive Ralph Caplan, correspondence with author environment for the city that spawned Hugh Dubberly, March 28, 2015.

12 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design