N. Katherine Hayles
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Cybernetics 1950
SOME OF THE PROBLEMS CONCERNING DIGITAL [11] NOTIONS IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM RALPH W. GERARD Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, University of Chicago I should like to begin by saying, especially for the benefit of the newcomers, that this particular group is the most provocative one with which I am associated. I owe more new ideas and viewpoints to the meetings we have had over the past few years than to any other similar experience; our gatherings, therefore, have evoked some insights. The subject and the group have also provoked a tremendous amount of external inter- est, almost to the extent of a national fad. They have also prompted extensive articles in such well known scientific magazines as Time, News-Week, and Life. Some of these events have, in turn, led me to speak to you this morning. It seems to me, in looking back over the history of this group, that we started our discussions and sessions in the »as if« spirit. Everyone was delighted to express any idea that came into his mind, whether it seemed silly or certain or merely a stimulating guess that would affect someone else. We explored possibilities for all sorts of »ifs.« Then, rather sharply it seemed to me, we began to talk in an »is« idiom. We were say- ing much the same things, but now saying them as if they were so. I remembered a definition of pregnancy: »the result of taking seriously something poked at one in fun,« and wondered if we had become pregnant and were in some danger of premature delivery. -
American Society for Cybernetics the Heinz Von Foerster Society
American Society for Cybernetics The Warren McCulloch Award of the American Society for Cybernetics is awarded to The Heinz von Foerster Society for an extensive, prolonged, deep and successful commitment to the furtherance of the work of Heinz von Foerster and other cyberneticians concerned with second-order cybernetics and related approaches and understandings. Beginning with a major interview book with Heinz von Foerster (“Der Anfang von Himmel und Erde hat keinen Namen: Eine Selbsterschaffung in sieben Tagen” about to appear in English translation), members of the Heinz for Foerster Society have promoted second order cybernetics in general, and the work of Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Ernst von Glasersfeld and Richard Jung in particular, in the conferences and lectures they have funded and promoted over the past 10 years. Emerging from their first conference, the book “An Unfinished Revolution” is a key critical and reference work covering the progress so far of second-order cybernetics. Together with the publishers echoraum, they have also published a series of books on mainly second-order cybernetic topics, with authors including ASC members; and recently began a new series with the book “Trojan Horses,” which emerged from the ASC’s 2010 conference held in Troy, NY. The Heinz von Foerstar Society has been successful in directing new public attention to cybernetics in both the English and the German speaking worlds. Theirs is a major contribution to the furtherance of cybernetics, both in terms of public attention and publicity, and in the continuing development of our subject area. Ranulph Glanville President of the American Society for Cybernetics 2013/08/01. -
Warren Mcculloch and the British Cyberneticians
Warren McCulloch and the British cyberneticians Article (Accepted Version) Husbands, Phil and Holland, Owen (2012) Warren McCulloch and the British cyberneticians. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 37 (3). pp. 237-253. ISSN 0308-0188 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/43089/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse: Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University. Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available. Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Warren McCulloch and the British Cyberneticians1 Phil Husbands and Owen Holland Dept. Informatics, University of Sussex Abstract Warren McCulloch was a significant influence on a number of British cyberneticians, as some British pioneers in this area were on him. -
Neuerscheinungsdienst 2017 ND 08
Neuerscheinungsdienst Jahrgang: 2017 ND 08 Stand: 22. Februar 2017 Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main) 2017 ISSN 1611-0153 urn:nbn:de:101-201612064955 2 Hinweise Der Neuerscheinungsdienst ist das Ergebnis der Ko- blikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; de- operation zwischen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek und taillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über der MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. GmbH. Ziel dieser Kooperation ist zum einen die Hebung Bibliographic information published by the Deut- des Qualitätsstandards des Verzeichnisses lieferbarer sche Nationalbibliothek Bücher (VLB) und zum anderen die Verbesserung der The Deutsche Naitonalbibliothek lists this publication in Aktualität und Vollständigkeit der Deutschen Nationalbi- the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic bliografie. In der Titelaufnahme wird der entsprechende data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Link zu den Verlagsangaben direkt geschaltet; ebenso Information bibliographique de la Deutsche Natio- alle anderen möglichen Links. nalbibliothek Die Verleger melden ihre Titel in einem einzigen Vor- La Deutsche Nationalbibliothek a répertoiré cette publi- gang für das VLB und den Neuerscheinungsdienst der cation dans la Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; les données Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. Dieser zeigt somit alle bibliographiques détaillées peuvent être consultées sur Neumeldungen von Titeln an, die auch in das VLB ein- Internet à l’adresse http://dnb.dnb.de gehen. Die VLB-Redaktion leitet die Meldungen an die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek weiter. Die Titel werden oh- Die Verleger übersenden gemäß den gesetzlichen Vor- ne weitere Änderungen im Neuerscheinungsdienst der schriften zur Pflichtablieferung zwei Pflichtexemplare je Deutschen Nationalbibliothek angezeigt. Die Titelanzei- nach Zuständigkeit an die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek gen selbst sind, wie auf der Sachgruppenübersicht an- nach Frankfurt am Main oder nach Leipzig. -
A Dictionary of Cybernetics
Annenberg School for Communication Departmental Papers (ASC) University of Pennsylvania Year 1986 A Dictionary of Cybernetics Klaus Krippendorff University of Pennsylvania, kkrippendorff@asc.upenn.edu This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/asc papers/224 A DICTIONARY OF CYBERNETICS by Klaus Krippendorff University of Pennsylvania version 2/2/86 A dictionary like the discipline whose terminology it aims to clarify is constantly in flux. It is aided by communal efforts and in turn aids communication within the community of users. Critical comments and suggestions, especially for including new or omitting useless entries, for improving the wording, for references that may need to be added should be directed to: Klaus Krippendorff The Annenberg School of Communications University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia PA 19104 NOTE: This dictionary is not intended to represent the American Society for Cybernetics nor the opinions of any of its members: neither does it replace the current Cybernetics Glossary. Klaus Krippendorff has been kind enough to make his work available to ASC members in order to stimulate discussion on the language of cybernetics. as well as on the idea of a dictionary itself. ABSOLUTE DISCRIMINATION: ->LIMIT OF ABSOLUTE DISCRIMINATION ADAPTATION: STABILITY of success in the face of a changing environment. Two kinds of adaptation are distinguished. (a) Darwinian adaptation after Darwin who observed how organisms change their internal STRUCTURE when their environment makes existing forms no longer viable. E.g., Ashby's HOMEOSTAT searches for a new pattern of behavior as soon as disturbances in its surroundings drive or threaten to drive its essential VARIABLEs outside specified limits. -
Second-Order Economics As an Example of Second-Order Cybernetics
Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Vol. 18, nos. 3-4, pp. xx-xx Second-Order Economics as an Example of Second-Order Cybernetics Stuart A. Umpleby1 Heinz von Foerster proposed that the observer should be included in the domain of observation. He suggested that this approach to cybernetics be called second-order cybernetics. Heinz was primarily interested in understanding cognition, based on neurophysiology and mathematics. But there has also been strong interest in cybernetics as a theory of social systems. Using the “second order” idea for existing social science fields would focus attention on the role of the observer and on reflexive phenomena such as the effect of theories on what is being studied. This article considers how the field of economics might adopt the second order idea. A Current Task for Cybernetics In emphasizing the role of the observer and creating the term second-order cybernetics Von Foerster was ahead of his time. One example is the fact that the field of economics may be on the verge of beginning research on second-order economics. But before explaining why that is happening, some background is necessary. Von Foerster was persuaded that the observer needed to be studied as well as the observed. The traditional philosophy of science maintained that scientific observations should be independent of the characteristics of the observer. However, as Humberto Maturana noted, “Anything said is said by an observer” (Maturana, 1970, p. 4). Hence, excluding the observer from consideration is a kind of denial. Von Foerster sustained and advanced the field of cybernetics when many others had returned to their home disciplines. -
This Following Article Is of a Conversation Between Stewart
CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976, 10(21), 32-44. This following article is of a conversation between Stewart Brand, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead and was originally published in the CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976, Issue no. 10, pp. 32-44. With very many thanks to Stewart Brand to reproduce it in: A. Kleiner and S. Brand, Editors, Ten years of coevolution quarterly, North Point Press, San Francisco (1986). Available at http://www.oikos.org/forgod.htm For God’s Sake, Margaret Conversation with Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were married in 1936. They had met and fallen in love in 1932 while both were doing anthropological fieldwork on the Sepik River in New Guinea (Margaret was at the same time with her second husband, Reo Fortune). In New Guinea Gregory’s unusual sense of theory met Margaret’s improved field methodology and sparked much of the quality in Gregory’s opus on the latmul tribe, Naven. Newly-wed in Bali, they spent two collaborative years in the most intense and productive fieldwork of their lives, developing, among other things, a still unmatched photographic analysis of the culture. Their daughter Mary Catherine, Margaret’s only child, was born in 1939 in the United States. Gregory and Margaret worked together on the result of their Bali fieldwork, Balinese Character - A Photographic Analysis, and then were separated increasingly by World War II and their own diverging interests. Download from http://www.alice.id.tue.nl/references/ 1 | Page CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976, 10(21), 32-44. After the war they both were involved in starting the somewhat famous Macy Conferences (1947-53) that invented cybernetics. -
“The Action of the Brain” Machine Models and Adaptive Functions in Turing and Ashby
“The Action of the Brain” Machine Models and Adaptive Functions in Turing and Ashby Hajo Greif1,2 1 Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University of Munich, Germany 2 Department of Philosophy, University of Klagenfurt, Austria [email protected] Abstract Given the personal acquaintance between Alan M. Turing and W. Ross Ashby and the partial proximity of their research fields, a comparative view of Turing’s and Ashby’s works on modelling “the action of the brain” (in a 1946 letter from Turing to Ashby) will help to shed light on the seemingly strict symbolic / embodied dichotomy: while it is a straightforward matter to demonstrate Turing’s and Ashby’s respective commitments to formal, computational and material, analogue methods of modelling, there is no unambiguous mapping of these approaches onto symbol-based AI and embodiment-centered views respectively. Instead, it will be argued that both approaches, starting from a formal core, were at least partly concerned with biological and embodied phenomena, albeit in revealingly distinct ways. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetics, Models, Embodiment, Darwinian evolution, Morphogenesis, Functionalism 1 Introduction Not very much has been written to date on the relation between Alan M. Turing and W. Ross Ashby, both of whom were members of the “Ratio Club” (1949– 1958).1 Not much of the communication between the two seems to have been preserved or discovered either, the major exception being a letter from Turing to Ashby that includes the following statement: In working on the ACE [an early digital computer] I am more interested in the possibility of producing models of the action of the brain than in the practical applications of computing. -
Cybernetics, Economics, and Philosophy in the German Democratic Republic
Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Theses Department of History Spring 5-7-2011 Red Helmsman: Cybernetics, Economics, and Philosophy in the German Democratic Republic Kevin T. Baker Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Baker, Kevin T., "Red Helmsman: Cybernetics, Economics, and Philosophy in the German Democratic Republic." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2011. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses/47 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RED HELMSMAN: CYBERNETICS, ECONOMICS, AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC by KEVIN T. BAKER Under the Direction of Jared Poley ABSTRACT Cybernetics, despite being initially rejected in the Eastern Bloc throughout the 1950s for ideological reasons, rose to a high level of institutional prominence in the 1960s, profoundly influencing state philosophy and economic planning. This thesis is an examination of this transition, charting the development of cybernetics from the object of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands’s (SED) opprobrium to one of the major philosophical currents within the party intelligentsia. INDEX WORDS: East Germany, Marxism, History of science, Economics, Cybernetics, Philosophy, Cold War, Information theory, Georg Klaus, Walter Ulbricht RED HELMSMAN: CYBERNETICS, ECONOMICS, AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC by KEVIN T. BAKER A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of the Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2011 Copyright by Kevin T. -
The Place and Meaning of Computing in a Sound Relationship of Man, Machines, and Environment
Proceedings ICMC|SMC|2014 14-20 September 2014, Athens, Greece The place and meaning of computing in a sound relationship of man, machines, and environment Agostino Di Scipio Electroacoustic Music Dept., Conservatory of L'Aquila, Italy [email protected] ABSTRACT other than digital in order to make sense of what in the world can be computed - provided there is anything really The following is a revised version of the text prepared by computable in music-related activities (a problematic the author for his keynote speech at the opening session question, often debated years ago). However, today the of the International Computer Music Conference 2013 particular manner in which digital technologies are sided (12.08.2013 Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre, by, and integrated in, different but overlapping techno- logical layers, seems to be increasingly significant to Perth, Western Australia). It bears on conceptual changes practitioners. This is clear from live performance prac- that have taken place, along the decades, in the shared tices where computing devices do not represent some- notion of "computing" as relative to creative practices of thing standing on its own, and are rather embedded in a sound- and music-making. In particular, the notion of larger "performance ecosystem" (Waters, 2011) where computing is considered vis a vis the relationship, either other technogical layers and agencies play an (equally?) implicity established or deliberately designed by practi- important role, whether they are human agencies (per- tioners, to the (necessarily hybrid) technological infra- formers), mechanical agencies (music instruments and structures of their work, as well as to the surrouding various infrastructures), or devices ranging from basic physical space where such practices take place. -
"Contesting for the Body of Information: the Macy Conferences On
........... Ch..a ..p.Le.r. ... T.h.r.e .. e CONTESTING FOR THE BODY OF INFORMATION: THE MACY CONFERENCES ON CYBERNETICS When and where did information get constructed as a disembodied medium? How were researchers convinced that humans and machines are brothers under the skin? Although the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics were notthe only forum grappling with these questions, they were particu larly important because they acted as a crossroads for the traffic in cyber netic models and artifacts. This chapter charts the arguments that made information seem more important than materiality within this research community. Broadly speaking, the arguments were deployed along three fronts. The first was concerned with the construction of information as a theoretical entity; the second, with the construction of (human) neural structures so that they were seen as flows of information; the third, with the construction of artifacts that translated information flows into observable operations, thereby making the flows "real." Yet at each of these fronts, there was also significant resistance to the reification of information. Alternate models were proposed; important qualifications were voiced; objections were raised to the disparity between simple artifacts and the complex problems they addressed. Reification was triumphant not because it had no opposition but because scientifically and culturally situated debates made it seem a better choice than the alterna tives. Recovering the complexities of these debates helps to demystifY the assumption that information is more essential than matter or energy. Fol lowed backto moments before it became a black box, this conclusion seems less like an inevitability and more like the result of negotiations specific to the circumstances of the U.S. -
Adventures Beyond Reductionism. the Remarkable Unfolding of Complex Holism: Sustainability Science
Adventures Beyond Reductionism. The Remarkable Unfolding of Complex Holism: Sustainability Science A. Sengupta Institute for Complex Holism, Kolkata, INDIA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down”. Can Darwinian random mutations and selection generate biological complexity and holism? In this paper we argue that the “wonderful but not enough” tools of linear reductionism cannot lead to chaos and hence to complexity and holism, but with ChaNoXity this seems indeed plausible, even likely. Based on the Pump-Engine realism of mutually interacting supply and demand — demand institutes supply that fuels demand — we demonstrate that the “supply” of symmetry breaking Darwinian genetic variation, in direct conflict with the symmetry inducing “demand” of natural selection, defines the antagonistic arrows of the real and negative worlds. Working in this competitively collaborating nonlinear mode, these opposites generate the homeostasy of holistic life. Protein folding, mitosis, meiosis, hydrophobicity and other ingredients have their respective expressions in this paradigm; nucleotide substitution, gene duplication-divergence, HGT, stress-induced mutations, antibiotic resistance, Lamarckism would appear to fit in naturally in this complexity paradigm defined through emergence of novelty and self-organization. With obvious departures from mainstream reductionism, this can have far reaching implications in the Darwinian and nano medicine of genetic diseases and disorders. Our goal is to chart a roadmap of adventure beyond (neo)-Darwinian reductionism. Keywords: Chanoxity; Reductionism; Darwinian Holism; Self-organization and Emergence; Demand, Sup- ply, Logistic. 1 Introduction: Beyond Reductionism Biological systems are complex holistic systems: thermodynamically open and far-from-equilibrium, self organizing, emergent.