Michael Woodger
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198565932
- eISBN:
- 9780191714016
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198565932.003.0016
- Subject:
- Mathematics, History of Mathematics
This chapter discusses the ACE simulator and the Cybernetic Model. The ACE simulator was a demonstration machine built as an aid to the visualization of binary operations. Designed by D. W. Davies ...
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This chapter discusses the ACE simulator and the Cybernetic Model. The ACE simulator was a demonstration machine built as an aid to the visualization of binary operations. Designed by D. W. Davies and Michael Woodger in the winter of 1949/1950, it was demonstrated on January 30, 1950 as part of the NPL Jubilee demonstrations to the Royal Society at Burlington House. The Cybernetic Model was constructed in May 1949, before even the first chassis of the Pilot Model ACE had been delivered. The Cybernetic Model was built to explore some of Turing's ideas about learning, and had nothing to do with the development of the ACE.Less
This chapter discusses the ACE simulator and the Cybernetic Model. The ACE simulator was a demonstration machine built as an aid to the visualization of binary operations. Designed by D. W. Davies and Michael Woodger in the winter of 1949/1950, it was demonstrated on January 30, 1950 as part of the NPL Jubilee demonstrations to the Royal Society at Burlington House. The Cybernetic Model was constructed in May 1949, before even the first chassis of the Pilot Model ACE had been delivered. The Cybernetic Model was built to explore some of Turing's ideas about learning, and had nothing to do with the development of the ACE.
Eran Magen and James J. Gross
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195391381
- eISBN:
- 9780199776894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195391381.003.0018
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology
Research on self-control has enjoyed tremendous growth over the past few decades, as researchers from a variety of disciplines have tested different self-control techniques in different domains of ...
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Research on self-control has enjoyed tremendous growth over the past few decades, as researchers from a variety of disciplines have tested different self-control techniques in different domains of self-control. The result has been a proliferation of theories, models, and approaches, each offering important, but so far largely unrelated insights. The lack of a unifying framework has been an impediment to the development of an incremental science of self-control, and has left researchers struggling to relate their work to that of others. In this chapter, we present a general model of self-control, which we call the cybernetic process model of self-control. This model integrates two existing models — Cybernetic control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1982) and the process model of emotion-regulation (Gross, 1998b) — and describes the process through which tempting impulses arise and may be regulated. The cybernetic process model of self-control provides a conceptual framework for organizing disparate findings from research on self-control, and serves as a useful aid in selecting and designing appropriate self-control techniques.Less
Research on self-control has enjoyed tremendous growth over the past few decades, as researchers from a variety of disciplines have tested different self-control techniques in different domains of self-control. The result has been a proliferation of theories, models, and approaches, each offering important, but so far largely unrelated insights. The lack of a unifying framework has been an impediment to the development of an incremental science of self-control, and has left researchers struggling to relate their work to that of others. In this chapter, we present a general model of self-control, which we call the cybernetic process model of self-control. This model integrates two existing models — Cybernetic control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1982) and the process model of emotion-regulation (Gross, 1998b) — and describes the process through which tempting impulses arise and may be regulated. The cybernetic process model of self-control provides a conceptual framework for organizing disparate findings from research on self-control, and serves as a useful aid in selecting and designing appropriate self-control techniques.
Bruce Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228508
- eISBN:
- 9780823240999
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228508.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Posthumanism recognizes the human as one among numberless other situations of complexity. Human technologies have produced a hypercomplex environment for which humanist distinctions between the ...
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Posthumanism recognizes the human as one among numberless other situations of complexity. Human technologies have produced a hypercomplex environment for which humanist distinctions between the natural, the human, and the technological are increasingly nonfunctional. Cybernetics has allowed us to embed mechanisms within our bodies and to insert vast mechanical and computational systems into the world around us. The posthuman does not transcend the human as the discourse of the human has imagined transcendence; it is rather the neocybernetic posthuman transcends the vision of disconnection that isolated the human for so long in its own conceit of uniqueness. The neocybernetic posthuman is the human metamorphosed by reconnection to the worldly and systemic conditions of its evolutionary possibility.Less
Posthumanism recognizes the human as one among numberless other situations of complexity. Human technologies have produced a hypercomplex environment for which humanist distinctions between the natural, the human, and the technological are increasingly nonfunctional. Cybernetics has allowed us to embed mechanisms within our bodies and to insert vast mechanical and computational systems into the world around us. The posthuman does not transcend the human as the discourse of the human has imagined transcendence; it is rather the neocybernetic posthuman transcends the vision of disconnection that isolated the human for so long in its own conceit of uniqueness. The neocybernetic posthuman is the human metamorphosed by reconnection to the worldly and systemic conditions of its evolutionary possibility.
Daniel Belgrad
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226652368
- eISBN:
- 9780226652672
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226652672.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This book repaints the familiar image of the 1970s in American culture as a time of Me Generation malaise, by recovering the broad reach of a vibrant cultural movement that was dedicated to finding ...
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This book repaints the familiar image of the 1970s in American culture as a time of Me Generation malaise, by recovering the broad reach of a vibrant cultural movement that was dedicated to finding radically new ways of interacting with animals, plants, and nature as a whole. There are chapters on environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, the politics of Native American spirituality, biofeedback and psychedelics, ambient music, dolphin lovers and horse whisperers. The term "feedback" was coined in the early 1940s to describe the dynamics of a system that self-regulates by feeding information about the consequences of its actions back into the system to modify it. Because such systems can self-correct, or learn, they could be considered intelligent. Conversely, systems theory (cybernetics and systems ecology) came to define intelligence itself as the ability to self-correct in response to feedback. Redefining intelligence in this way—not as a uniquely human faculty produced by consciousness, but as the property of a system governed by feedback loops—allowed new ways of thinking about the varieties of intelligence found in nature. By the early 1970s, feedback had become the governing trope for a counterculture that was reoriented and reinvigorated by the idea that forms of intelligence, or mind, were present everywhere in nature. Seeing the seventies as defined by this "culture of feedback" challenges prevailing historical accounts of the fate of sixties radicalism and the rise of Reaganism, offering an alternative paradigm for understanding the triumphs and failures of the seventies decade.Less
This book repaints the familiar image of the 1970s in American culture as a time of Me Generation malaise, by recovering the broad reach of a vibrant cultural movement that was dedicated to finding radically new ways of interacting with animals, plants, and nature as a whole. There are chapters on environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, the politics of Native American spirituality, biofeedback and psychedelics, ambient music, dolphin lovers and horse whisperers. The term "feedback" was coined in the early 1940s to describe the dynamics of a system that self-regulates by feeding information about the consequences of its actions back into the system to modify it. Because such systems can self-correct, or learn, they could be considered intelligent. Conversely, systems theory (cybernetics and systems ecology) came to define intelligence itself as the ability to self-correct in response to feedback. Redefining intelligence in this way—not as a uniquely human faculty produced by consciousness, but as the property of a system governed by feedback loops—allowed new ways of thinking about the varieties of intelligence found in nature. By the early 1970s, feedback had become the governing trope for a counterculture that was reoriented and reinvigorated by the idea that forms of intelligence, or mind, were present everywhere in nature. Seeing the seventies as defined by this "culture of feedback" challenges prevailing historical accounts of the fate of sixties radicalism and the rise of Reaganism, offering an alternative paradigm for understanding the triumphs and failures of the seventies decade.
Patrick W. Conner
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236634
- eISBN:
- 9780191679315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236634.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter argues that any critical use of the term ‘hypertext’ must take into account how the object so termed may be modelled in the cybernetic context because at least in the case of hypertext, ...
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This chapter argues that any critical use of the term ‘hypertext’ must take into account how the object so termed may be modelled in the cybernetic context because at least in the case of hypertext, the connection between literary criticism and technology is mutually supportive of both domains, and each serves the ideologies of the other. To support this claim, the chapter examines certain conjunctions of ideology and structure in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Samuel Clemens did not have access to the term ‘hypertext’, yet he endowed a certain open structure within Huckleberry Finn with an ideology which reflects the fundamental assumptions of a recognisable American myth; this myth, which focuses on the relative positions of the individual and society, and an ambiguous attitude towards boundaries and difference, is relevant to the underlying assumptions of those critics and software designers who are currently championing cybernetic hypertext.Less
This chapter argues that any critical use of the term ‘hypertext’ must take into account how the object so termed may be modelled in the cybernetic context because at least in the case of hypertext, the connection between literary criticism and technology is mutually supportive of both domains, and each serves the ideologies of the other. To support this claim, the chapter examines certain conjunctions of ideology and structure in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Samuel Clemens did not have access to the term ‘hypertext’, yet he endowed a certain open structure within Huckleberry Finn with an ideology which reflects the fundamental assumptions of a recognisable American myth; this myth, which focuses on the relative positions of the individual and society, and an ambiguous attitude towards boundaries and difference, is relevant to the underlying assumptions of those critics and software designers who are currently championing cybernetic hypertext.
David Greetham
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236634
- eISBN:
- 9780191679315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236634.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The question for a ‘coda’ to a collection the electronic text is whether one might be close to achieving that new norm, whether the brave new world of biomorphs and cybernetics has begun to change ...
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The question for a ‘coda’ to a collection the electronic text is whether one might be close to achieving that new norm, whether the brave new world of biomorphs and cybernetics has begun to change the temporal and logistic contours of identity so that, just as the agency of the human subject may be called into question as a biographical, biological, and coherently historical figure under postmodernism, so may the textual productions of a newly digitised sensibility. Morphing is not just immortality, it is change itself. In other words, morphing as a general biological phenomenon is already a condition of nature, according to this law of the preservation of energy as Publius Ovidius Naso shows in the opening lines of his Metamorphoses.Less
The question for a ‘coda’ to a collection the electronic text is whether one might be close to achieving that new norm, whether the brave new world of biomorphs and cybernetics has begun to change the temporal and logistic contours of identity so that, just as the agency of the human subject may be called into question as a biographical, biological, and coherently historical figure under postmodernism, so may the textual productions of a newly digitised sensibility. Morphing is not just immortality, it is change itself. In other words, morphing as a general biological phenomenon is already a condition of nature, according to this law of the preservation of energy as Publius Ovidius Naso shows in the opening lines of his Metamorphoses.
Tara H. Abraham
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035095
- eISBN:
- 9780262335386
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035095.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with ...
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Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with Walter Pitts on the logic of neural networks, and from his colourful role as chairman of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (1946-1953). This biographical work looks beyond McCulloch’s iconic status by exploring the varied scientific, personal, and institutional contexts of McCulloch’s life. By doing so, the book presents McCulloch as a transdisciplinary investigator who took on many scientific identities beyond that of a cybernetician: scientific philosopher, neurophysiologist, psychiatrist, poet, mentor-collaborator, and engineer, and finally, his public persona towards the end of his life, the rebel genius. The book argues that these identities were neither products of McCulloch’s own will nor were they simply shaped by his institutional contexts. In integrating context and agency, the book as provides a more nuanced and rich understanding of McCulloch’s role in the history of American science as well as the institutional contexts of scientific investigations of the brain and mind: in particular at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book argues that one of McCulloch’s most important contributions was opening up new ways of understanding the brain: no longer simply an object of medical investigation, the brain became the centre of the multidisciplinary neurosciences.Less
Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with Walter Pitts on the logic of neural networks, and from his colourful role as chairman of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (1946-1953). This biographical work looks beyond McCulloch’s iconic status by exploring the varied scientific, personal, and institutional contexts of McCulloch’s life. By doing so, the book presents McCulloch as a transdisciplinary investigator who took on many scientific identities beyond that of a cybernetician: scientific philosopher, neurophysiologist, psychiatrist, poet, mentor-collaborator, and engineer, and finally, his public persona towards the end of his life, the rebel genius. The book argues that these identities were neither products of McCulloch’s own will nor were they simply shaped by his institutional contexts. In integrating context and agency, the book as provides a more nuanced and rich understanding of McCulloch’s role in the history of American science as well as the institutional contexts of scientific investigations of the brain and mind: in particular at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book argues that one of McCulloch’s most important contributions was opening up new ways of understanding the brain: no longer simply an object of medical investigation, the brain became the centre of the multidisciplinary neurosciences.
Rosemary Wakeman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226346038
- eISBN:
- 9780226346175
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226346175.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This book investigates the golden age of new town building in the mid to late twentieth century. It argues that the magnitudeof new town construction, its geographic extent, and the discourse about ...
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This book investigates the golden age of new town building in the mid to late twentieth century. It argues that the magnitudeof new town construction, its geographic extent, and the discourse about new towns marked it as a commanding intellectual movement. It represented a rich corpus of ideas and influences that carried forward the inheritance of urban utopianism and was instrumental in defining modernization and the aspirations of the late twentieth century. The book considers new towns as a dynamic concept that was implemented across the globe by a transnational planning culture. It first examines the new towns of the post Second World War reconstruction years and the export of the garden city ideal as postcolonial strategy, and thenthe second great wave of new towns in the 1960s and 1970s influenced by cybernetics, systems analysis, and the Space Age. Evidence ranges across transnational intellectual debates and a corpus of new town plans and visual imagery that mapped out urban utopia. Case-studies are drawn from Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States as well as new towns in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.Less
This book investigates the golden age of new town building in the mid to late twentieth century. It argues that the magnitudeof new town construction, its geographic extent, and the discourse about new towns marked it as a commanding intellectual movement. It represented a rich corpus of ideas and influences that carried forward the inheritance of urban utopianism and was instrumental in defining modernization and the aspirations of the late twentieth century. The book considers new towns as a dynamic concept that was implemented across the globe by a transnational planning culture. It first examines the new towns of the post Second World War reconstruction years and the export of the garden city ideal as postcolonial strategy, and thenthe second great wave of new towns in the 1960s and 1970s influenced by cybernetics, systems analysis, and the Space Age. Evidence ranges across transnational intellectual debates and a corpus of new town plans and visual imagery that mapped out urban utopia. Case-studies are drawn from Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States as well as new towns in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195380019
- eISBN:
- 9780199932764
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195380019.003.0005
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter is the first of three addressing how mobbing develops and its causes. In this chapter, four different theoretical models arising from multiple disciplines are analyzed for their ...
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This chapter is the first of three addressing how mobbing develops and its causes. In this chapter, four different theoretical models arising from multiple disciplines are analyzed for their contributions to the understanding of how mobbing and organizational abusiveness develop. Discussed are the conflict model, drawing from sociology; the cybernetic model, drawing from systems theory; the communications flow model, drawing from communications theory; and the antecedents, behavior, consequences (A-B-C) model, drawing from psychology. Additionally, the organizational dynamics of strategy, structure, culture, leadership, members, and the external environment and their interrelatedness are proposed as a means for obtaining a cross-sectional view of an organization to assess its mobbing-proneness.Less
This chapter is the first of three addressing how mobbing develops and its causes. In this chapter, four different theoretical models arising from multiple disciplines are analyzed for their contributions to the understanding of how mobbing and organizational abusiveness develop. Discussed are the conflict model, drawing from sociology; the cybernetic model, drawing from systems theory; the communications flow model, drawing from communications theory; and the antecedents, behavior, consequences (A-B-C) model, drawing from psychology. Additionally, the organizational dynamics of strategy, structure, culture, leadership, members, and the external environment and their interrelatedness are proposed as a means for obtaining a cross-sectional view of an organization to assess its mobbing-proneness.
Benjamin Peters
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034180
- eISBN:
- 9780262334198
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Russian Politics
This is the tragic story—presented for the first time in English in book form—of pioneering attempts to build nationwide networks for a range of civilian purposes in the Soviet Union between 1959 and ...
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This is the tragic story—presented for the first time in English in book form—of pioneering attempts to build nationwide networks for a range of civilian purposes in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1989. It advances and complicates the plain proposition that the first international computer networks took shape thanks to cooperating capitalists, not competing socialists. In particular, it chronicles and comments on the development of the cold war science of cybernetics, the rise of Soviet economic cybernetics for managing the command economy, and attending proposals and projects to bring about electronic socialism by nationwide network. It argues that, despite significant differences, the fate of Soviet networks is closer to that of the current network world than may appear.Less
This is the tragic story—presented for the first time in English in book form—of pioneering attempts to build nationwide networks for a range of civilian purposes in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1989. It advances and complicates the plain proposition that the first international computer networks took shape thanks to cooperating capitalists, not competing socialists. In particular, it chronicles and comments on the development of the cold war science of cybernetics, the rise of Soviet economic cybernetics for managing the command economy, and attending proposals and projects to bring about electronic socialism by nationwide network. It argues that, despite significant differences, the fate of Soviet networks is closer to that of the current network world than may appear.
Seb Franklin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029537
- eISBN:
- 9780262331135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029537.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines the interdisciplinary field of cybernetics as an emblematic site for the movement of digital principles from specific, technical applications to imprecisely deployed metaphors. ...
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This chapter examines the interdisciplinary field of cybernetics as an emblematic site for the movement of digital principles from specific, technical applications to imprecisely deployed metaphors. The chapter tracks specific terminology and speculative claims about the possibility of behavioural prediction from tightly delimited work in ballistics, psychology, information theory, and computer science to highly general (and generalizing) applications in anthropology, economic theory, and management. In so doing the chapter demonstrates the historical and conceptual dynamics of control, as well as their proximity to the tendential expansion in space and time that characterizes capitalist accumulation.Less
This chapter examines the interdisciplinary field of cybernetics as an emblematic site for the movement of digital principles from specific, technical applications to imprecisely deployed metaphors. The chapter tracks specific terminology and speculative claims about the possibility of behavioural prediction from tightly delimited work in ballistics, psychology, information theory, and computer science to highly general (and generalizing) applications in anthropology, economic theory, and management. In so doing the chapter demonstrates the historical and conceptual dynamics of control, as well as their proximity to the tendential expansion in space and time that characterizes capitalist accumulation.
Gary Westfahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037801
- eISBN:
- 9780252095085
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology ...
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The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. This book draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world. Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, the book describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as the book provides extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.Less
The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. This book draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world. Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, the book describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as the book provides extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.
John Beck and Ryan Bishop (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409483
- eISBN:
- 9781474426954
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409483.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
What are the legacies of the Cold War? This interdisciplinary collection explores how, in a number of fundamental ways, contemporary life and thought continue to be shaped by theories, technologies ...
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What are the legacies of the Cold War? This interdisciplinary collection explores how, in a number of fundamental ways, contemporary life and thought continue to be shaped by theories, technologies and attitudes that were forged during World War II and developed into organisational structures during the long Cold War. From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we live in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War.Less
What are the legacies of the Cold War? This interdisciplinary collection explores how, in a number of fundamental ways, contemporary life and thought continue to be shaped by theories, technologies and attitudes that were forged during World War II and developed into organisational structures during the long Cold War. From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we live in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War.
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501703188
- eISBN:
- 9781501706257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501703188.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Russian Politics
This introductory chapter provides an overview of system-cybernetic governance. Cybernetics and the systems approach—which includes but is not limited to operations research (OR), systems theory, ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of system-cybernetic governance. Cybernetics and the systems approach—which includes but is not limited to operations research (OR), systems theory, systems analysis, and, at a later stage, policy analysis—constitute a hybrid field of science and technology that emerged from innovations in mathematics and electronic engineering during World War II, to become part of the academic establishment during the late 1940s. However, the field of system-cybernetic, computer-based science originated as a resource for both formulating and solving governmental problems. As such, system-cybernetic sciences were part and parcel of the late modern worldview, according to which societies, economies, and nature were so highly complex that neither common sense nor sector-specific knowledge was sufficient to govern them.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of system-cybernetic governance. Cybernetics and the systems approach—which includes but is not limited to operations research (OR), systems theory, systems analysis, and, at a later stage, policy analysis—constitute a hybrid field of science and technology that emerged from innovations in mathematics and electronic engineering during World War II, to become part of the academic establishment during the late 1940s. However, the field of system-cybernetic, computer-based science originated as a resource for both formulating and solving governmental problems. As such, system-cybernetic sciences were part and parcel of the late modern worldview, according to which societies, economies, and nature were so highly complex that neither common sense nor sector-specific knowledge was sufficient to govern them.
Günther G. Schulze
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529202168
- eISBN:
- 9781529209594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529202168.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
This chapter summarizes the “Environmental conflicts, migration and governance” book’s key insights and reflects on theoretical and methodological challenges tied to the study of the nexus between ...
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This chapter summarizes the “Environmental conflicts, migration and governance” book’s key insights and reflects on theoretical and methodological challenges tied to the study of the nexus between environmental problems, conflict dynamics, and migration. The author argues that it is not entirely clear what is the most important direction(s) of causality in the environment, conflict, migration nexus. Multiple feedback effects exist that make the interdependencies non-linear in nature, reason why the author calls upon a cybernetic approach to further study the nexus. Understanding the different relations of the variables in this nexus provides entry points for good governance. However, the chapter argues the need to examine the interplay between environmental conflicts, migration and governance more comprehensively and context-specifically.Less
This chapter summarizes the “Environmental conflicts, migration and governance” book’s key insights and reflects on theoretical and methodological challenges tied to the study of the nexus between environmental problems, conflict dynamics, and migration. The author argues that it is not entirely clear what is the most important direction(s) of causality in the environment, conflict, migration nexus. Multiple feedback effects exist that make the interdependencies non-linear in nature, reason why the author calls upon a cybernetic approach to further study the nexus. Understanding the different relations of the variables in this nexus provides entry points for good governance. However, the chapter argues the need to examine the interplay between environmental conflicts, migration and governance more comprehensively and context-specifically.
Jonathan P. Eburne
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381434
- eISBN:
- 9781781382387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381434.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Acknowledging its comic genealogy and resonances of SF, this chapter explores the Surrealist roman-photo as a meditation on the ‘tribulations’ depicted in the six extant photographs that comprise the ...
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Acknowledging its comic genealogy and resonances of SF, this chapter explores the Surrealist roman-photo as a meditation on the ‘tribulations’ depicted in the six extant photographs that comprise the book ‘Les Tribulations de Monsieur Wzz…,’ which adopts its serial-panel form toward an exploration of ‘approximate life,’ a notion that pertains at once to the financial conditions of a group of young leftist writers who turned to screenwriting and translating as ways to make a living, as well as to broader questions about the technological and material conditions for modern life in general. The anthropomorphic Monsieur Wzz, a figure composed of twisted wire with no observable organs or mechanisms, accompanies human actors on a series of adventures that suggest the extent to which the technophilic machine-bodies of Dada had become assimilated into the photorealism of contemporary Paris. As in earlier avant-garde explorations of mechanical approximations of human life – whether the robots of Karel Capek’s R.U.R. or the mechanomorphs of Dada – it is the implied actions of Monsieur Wzz’ that become significant within the Surrealist comic book. At the same time, with no inner workings, Monsieur Wzz invokes the mystification its technophilic name suggests: life may be a ‘whizz,’ yet no less subject to tribulation. Thus the roman-photo comments no less directly on the explicit demands on life posed by the Surrealist movement’s discussions about communism, which become the focus of Tristan Tzara’s contemporaneous meditation on modern-day humanism in his poem ‘L’Homme Approximatif,’ an excerpt from which was published in 1929 in the main Surrealist journal of that decade La Révolution Surréaliste, around the time of the appearance of Monsieur Wzz.Less
Acknowledging its comic genealogy and resonances of SF, this chapter explores the Surrealist roman-photo as a meditation on the ‘tribulations’ depicted in the six extant photographs that comprise the book ‘Les Tribulations de Monsieur Wzz…,’ which adopts its serial-panel form toward an exploration of ‘approximate life,’ a notion that pertains at once to the financial conditions of a group of young leftist writers who turned to screenwriting and translating as ways to make a living, as well as to broader questions about the technological and material conditions for modern life in general. The anthropomorphic Monsieur Wzz, a figure composed of twisted wire with no observable organs or mechanisms, accompanies human actors on a series of adventures that suggest the extent to which the technophilic machine-bodies of Dada had become assimilated into the photorealism of contemporary Paris. As in earlier avant-garde explorations of mechanical approximations of human life – whether the robots of Karel Capek’s R.U.R. or the mechanomorphs of Dada – it is the implied actions of Monsieur Wzz’ that become significant within the Surrealist comic book. At the same time, with no inner workings, Monsieur Wzz invokes the mystification its technophilic name suggests: life may be a ‘whizz,’ yet no less subject to tribulation. Thus the roman-photo comments no less directly on the explicit demands on life posed by the Surrealist movement’s discussions about communism, which become the focus of Tristan Tzara’s contemporaneous meditation on modern-day humanism in his poem ‘L’Homme Approximatif,’ an excerpt from which was published in 1929 in the main Surrealist journal of that decade La Révolution Surréaliste, around the time of the appearance of Monsieur Wzz.
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most ...
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This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most excessive forms humanist thought, this book situates the contemporary transhumanist movement within the longer history of a rhetorical mode Pilsch calls "evolutionary futurism." Evolutionary futurism is a way of arguing about technology that suggests that global telecommunications technologies, in expanding the geographic range of human thought, radically reshape the future of the human species. Evolutionary futurist argumentation makes the case that we, as a species, are on the cusp of a radical explosion in cognitive, physical, and cultural intelligence. Transhumanism surveys the varying uses of evolutionary futurism throughout the 20th century, as it appears in a wide array of fields. This book unearths evolutionary futurist argumentation in modernist avant-garde poetry, theosophy, science fiction, post-structural philosophy, Christian mysticism, media theory, conceptual art, and online media culture. Ultimately, the book suggests that evolutionary futurism, in the age of the collapse of the state as a unit for imagining Utopia, works by highlighting the human as the limit that must be overcome if we are to imagine new futures for our culture, our planet, and ourselves. Less
This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most excessive forms humanist thought, this book situates the contemporary transhumanist movement within the longer history of a rhetorical mode Pilsch calls "evolutionary futurism." Evolutionary futurism is a way of arguing about technology that suggests that global telecommunications technologies, in expanding the geographic range of human thought, radically reshape the future of the human species. Evolutionary futurist argumentation makes the case that we, as a species, are on the cusp of a radical explosion in cognitive, physical, and cultural intelligence. Transhumanism surveys the varying uses of evolutionary futurism throughout the 20th century, as it appears in a wide array of fields. This book unearths evolutionary futurist argumentation in modernist avant-garde poetry, theosophy, science fiction, post-structural philosophy, Christian mysticism, media theory, conceptual art, and online media culture. Ultimately, the book suggests that evolutionary futurism, in the age of the collapse of the state as a unit for imagining Utopia, works by highlighting the human as the limit that must be overcome if we are to imagine new futures for our culture, our planet, and ourselves.
Gennaro Auletta
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199608485
- eISBN:
- 9780191729539
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608485.003.0009
- Subject:
- Physics, Soft Matter / Biological Physics
Here, the concept of sign is introduced as well as those of teleonomic and teleologic mechanisms. The crucial notions of information control and functional equivalence classes are worked out. ...
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Here, the concept of sign is introduced as well as those of teleonomic and teleologic mechanisms. The crucial notions of information control and functional equivalence classes are worked out. Chemotaxis is studied as an example of biological cybernetic system. Finally, the notion of biological self is introduced.Less
Here, the concept of sign is introduced as well as those of teleonomic and teleologic mechanisms. The crucial notions of information control and functional equivalence classes are worked out. Chemotaxis is studied as an example of biological cybernetic system. Finally, the notion of biological self is introduced.
Tara H. Abraham
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035095
- eISBN:
- 9780262335386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035095.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter offers an interpretation of the cybernetics movement that places McCulloch at the centre of the story. By doing so, it illustrates that McCulloch’s cybernetic project can be best ...
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This chapter offers an interpretation of the cybernetics movement that places McCulloch at the centre of the story. By doing so, it illustrates that McCulloch’s cybernetic project can be best understood in light of his interest in psychiatric foundations and the problem of mind and brain. Focusing on McCulloch’s translation of his psychiatric work into the language of cybernetics, his rhetorical strategies in promoting cybernetics, and the challenges he faced, the chapter also highlights the transdisciplinary nature of cybernetics. Further, it illustrates how, despite the origin stories of McCulloch and other members of the cybernetics group, and despite its association with the American unity of science movement, the cybernetics group was more disunified than is commonly argued.Less
This chapter offers an interpretation of the cybernetics movement that places McCulloch at the centre of the story. By doing so, it illustrates that McCulloch’s cybernetic project can be best understood in light of his interest in psychiatric foundations and the problem of mind and brain. Focusing on McCulloch’s translation of his psychiatric work into the language of cybernetics, his rhetorical strategies in promoting cybernetics, and the challenges he faced, the chapter also highlights the transdisciplinary nature of cybernetics. Further, it illustrates how, despite the origin stories of McCulloch and other members of the cybernetics group, and despite its association with the American unity of science movement, the cybernetics group was more disunified than is commonly argued.
Seb Franklin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029537
- eISBN:
- 9780262331135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029537.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This book addresses the conditions of knowledge that make the concept of the “information economy” possible while at the same time obscuring its deleterious effects on material social spaces. In so ...
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This book addresses the conditions of knowledge that make the concept of the “information economy” possible while at the same time obscuring its deleterious effects on material social spaces. In so doing, the book traces three intertwined threads: the relationships among information, labor, and social management that emerged in the nineteenth century; the mid-twentieth-century diffusion of computational metaphors; and the appearance of informatic principles in certain contemporary socioeconomic and cultural practices. Drawing on critical theory, media theory, and the history of science, the book names control as the episteme grounding late capitalism. Beyond any specific device or set of technically mediated practices, digitality functions within this episteme as the logical basis for reshaped concepts of labor, subjectivity, and collectivity, as well as for the intensification of older modes of exclusion and dispossession. In tracking the pervasiveness of this logical mode into the present, the book locates the cultural traces of control across a diverse body of objects and practices, from cybernetics to economic theory and management styles, and from concepts of language and subjectivity to literary texts, films, and video games.Less
This book addresses the conditions of knowledge that make the concept of the “information economy” possible while at the same time obscuring its deleterious effects on material social spaces. In so doing, the book traces three intertwined threads: the relationships among information, labor, and social management that emerged in the nineteenth century; the mid-twentieth-century diffusion of computational metaphors; and the appearance of informatic principles in certain contemporary socioeconomic and cultural practices. Drawing on critical theory, media theory, and the history of science, the book names control as the episteme grounding late capitalism. Beyond any specific device or set of technically mediated practices, digitality functions within this episteme as the logical basis for reshaped concepts of labor, subjectivity, and collectivity, as well as for the intensification of older modes of exclusion and dispossession. In tracking the pervasiveness of this logical mode into the present, the book locates the cultural traces of control across a diverse body of objects and practices, from cybernetics to economic theory and management styles, and from concepts of language and subjectivity to literary texts, films, and video games.
