In order to develop a model for stability in design problems, Alexander looked to cybernetics for models of homeostasis and ultrastability. Such systems could stabilize themselves regardless of what disturbed them, including variables that weren’t considered when the system was designed.

Chris Aldrich on Cybernetic Communications

But stepping back even further, one can only see this imagined software as an enhancement to Latour’s larger model of interplay in his actor-network theory, a theory that does not need software or special equipment to exist. The activity in a spatial environment is not reliant on the digital environment. It may be enhanced by a code/text-based software, but a spatial software or protocol can be any platform that establishes variables for space as information

Compared to the relative trickle of space made by special practitioners, these technologies produce a fire hose blast. The most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written in the protocols or softwares of infrastructural space.

On the one hand, Alexander expands the repertoire of design to include activity. But on the other, he quickly codifies and taxonomizes that activity. He mimics the object of this own critique by reforming the artificial with a “natural” corrective—instead of the tree, the semi-lattice becomes the placeholder. Despite his attempt to incorporate active form and information, Alexander only creates another immobilized form.

In his 1965 article “The City is not a Tree,” he critiqued what he deemed to be the infrastructural or organizational template of many settlements and cities. A “tree,” in Alexander’s parlance, is a branching structure in which sets are either completely disconnected from one another or entirely contained within one set without overlapping sets. The branches do not grow together but emanate separately from a single trunk.

This capacity seems to finally fulfill the dream of artists and architects of the mid- to late twentieth century, among them Jack Burnham, Cedric Price, Archigram, and Christopher Alexander, who experimented with a cybernetic apparatus for modeling space.

Weaver distinguishes ‘three levels of communication problems’, beginning with the technical problem (A), which is concerned with the f idelity of symbol transmission and thus the level where Shannon’s mathematical def inition and measure of information are situated. But Weaver then also postulates a semantic problem (B) that refers to the transmission of meaning and an ef fectiveness problem (C) that asks

in terms of the new perspectives provided by cybernetics and thecommunication sciences,

now we go back to jakub von ogskul and we find him critiquing exactly the 00:09:20 same thing for exactly the same reasons 30 years after john dewey there on the left he has picked out the reflex arc pointing out that it is a linear throughput which leaves no room 00:09:34 for subjectivity no room for intentional action no room for meaning to arise if you if the middle is only animated by inputs then it's a puppet 00:09:47 he replaces this with a model on the right that will whose terms will not be entirely clear to you as you read the article but i want you to notice one thing about it it's circular it's not a linear 00:09:59 throughput it's circular he starts by noting the embeddedness of the body in the world and the fact that the activity of the 00:10:13 body is meaningful at all times and not separable into inputs and outputs his replacement of the linear throughput with this circular model that he elaborates in various ways 00:10:25 is remarkably prescient of the basic cybernetic insight that will arise after the second world war in which it's all feedback systems positive feedback systems negative feedback systems 00:10:37 homeostatic systems um reciprocity is always involved the fact that you do something and something is done to you at the same time that that we dance in the world 00:10:50 rather than standing apart from it and recording a movie of it so his um uncovery of this basic cybernetic principle with which one might approach the body and its being in the world is 00:11:02 remarkably prescient but these profound ideas of vulnerable are often hidden because he's well frankly so charming well he's a problematic character as we'll see lately 00:11:14 but he tells a good story and he does cool experiments

The Antinet’s permanent-address scheme, with its shifting nature, gives the system a unique personality. The Antinet’s unique personality stands as one of the most integral aspects of the system. A key component that enables insightful communication with a human being is the human’s personality–the person’s unique way of communicating with you based on their unique perspectives and interpretations. The Numeric-alpha addresses provide the Zettelkasten with a unique personality. Over time, unique structures form due to Numeric-alpha addresses. This is important because it allows one to communicate with the Antinet, transforming it into a communication experience with a second mind, a doppelgänger, or a ghost in a box, as Luhmann called it. (5)5 This is the entity Luhmann referred to when he titled his paper, Communicating with Noteboxes. Numeric-alpha addresses make all of this possible.

ZK II: Note 9/8 9/8 Zettelkasten 1 as a cybernetic system Combination of disorder and order, of lump formation and unpredictable combination realized in ad hoc access. Precondition: waiver of fixed order. The upstream differentiation: search aids vs. content; Registers, questions, ideas vs. Existing forms and partly makes superfluous what must be assumed in terms of inner order .

The book was reviewed in all major magazines and newspapers, sparking what historian Ronald Kline has termed a “cybernetics craze,” becoming “a staple of science fiction and a fad among artists, musicians, and intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s.”

In Hubbard’s case, the trick was to latch onto popular fads and run with them. It all started with his 1951 book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which was an unabashed parasitization—some have argued, a parody—of the 1948 zeitgeist-bending international bestseller Cybernetics, published by MITs’ prodigy-in-chief Norbert Wiener.

The unwritten rule of Cybernetics seems to be - Maintain the homeostasis until you break it for the better. #Cybernetics #Ashby

O’Rourke’s “stuff” ranges from frequent releases on Bandcamp under the “Steamroom” label, including hushed, avant-garde instrumentation and complex mosaics of sound in all its beautiful and messy forms. In that same interview, O’Rourke explained his process for creating one of those works — “Steamroom 47” — culling from a wide range of touchstones including data points in music information retrieval, cybernetics and Glenn Gould’s “Goldberg Variations.” Heady stuff.

Walter Pitts was pivotal in establishing the revolutionary notion of the brain as a computer, which was seminal in the development of computer design, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and theoretical neuroscience. He was also a participant in a large number of key advances in 20th-century science.

See it as an experiment where failure yields valuable insights 🔬.

first-order cybernetics is “the science of observed systems,” while second-order cybernetics is “the science of observing systems.

If shared conceptual models applicable to solving problems in many sciences could be found, then “by agreeing on the usefulness of these models, we get glimpses of a new lingua franca of science....

at the Second Cybernetic Conference, Pitts announced that he was writing his doctoral dissertation on probabilistic three-dimensional neural networks.

Thus formed the beginnings of the group who would become known as the cyberneticians, with Wiener, Pitts, McCulloch, Lettvin, and von Neumann its core.

ybernetics

The Practice of Change Joi's Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance PhD Dissertation.

I was surprised to encounter empathy again in the context of cybernetics. This rediscovery happened thanks to a Twitter exchange with @seungchan​. Cybernetics tells us that, in order for any one or any thing to function, it must have a relationship with other people and/or things.