PODCAST

Cybernetics and Society - 25 April 2017 - The Disunity of Cybernetics and the Digital

Professor Ronald Kline, STS (Cornell)Discussant: Dr Richard Staley (HPS, Cambridge) AbstractThis seminar will focus on two works in progress: "Why the Disunity of Cybernetics Matters to the History of the Human Sciences in the United States, 1940-1980" (which is an extension of research in Professor Kline's book book Cybernetics Moment); and "Inventing an Analog Past and a Digital Future in Computing" (which is a draft of a chapter on a book in progress on the history of digitalization). The seminar will tie these two papers together under the rubric of “disunity of science” in order to argue that the multiple interpretations of cybernetics and the term “digital” are important to understanding their past (and present and future).The paper on cybernetics discusses disunity in regard to first-order cybernetics (in the work of such figures as Karl Deutsch in political science, George Miller in psychology and Herbert Simon in management science) and the revision of the field kn