Katherine Hayles argues that the development of science, cultural production and practices (e.g. literature) and subjectivity, also in the sense of an embodied subjectivity are interconnected in a feedback loop, constantly influencing each other. And that therefore an analysis of how we became to be "flows of data" as opposed to matter needs to be working on an interdisciplinary level analyzing science as well as popular culture.
She divides the development of cybernetics into three different phases featuring three different concepts, 1) homoestasis, a system that has the capacity of stabilizing itself, 2)reflexivity, a chain of systems in which something that first seemed to be outside of the system can enter the system given a changed point of observation and 3) self-evolving systems, which can either be considered as models of life or as being alive. She traces back how these ideas intersected, overlapped and finally were substituting each other.
One of the things I found most interesting about the debates she portrays was the question of whether the definition of Information should hold a capacity of meaning or not, and while there seemed to be some people who agreed with McKay's concept and concern that the idea was simply abounded due to its complexity. I wonder what information technology would have turned out to be if information had not been stripped of meaning. While I am also still wondering about her remark in relation to deconstruction and a void of meaning in regard to cybernetics.?
While at times I found that her argumentation carried a strong undercurrent of ad hominem arguments I believe that she makes a valid point in finding out how we came to a point of understanding ourselves as cyborgs/machines, which need to find out where they have misplaced their bodies.
In regard to A.M. Turning discrete and digital machines I was just in awe at him developing a vision of the little child computer which needs home-schooling because the other kids might make fun of him. Which leads me to another question how seriously did cyberneticists take themselves at the time? As so far most of this actually reads like science fiction.
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Katherine Hayles argues that the development of science, cultural production and practices (e.g. literature) and subjectivity, also in the sense of an embodied subjectivity are interconnected in a feedback loop, constantly influencing each other. And that therefore an analysis of how we became to be "flows of data" as opposed to matter needs to be working on an interdisciplinary level analyzing science as well as popular culture.
She divides the development of cybernetics into three different phases featuring three different concepts, 1) homoestasis, a system that has the capacity of stabilizing itself, 2)reflexivity, a chain of systems in which something that first seemed to be outside of the system can enter the system given a changed point of observation and 3) self-evolving systems, which can either be considered as models of life or as being alive. She traces back how these ideas intersected, overlapped and finally were substituting each other.
One of the things I found most interesting about the debates she portrays was the question of whether the definition of Information should hold a capacity of meaning or not, and while there seemed to be some people who agreed with McKay's concept and concern that the idea was simply abounded due to its complexity. I wonder what information technology would have turned out to be if information had not been stripped of meaning. While I am also still wondering about her remark in relation to deconstruction and a void of meaning in regard to cybernetics.?
While at times I found that her argumentation carried a strong undercurrent of ad hominem arguments I believe that she makes a valid point in finding out how we came to a point of understanding ourselves as cyborgs/machines, which need to find out where they have misplaced their bodies.
In regard to A.M. Turning discrete and digital machines I was just in awe at him developing a vision of the little child computer which needs home-schooling because the other kids might make fun of him. Which leads me to another question how seriously did cyberneticists take themselves at the time? As so far most of this actually reads like science fiction.
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