ASC Wavefront: Contributions

The actions and interactions of ASC and its members constitute the 'wavefront' of cybernetics as we move into the 21st Century.

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS

WAVEFRONT

ASC contributions to the promotion and evolution of cybernetics...

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CONTRIBUTIONS

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ABOUT THESE CONTRIBUTIONS

ASC members have always made contributions to the corpus of material on cybernetics, sytems, and related topics.

This page is an entry point to a sample of such contributions.

The contributions are of diverse types and were done at a variety of times.

Perspectives on Cybernetics

Multiple Authors
1997-1999

In anticipation of the 1997 ASC Conference a number of perspectives on cybernetics were solicited for the website. Respondents contributed their thoughts on the intersection between cybernetics and other fields, the effect cybernetics thinking has had on understanding certain phenomena, and other topics.

Some additional perspectives were contributed by ASC members after the 1997 conference.

These perspectives have been compiled into the Perspectives Page here within the ASC Wavefront.

Evil and Ethics (The Story)

Multiple Authors
1999 - 2001

In 1999, the ASC held a syntegration on the question: "What does Cybernetics have to contribute to the 21st century?" One of the questions pursued had to do with the potential for the deconstruction of racism based on the initial starting statement: "Cybernetics provides a language theater for non-violent, non-oppressive engagement with world racism."

Over a period of four months after the conference, this question was pursued on the Internet in the form of a discussion on Evil and Ethics. The record of that conversation can be accessed via the Conversations Page here within ASC Wavefront.

This online discussion eventually changed into an experiment in writing a collective story...an activity which shifted the interactions into the poiesis of imagination and, through shifting from an "artificial" conversation to an exercise in writing together a new story, generated a new collective space. This space lacked the compelling compositional quality of stories told as a dynamic temporal experience but was within the domain of written story, created to be read by the individual in an atemporal manner through which each reader constructs a domain of shared understanding through the structure of literate narrative.

View the Evil and Ethics Narrative

ASC Conference Contributions

Among the most productive venues for ASC member contributions are the ASC conferences and other sponsorted events. A sampling of the breadth of such contributions can be obtained by checking the legacy materials generated for and by the recent ASC conferences:

2001 ASC Conference (Vancouver): The 2001 conference was structured with primary regard to presentation of abstracts leading to feedback to be employed in the generation of papers. The set of abstracts and the eventual papers submitted by 2001 conference participants can be found on the 2001 ASC Conference Legacy Page.
2002 ASC Conference (Santa Cruz): The 2002 conference was structured so as to prioritize personal presentations to a diverse audience. Some of the documentary materials employed or submitted by 2002 conference participants can be found on the 2002 ASC Conference Legacy Page.

Disciplinary Matrices (for notable people in cybernetics)

George Washington University
1970's - 1990's

Beginning in the late 1970's, Stuart Umpleby supervised a series of George Washington University class assignments in which students analyzed the writings of notable cyberneticians and systems theorists. The resultant analyses were termed "disciplinary matrices," after an idea in the postscript to Thomas S. Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Organizing a given theorist's key ideas into a "disciplinary matrix" can be thought of as a structured alternative to a dictionary or encyclopedia entry.

The entry point for these archived disciplinary matrices is:

http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/people/dpmatrix.html

A History of Cybernetics (Slide Show)

George Washington University
(Former ASC Website)
1982

This slide show provides an introduction to some foundational ideas in cybernetics and an overview of the field's history. The presentation was originally produced in 1982 by Katherine Becker and Marcella Slaboski based on lectures by Stuart Umpleby.

In the 1990's this slide show was turned into a WWW presentation. The original Web version of this presentation is available at:

http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/slide.html