Albert Mueller’s Paper Proposal

Avec un „s“: Histories of Cybernetics

In 1999 French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard published his four volume work “Histoire(s) du Cinéma”, one of the key publications contributing to a developed theory of post-modernism. Godard pretended and presented a version of cinema history (a key media of the 20 century) “with an “s”.

The 50th anniversary of the American Society of Cybernetics seems to be am ideal occasion to draw on the following topics

Is there a significant difference between a North-American development and a European development of cybernetics as a field (that would be the Pickering thesis)?

Is there a significant differentiation among European scientific cultures (e.g. East and West Germany, France or Britain, the Ukraine and Sweden etc)?

Is there a special impact by European (and partly forced) immigration in the context of WW II (the Umpleby-Thesis, as I call it)?

Is there an ignored tradition in the histories of cybernetics?

How could North-American, Asian, and European traditions of cybernetics be related?

What does it make for the ASC to produce an archive that earns its name? What should we do to create it?

Cybernetic traditions:

  • 3) Experimental epistemology; constructivism; philosophy of science
  • 9) Social sciences

1 thought on “Albert Mueller’s Paper Proposal

  1. Ranulph Glanville

    It seems to me that there are 3 separate sections here.

    I’m not sure I see the relevance of the Godard volumes.

    I see the questions about different types of approach to cybernetics. I give them some credence, but I think that they are also very politically motivated. There is interesting material here, but I get no sense of what you will do with it. I will be interested to find out.

    I do not see the connection to the question of what an ASC archive should be, at all. I don’t mean it’s not an important question, I just don’t see ho wit fits in here.

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