New Media Theory 2

• Norbert Wiener "Men, Machines, and the World About": Origin of cybernetics emerges from "two converging themes of ideas" focused around automatic computing and antiaircraft defense. Negative feedback and homeostasis--machine capabilities inspired by biology and medicine. First Industrial Revolution uses machine's to replace man's energy (the engine). New Industrial Revolution to use machine to replace man's judgment (machines that can learn). The moral problem of magic and the danger of "worship of the gadget."

• J. C. R. Licklidder "Man-Computer Symbiosis": Cooperation and "close coupling" between humans and machines. Division of labor: men will "set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations." Machines will do "routinizable work." Symbiosis to require "developments in time sharing, memory hardware and software, programming languages, and human-computer interface (HCI). Cf. Wiener (cybernetics).

• J. C. R. Licklidder "The Computer as a Communication Device": Communication as a process in which on participant knows something that he did not know before communication. Communication entails a reconciliation of disparate models/patterns. Economic feasibility of networking computers. Possibility of new kinds of networked communities. Evaluation of social impact.

• Katherine Hayles "Intro and Ch. 1 of How We Became Posthuman". Historical, narrative account of the separation of information and embodiment and the creation of the cyborg. Liberal humanist subject vs. posthuman. Development of cybernetics in stages defined by homeostasis, reflexivity, and emergence of self-evolving programs. "Platonic Forehand" and "Platonic Backhand" approaches to theorization. Technological development as "seriation." Adoption of technology and "skeuomorphs". Methodological focus on literature as a means of embodiment and addressing the ethical and cultural demands of studying cybernetics.

Definition of the Posthuman:

1. Privileging of information over material instantiation

2. Consideration of consciousness as the seat of identity

3. Regarding the body as a prosthesis (or even an ornament)

4. Configuration of the human body as seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines--denying an essential difference between cybernetic mechanism and biological organism

Cf. Moravee (Morvaee test vs. Turing test), Wiener (Macy conference, origins of cybernetics), Kubie (psychoanalysis, subjectivity, compare with Austin on utterances), Shannon (information as pattern, vs. McKay on the definition of communication), Bolter and Grusin (hypermediacy)