COMM525/Socialpsychological, Cybernetics, and Systems Theory
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Social-psychological (45 min)
- Synthesis overview of readings, themes
- Reaction I
- Reaction II
5 minute break
Cybernetics, Systems (45 min)
- Synthesis overview of readings, themes (Ritesh)
- Reaction I (Kevin)
- Reaction II (Poong)
- ___ (Nan)
10 minute break
Lightly moderated discussion (45 min)
- Seeded by...
- questions from our group
- questions from class reactions
Question samples
- What are the distinctions among systems and networks?
- What Would Burke Say? (WWBS)
- Narrative implications...
- Can people be explained through psychological mechanisms?
- Are there universal mechanisms that explain people's behavior?
- What is the role of culture in people's behavior?
wiener
haraway
nelson
Vannevar Bush
Bush, Vannevar. (1945) "As We May Think." Atlantic Monthly, July.
- Memex
- Links among research material
- Analog computer
Norbert Wiener
Cybernetics: Control and communication
- Assistive technologies, man-machine systems
- Autonomous, adaptive technologies
- Self-regulating weapons systems
- Automatic aiming and firing of anti-aircraft guns
- 75mm Skysweeper
- Self-organizing drone fighters
- Incorporated in the development of systems, neural networks, A.I., cognitive science
- Interdisciplinary
Ethics of cybernetics
Wiener, Norbert. (1947) "A scientist rebels." Atlantic Monthly, 179, 46.
Wiener, Norbert. (1950) The human use of human beings: Cybernetics and society. Doubleday Books.
Conway, Flo & Siegelman, Jim. (2004) Dark hero of the information age: In search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics. Basic Books.
"In October 1945, two months after the Second World War ended, Wiener vowed to remove himself and his knowledge from any connection to the next war - even if that mean quitting mathematics and science altogether." (Conway 238)
"Wiener's new policy of scientific non-cooperation was endorsed by Einstein at Princeton. "I greatly admire adn approve the attitude of Professor Wiener," Einstein told the press, adding, "I believe that a similar attitude on the part of all the prominent scientists in this country would contribute much toward solving the urgent problem of national security."
Claude Shannon
Binary theory
Claude Shannon, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits," unpublished MS Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aug. 10, 1937.
- Most influential Master's thesis ever
Information theory
- Applied mathematical theory of communication, 1948
- Signal, noise
- Related to challenges faced by Wiener of communication in cybernetic engineering
- Redundancy
Licklider at the edges of military spending
- 1962, head of Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA
Man-computer symbiosis
"Men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking." (Licklider 1960)
- Licklider, J.C.R., "Man-Computer Symbiosis", IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HFE-1, 4-11, Mar 1960.
Real-time personal computing
Douglas Engelbart
Engelbart, D.C., "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework", Summary Report AFOSR-3233, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, CA, Oct 1962.
- Augmentation Research Center (ARC), Standford Research Institute (SRI)
- oN-Line System
- Real-time computing, implementation of the feedback loop
Ivan Sutherland
Sketchpad, 1963
- PhD thesis: Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System
- First program to implement a GUI
- Lincoln Lab Sketchpad Demo, 0:46 -
Complex adaptive systems in the wild
Google spider, web crawler
Brin, S. and Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1-7):107-117.
Ignoring the full-text parsing, and focusing just on the URLs,
- Recursive indexing of hyperlinks
- Result of relationships is a semantic model that reveals patterns, clusters, resource niches
