egle rindzeviciute

The lecture by Jon Agar and Jacob Ward (University College London) will be open to all free of charge. Further information, including an abstract, is available here. Convenors Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (University of Cambridge) Poornima Paidipaty (University of Cambridge) Egle Rindzeviciute (Kingston University) Summary As more and more of our collective activities (education, pension planning, health management, environmental protection) are mediated by rapidly moving markets and computerized technologies, uncertainties abound. Such visions of a technologically mediated — and seemingly limitless — future are not new. They echo the technological futurism popularized in the middle of the twentieth century by cybernetics. Beginning with the 1948 publication of Norbert Wiener’s book, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, cybernetics inaugurated path-breaking scientific explorations of feedback and self-regulation in biological and mechanical systems. It initiated an ambitious set of technoscientific discussions that provocatively transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries. Cyberneticians argued that patterns of feedback and self-regulation were key to understanding the operation of anti-aircraft guns, the erratic movements of victims of brain injury, the dynamics of group psychology, the relationship of human societies to their natural environment and much more. These insights furnished profound reassessments of notions of agency, of distinctions between the human and the non-human and of models of learning and memory. The scholarship on cybernetics has, however, only recently began to trace the legacies of this movement beyond the Cold War era. By providing insights into the enduring impact of mid-century techno-science on our contemporary information landscape, 'The Afterlives of Cybernetics' conference will contribute to a more thorough history of the present by helping us understand the antagonisms and synergies that animate the multiple offshoots of cybernetic thought, including operations research, AI, rational choice theory, predictive analysis, design thinking, behavioural economics and risk management. This in turn will lay the foundations for a better understanding of how these knowledge practices allow us to project, imagine and engage with uncertain and unbounded futures.

The lecture by Jon Agar and Jacob Ward (University College London) will be open to all free of charge. Further information, including an abstract, is available here. Convenors Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (University of Cambridge) Poornima Paidipaty (University of Cambridge) Egle Rindzeviciute (Kingston University) Summary As more and more of our collective activities (education, pension planning, health management, environmental protection) are mediated by rapidly moving markets and computerized technologies, uncertainties abound. Such visions of a technologically mediated — and seemingly limitless — future are not new. They echo the technological futurism popularized in the middle of the twentieth century by cybernetics. Beginning with the 1948 publication of Norbert Wiener’s book, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, cybernetics inaugurated path-breaking scientific explorations of feedback and self-regulation in biological and mechanical systems. It initiated an ambitious set of technoscientific discussions that provocatively transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries. Cyberneticians argued that patterns of feedback and self-regulation were key to understanding the operation of anti-aircraft guns, the erratic movements of victims of brain injury, the dynamics of group psychology, the relationship of human societies to their natural environment and much more. These insights furnished profound reassessments of notions of agency, of distinctions between the human and the non-human and of models of learning and memory. The scholarship on cybernetics has, however, only recently began to trace the legacies of this movement beyond the Cold War era. By providing insights into the enduring impact of mid-century techno-science on our contemporary information landscape, 'The Afterlives of Cybernetics' conference will contribute to a more thorough history of the present by helping us understand the antagonisms and synergies that animate the multiple offshoots of cybernetic thought, including operations research, AI, rational choice theory, predictive analysis, design thinking, behavioural economics and risk management. This in turn will lay the foundations for a better understanding of how these knowledge practices allow us to project, imagine and engage with uncertain and unbounded futures.

Egle Rindzeviciute (Lecturer, Kingston University London) Discussant: Franziska Exeler (University of Cambridge) Cybernetics and systems analysis – both important contributors to our contemporary information architecture – have been the subjects of highly critical historical analyses. Scholars such as Peter Galison, S. Amadae and Paul Edwards argue that the techno-sciences of cybernetics were instrumental in the development of Cold War military-industrial operations and influenced high modernist fantasies of top-down control. Yet, in her fascinating new book, The Power of Systems, Dr. Egle Rindzeviciute examines a little known period of Soviet-American cooperation to argue for an alternative political history – one that asserts an anti-totalitarian character to the development of systems and policy sciences during the late Cold War. Focusing her study on the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Dr. Rindzeviciute’s work explores a rare zone of freedom, communication and negotiation. Her research demonstrates how computer modeling, cybernetics and systems analysis challenged Soviet governance by undermining the linear notions of control on which Soviet governance was based and creating new objects and techniques of government.