Cybernetics
As the Second World War was reaching its end, cybernetics grew up in the environment of a group investigating problems of communication systems and anti-aircraft targeting systems. The last problem was Norbert Wiener concerns about a computing pioneer named Vannevar Bush, in 1940. Wiener was a physicist and mathematician who meant that object’s trajectory and speed must be calculated in order to target a moving object. Always attack the enemy where it will be. This theory is for example used by hunters, who have to calculate where the dove will be by the time the bullet reaches it. Another cyberneticist named John von Neuman, who was a computing machine pioneer, worked together with an economic theorist named Oscar Morgenstern. Together they developed an influential model of economic behavior known as ‘games theory’, which is today often used in strategic decisions in the daily social life. And finally, a cybernetic named Claude Shannon, who was in common with them all, worked with the theoretical design and practical installation of maximally efficient communication systems. His model has been used in the media, but more as propaganda than communication since it concerns only about the successful and one-way sort of communication. In the end it’s necessary to think of all communication as verbal and symbolic, and look at the response and reaction to understand the real message.
Readings
Lister, M 2009, New Media: a critical introduction, London: Routledge, 237-242, 281-283.
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