3 ms·

> Finally, because of his emphasis on control, Wiener could not foresee a technological world in which innovation and self-organization bubble up from the botto

> Finally, because of his emphasis on control, Wiener could not foresee a technological world in which innovation and self-organization bubble up from the bottom rather than being imposed from the top. I think this misunderstands the meaning of "control" in a control system / cybernetic sense, mistaking it for a more popular sense of the term. It's the difference between control-as-behaviour and control-as-power. The latter is strictly about humans, the former can include power structures but extends to any circular causality with at least one balancing loop. Cybernetics thinkers were well aware of emergence and multi-layered autonomy. Some of them made it a central concept (eg Stafford Beer).

atoav 7y ago
This was my first thought, even in his simpler examples Wiener doesn't use control in this colloquial connotation, but rather as a thing that helps to shape the whole system with its feedback cycles.
cma 7y ago
> Wiener could not foresee a technological world in which innovation and self-organization bubble up from the bottom rather than being imposed from the top. His book Cybernetics even has a whole chapter on random circuits being able to self-organize with some kind of learning algorithm for adjusting weights.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  It sort of makes you wonder what "self-organization from the bottom" is supposed to mean, if it's not some kind of control system. When entities specialize into particular roles in a system, there's a control relationship between them even without any central authority. The cybernetic definition of control which covers self-organization in technology is the same one which includes self-organization in cells, brain structures, and even social groups.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mehh 7y ago
It is weird how off that statement is, its practically the opposite of the philosophy of Cybernetics!
Bartweiss 7y ago
Ironically, the Soviet cyberneticists (Kantorovich and especially Glushkov) were decried as secretly capitalistic for not employing enough central control! They were still working on a planned economy, but their goal was to create a system where economic components could send signals to dictate their requirements upwards, essentially self-organizing necessary inputs. (The differences between that and capitalism being that a central administrator could set priorities, and the value of final goods wasn't to be determined by "what people are willing to pay" but "what's been allotted".) Any system that can adjust its behavior to circumstances involves 'control'. Really, anything that responds to stimuli at all has some control component. Confusing that with centralization or a lack of autonomy suggests that Lloyd is missing something pretty fundamental about the history of cybernetics.

atoav 7y ago

This was my first thought, even in his simpler examples Wiener doesn't use control in this colloquial connotation, but rather as a thing that helps to shape the whole system with its feedback cycles.

cma 7y ago

> Wiener could not foresee a technological world in which innovation and self-organization bubble up from the bottom rather than being imposed from the top. His book Cybernetics even has a whole chapter on random circuits being able to self-organize with some kind of learning algorithm for adjusting weights.

Bartweiss 7y ago
It sort of makes you wonder what "self-organization from the bottom" is supposed to mean, if it's not some kind of control system. When entities specialize into particular roles in a system, there's a control relationship between them even without any central authority. The cybernetic definition of control which covers self-organization in technology is the same one which includes self-organization in cells, brain structures, and even social groups.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mehh 7y ago

It is weird how off that statement is, its practically the opposite of the philosophy of Cybernetics!

Bartweiss 7y ago

Ironically, the Soviet cyberneticists (Kantorovich and especially Glushkov) were decried as secretly capitalistic for not employing enough central control! They were still working on a planned economy, but their goal was to create a system where economic components could send signals to dictate their requirements upwards, essentially self-organizing necessary inputs. (The differences between that and capitalism being that a central administrator could set priorities, and the value of final goods wasn't to be determined by "what people are willing to pay" but "what's been allotted".) Any system that can adjust its behavior to circumstances involves 'control'. Really, anything that responds to stimuli at all has some control component. Confusing that with centralization or a lack of autonomy suggests that Lloyd is missing something pretty fundamental about the history of cybernetics.