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I vaguely wonder sometimes as to what happened to cybernetics. It seems to have been in vogue in the 70s, and sci-fi authors that were able to read stuff on it
by aasasd 6y ago
I vaguely wonder sometimes as to what happened to cybernetics. It seems to have been in vogue in the 70s, and sci-fi authors that were able to read stuff on it (like Lem) placed high hopes in it. Then, poof, gone.
Though, to my uninformed self it seems that other more specific and down-to-earth disciplines just stepped up and remade the field into a dozen different specialized topics that are easier to reason about technically.
- Barrin92 6y agoI think a lot of good ideas out of cybernetics have silently been absorbed within disciplines, but culturally i think the politics and free-market disciples of the 80s onward largely killed it off in general public discourse. If you look at the application of systems thinking and cybernetics to ecology (Donella H. Meadows; limits to growth etc), or Russ Ackoff (stakeholdership and interdisciplinary management over specialisation and monolithic business goals) I think it's clear why it died off or maybe more accurately, killed off.