The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age
How did cybernetics and information theory arise, and how did they come to dominate fields as diverse as engineering, biology, and the social sciences?
Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Cybernetics—the science of communication and control as it applies to machines and to humans—originates from efforts during World War II to build automatic antiaircraft systems. Following the war, this science extended beyond military needs to examine all systems that rely on information and feedback, from the level of the cell to that of society. In The Cybernetics Moment, Ronald R. Kline, a senior historian of technology, examines the intellectual and cultural history of cybernetics and information theory, whose language of “information,” “feedback,” and “control” transformed the idiom of the sciences, hastened the development of information technologies, and laid the conceptual foundation for what we now call the Information Age.
Kline argues that, for about twenty years after 1950, the growth of cybernetics and information theory and ever-more-powerful computers produced a utopian information narrative—an enthusiasm for information science that influenced natural scientists, social scientists, engineers, humanists, policymakers, public intellectuals, and journalists, all of whom struggled to come to grips with new relationships between humans and intelligent machines.
Kline traces the relationship between the invention of computers and communication systems and the rise, decline, and transformation of cybernetics by analyzing the lives and work of such notables as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Herbert Simon. Ultimately, he reveals the crucial role played by the cybernetics moment—when cybernetics and information theory were seen as universal sciences—in setting the stage for our current preoccupation with information technologies.
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The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age
How did cybernetics and information theory arise, and how did they come to dominate fields as diverse as engineering, biology, and the social sciences?
Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Cybernetics—the science of communication and control as it applies to machines and to humans—originates from efforts during World War II to build automatic antiaircraft systems. Following the war, this science extended beyond military needs to examine all systems that rely on information and feedback, from the level of the cell to that of society. In The Cybernetics Moment, Ronald R. Kline, a senior historian of technology, examines the intellectual and cultural history of cybernetics and information theory, whose language of “information,” “feedback,” and “control” transformed the idiom of the sciences, hastened the development of information technologies, and laid the conceptual foundation for what we now call the Information Age.
Kline argues that, for about twenty years after 1950, the growth of cybernetics and information theory and ever-more-powerful computers produced a utopian information narrative—an enthusiasm for information science that influenced natural scientists, social scientists, engineers, humanists, policymakers, public intellectuals, and journalists, all of whom struggled to come to grips with new relationships between humans and intelligent machines.
Kline traces the relationship between the invention of computers and communication systems and the rise, decline, and transformation of cybernetics by analyzing the lives and work of such notables as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Herbert Simon. Ultimately, he reveals the crucial role played by the cybernetics moment—when cybernetics and information theory were seen as universal sciences—in setting the stage for our current preoccupation with information technologies.
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The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age
How did cybernetics and information theory arise, and how did they come to dominate fields as diverse as engineering, biology, and the social sciences?
Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Cybernetics—the science of communication and control as it applies to machines and to humans—originates from efforts during World War II to build automatic antiaircraft systems. Following the war, this science extended beyond military needs to examine all systems that rely on information and feedback, from the level of the cell to that of society. In The Cybernetics Moment, Ronald R. Kline, a senior historian of technology, examines the intellectual and cultural history of cybernetics and information theory, whose language of “information,” “feedback,” and “control” transformed the idiom of the sciences, hastened the development of information technologies, and laid the conceptual foundation for what we now call the Information Age.
Kline argues that, for about twenty years after 1950, the growth of cybernetics and information theory and ever-more-powerful computers produced a utopian information narrative—an enthusiasm for information science that influenced natural scientists, social scientists, engineers, humanists, policymakers, public intellectuals, and journalists, all of whom struggled to come to grips with new relationships between humans and intelligent machines.
Kline traces the relationship between the invention of computers and communication systems and the rise, decline, and transformation of cybernetics by analyzing the lives and work of such notables as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Herbert Simon. Ultimately, he reveals the crucial role played by the cybernetics moment—when cybernetics and information theory were seen as universal sciences—in setting the stage for our current preoccupation with information technologies.
Ronald R. Kline is the Bovay Professor in History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University. He is the author of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist and Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 War and Information Theory 9
2 Circular Causality 37
3 The Cybernetics Craze 68
4 The Information Bandwagon 102
5 Humans as Machines 135
6 Machines as Human 152
7 Cybernetics in Crisis 179
8 Inventing an Information Age 202
9 Two Cybernetic Frontiers 229
Abbreviations 245
Notes 249
Index 325
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
The Cybernetics Moment relies on a deep and thorough mining of primary historical sources, coupled with a broad and contextual review of the secondary historical literature and an appropriate level of attention to related popular culture narratives. With both a historian's attention to detail and contingency and a sociologist's understanding of discourse and meaning, Kline demonstrates in this rich story that there is more than we thought behind the decades-long adoption of computational models, techniques, and visions by the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.—Gregory J. Downey, University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television
Gregory J. Downey
The Cybernetics Moment relies on a deep and thorough mining of primary historical sources, coupled with a broad and contextual review of the secondary historical literature and an appropriate level of attention to related popular culture narratives. With both a historian's attention to detail and contingency and a sociologist's understanding of discourse and meaning, Kline demonstrates in this rich story that there is more than we thought behind the decades-long adoption of computational models, techniques, and visions by the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
