The cybernetics movements - Реферат

THE CYBERNETICS MOVEMENT (essay) THE ORIGIN OF CYBERNETICS Cybernetics as a field of scientific activity in the United States began in the years after World War II. Between 1946 and 1953 the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation sponsored a series of conferences in New York City on the subject of “Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems.” The chair of the conferences was Warren McCulloch of MIT. Only the last five conferences were recorded in written proceedings. These have now been republished (Pias, 2004). After Norbert Wiener published his book Cybernetics in 1948, Heinz von Foerster suggested that the name of the conferences be changed to “Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems.” In this way the meetings became known as the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics. In subsequent years cybernetics influenced many academic fields - computer science, electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, management, family therapy, political science, sociology, biology, psychology, epistemology, music, etc. Cybernetics has been defined in many ways: as control and communication in animals, machines, and social systems; as a general theory of regulation; as the art of effective organization; as the art of constructing defensible metaphors; etc. The term “cybernetics” has been associated with many stimulating conferences, yet cybernetics has not thrived as an organized scientific field within American universities. Although a few cybernetics programs were established on U. S. campuses, these programs usually did not survive the retirement or death of their founder. Relative to other academic societies the meetings on cybernetics tended to have more than the usual controversy, probably due to the wide variety of disciplines represented by those in attendance. Indeed Margaret Mead wrote an article, “Cybernetics of Cybernetics,” in the proceedings of the first conference of the American Society for Cybernetics, in which she suggested that cyberneticians should apply their knowledge of communication to how they communicate with each other. (Mead, 1968) INTERPRETATIONS OF CYBERNETICS Not everyone originally connected with cybernetics continued to use the term: 1. The cybernetics of Allen Turing and John von Neumann became computer science, AI, and robotics. Turing formulated the concept of a Universal Turing Machine - a mathematical description of a computational device. He also devised the Turing test - a way of determining whether a computer program displays “artificial intelligence.” The related professional societies are the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. 2. Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics became part of electrical engineering. This branch of cybernetics includes control mechanisms from thermostats to automated assembly lines. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, including the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, is the main professional society. The principal concern is systems engineering. 3. Warren McCulloch’s cybernetics became “second order cybernetics.” McCulloch chaired the Macy Foundation conferences. He sought to understand the functioning of the nervous system and thereby the operation of the brain and the mind. The American Society for Cybernetics has continued this tradition. It is the only one of the three groups that seeks to promote cybernetics as a transdisciplinary field. Other, smaller groups can also be identified. For example, a control systems group within psychology was generated by the work of William Powers (1973). (von Foerster and Zopf, 1962) As a result of an invitation made at this conference, Ross Ashby moved from England to Illinois. The work on self-organizing systems was a forerunner to the field of study now called “complexity.” Although the Macy Foundation Conferences ended in 1953, the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) was not founded until 1964. This seems rather late. Actually the founding of the ASC was in part the result of the Cold War. During the Presidential campaign in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected, there was talk about a “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union. Not long thereafter there began to be talk of a “cybernetics gap.” Some people in the Soviet Union thought cybernetics would provide the theory they needed to operate their centrally planned economy. Consequently the Soviet government generously funded cybernetics research. Some people in the U.S. government then feared that the U.S. might fall behind in a critical area of research, if this country did not also fund cybernetics research. In Washington, DC, a cybernetics luncheon club was meeting. The participants included Paul Henshaw, Atomic Energy Commission; Carl Hammer, Univac; Jack Ford, CIA; Douglas Knight, IBM; Walter Munster; Bill Moore, lawyer. This group founded the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC). The founding cere