[HN Gopher] The cybernetics scare and the origins of the Interne...
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The cybernetics scare and the origins of the Internet (2009)
Author : nanna
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-09-27 13:32 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (balticworlds.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (balticworlds.com)
| rbanffy wrote:
| I found it interesting that Stafford Beer was only mentioned in
| the references section.
| nanna wrote:
| Since he had nothing to do with Soviet cybernetics or the
| invention of the US internet?
| rbanffy wrote:
| I somehow doubt his work was unknown in the Soviet Union, as
| he worked in the Cybersyn project in Chile, before the US-
| sponsored military coup ensured it'd not happen.
| masijo wrote:
| If someone's interested in Cybernetics, I recommend to look at
| Paul Cockshott's work; mainly his book "Towards a New Socialism"
| were he explains why and how computers could be used in economy
| planification. Really interesting stuff, no matter where you sit
| on the "political spectrum" or whatever.
|
| Direct link:
| http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/new_soci...
| SaberTail wrote:
| Francis Spufford's _Red Plenty_ is a interesting, semi-fictional
| book about this optimistic period of cybernetics in the Soviet
| Union, and why the dream ultimately didn 't come true.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Some interesting excerpts:
|
| ". . . In their view, machines, organisms, and human society were
| all seen as self-organizing control systems, which, operating in
| a certain environment, pursued their goals (hitting a target,
| increasing order, achieving better organization, or reaching the
| state of equilibrium) by communicating with this environment,
| that is, sending signals and receiving information about the
| results of their actions through feedback loops."
|
| That's probably an overly simplistic view of biology and
| ecosystems.
|
| ". . . Wiener was deeply critical of capitalist America. He did
| not believe in the ability of the "invisible hand" of free market
| to establish an economic and social equilibrium, or homeostasis
| in cybernetic terms. His social outlook was overtly pessimistic:
| "There is no homeostasis whatever. We are involved in the
| business cycles of boom and failure, in the successions of
| dictatorship and revolution, in the wars which everyone loses."
|
| Not much has changed eh?
|
| ". . .He believed that describing society in cybernetic terms as
| a self-regulating device would make it clear that controlling the
| means of communication was "the most effective and most
| important" anti-homeostatic factor, which could drive society out
| of equilibrium.16 Wiener noted that on both sides of the Atlantic
| "political leaders may attempt to control their populations" by
| manipulating information flows, and argued that "it is no
| accident that Russia has had its Berias and that we have our
| McCarthys".17 His views of capitalism and communism were best
| summarized by his colleague and friend Dirk Struik: "plague on
| both your houses"."
|
| Now about mass consolidation of corporate media and social media
| platforms, with fairly arbitrary censorship and an obsession with
| 'control of the message' in government-corporate circles, ahem.
| Antitrust for media sounds like a very good idea.
| mc32 wrote:
| Apparently the scare part was a pre-emptive attempt by Stalinists
| who saw Kibernetika as a threat to Workers -their bread and
| butter. So it was suppressed and derided ideologically.
|
| After the Stalinists, Khrushchev sought to leverage Cybernetics
| and use it everywhere, so much was their propaganda the US took
| their rhetoric as actual policy and feared falling behind in the
| Cybernetics race.
|
| After Stalinism Kibernetika was rehabilitated:
|
| >"In the early 1950s, on the wave of Stalinist ideological
| campaigns against Western influence in Soviet science, the Soviet
| academic and popular press attacked cybernetics as "a modish
| pseudo-science" and "a reactionary imperialist utopia". Soviet
| critics used all tools in their rhetorical arsenal: philosophical
| arguments (accusing cybernetics of both idealistic and
| mechanistic deviations from dialectical materialism),
| sociological analysis (labeling cybernetics "a technocratic
| theory" whose goal was to replace striking workers with obedient
| machines), and moral invectives (alleging that cyberneticians
| aspired to replace conscience-laden soldiers with "indifferent
| metallic monsters"). Like any propaganda, the anti-cybernetics
| discourse was full of contradictions. Critics called cybernetics
| "not only an ideological weapon of imperialist reaction but also
| a tool for accomplishing its aggressive military plans", thus
| portraying it both as a pseudo-science and as an efficient tool
| in the construction of modern automated weapons."
| dogman144 wrote:
| Cybernetics, as a search query, opens up access to a great
| collection of tech-critique mixed with philosophy and solid
| intellectual rigor. 100% recommend checking it out. "The
| Cybernetic Hypothesis" is a good place to start (MIT Press has
| it).
|
| "Cybernetics" as a descriptor went out of style by the 2000's I
| think. Prior to that, you can find writing from
| ideologues/philosophers/academics who grasped what tech would
| look like and put it through analytical frameworks wrt its impact
| on systems outside of tech. I think they were able to do this
| because by the 1960's, the capabilities of tech were becoming
| clear if to someone in the right networks or from the right
| background. Pair that with the 1950's-1980's generating some
| heavyweight philosophers like Albert Camus (although idk if he
| ever wrote about tech) or writers like Huxley who blur the line a
| bit, and you can find some really interesting insight on tech.
|
| The cybernetics writers did a good job of understanding that tech
| would change everything in some fundamental and abstract sense,
| so they focused meta-analysis to cohere the "so what" of it all
| (impact on ethics, governance, politics, sociology). An example
| is analyzing the trend in tech of `if system is discovered ->
| then attempt to codify and automate it.` This provides some
| scaffolding for thinking through AI-driven governance, for
| instance, but with a little more intellectual rigor than a
| substack article. It's similar to the value-add of reading really
| good sci-fi, but this time from Camus or Nietzche versus William
| Gibson or Neil Stephenson.
|
| If you feel that our times warrants some level of serious
| analysis, find like there's a general void of comprehension
| outside of small pockets and policy circles, and therefore decide
| to settle for pulling insights from a sort of disappointing blend
| of cypherpunk writing, Peter Thiel-isms, Lex Fridman interviews,
| and Andrew Yang because at least "they get the big picture of
| what tech will do": writing on cybernetics is good to check out.
| nanna wrote:
| Start from the horse's mouth, either Wiener's book Cybernetics,
| or better yet his "layman's introduction", The Human Use of
| Human Beings.
|
| If you're interested in the history then Ronald Kline's The
| Cybernetic Moment (John Hopkins, 2015) is the cannonical
| American history, and Slava Gerovitch's From Newspeak to
| Cyberspeak (MIT, 2002) is the Soviet. Eden Medina's Cybernetic
| Revolutionaries (MIT, 2002) covers its role in Allende's Chile,
| but compared to the US or Soviet this is marginal.
|
| The Cybernetic Hypothesis is a very violent reading, definitely
| wouldn't recommend as a first port of call.
| jonjacky wrote:
| Another history is _Dark Hero of the Information Age: In
| Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics_ by Flo
| Conway and Jim Siegelman, from 2005.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Thanks for the recs both.
|
| To your last point, it's an interesting read, and ya
| something else to start with might be a good call.
|
| I found it in sort an alternative book shop (think MIT
| Press publications that veer more radical, types of books
| you're stoked can still get published) in a major coastal
| metro. I was super interested to find a technical-ish book
| in that setting, so I picked up as I was having trouble
| finding anyone talking about tech in the way I thought it
| warranted and hoped this could be it (that aforementioned
| void).
|
| The book's approach to language and arguments (reads like a
| Camus book, not sure what this style of writing is called
| though, "academic" doesn't do it justice I think) paired
| with really clear takes on tech is striking. Maybe intense
| for a first read though, to your point. Also I'm only
| halfway through so TBD on what shows up in the second half
| of it; I might have recommended a wild read haha.
| polypodiopsi wrote:
| I strongly recommend the essay of carribean posthumanist (avant
| la lettre) Sylvia Wynter "the cerrmony must be found" if you
| are interested in some of the consequences in philosophy (or
| rather theory since there is a tendency to universalisation as
| put forward in the article here) in the cybernetic episteme.
|
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
| dogman144 wrote:
| Cool stuff, skimming the first few pages look great. Thanks
| [deleted]
| maxbendick wrote:
| Excellent recommendation. I'll add Designing Freedom by
| Stafford Beer as a great intro. Available as a book and a
| series of free lectures here:
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1973-cbc-massey-lectures-...
|
| You hit the nail on the head with the "disappointing blend"
| btw. So much thought coming from tech circles is lacking - it's
| often over-intuitive, self-unaware, and ahistorical.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Thank you on both!
|
| It causes me distress that there isn't a solid discussion
| ecosystem today that (a) captures it better than "the blend",
| (b) is easily available to the public, and (c) is a bit more
| humane than sovereign individual concepts haha, i.e. western
| democracy is still around in "what's next."
|
| I wonder if, or how, this would ever get bootstrapped, and it
| feels critical that it is somehow. I know I, and probably
| everyone else, can list many of the reasons for this
| (Facebook distraction and... and...). What's disquieting is
| the list of entities who were not distracted and now apply
| the implications of cybernetics - if you can phrase it like
| that.
|
| - RU via thinkers like A. Dugin seem to grasp it and apply it
| in a fairy adversarial way to western ideology.
|
| - Downstream, Dugin is an input that folks like Bannon draw
| from the US.
|
| - Intel agencies seem to grasp it, and while I don't have
| knee-jerk negative views of those entities, equal
| understanding across democratically elected bodies and the
| agencies seems important.
|
| - CN grasps it and is building the governance systems they
| decide proper for what's next. This technical approach is
| getting exported.
|
| - Lastly, activist groups across the spectrum natively sense
| the seams present in how western systems were bolted onto
| tech's impacts, and opportunities for instability exist and
| are executed on.
|
| That's all to say, and hopefully by not too much of a rant,
| that it's critical that our public feedback loops find a way
| to account for how a huge spectrum of systems in our world
| have changed in a fundamental way because of tech, and we
| don't try to do so only by bolting on old solutions from the
| pre-tech era. Very few entities seem to offer clear analysis
| of this excluding reading cybernetics, humanities<>comp sci
| hybrid thinkers, and topics related to the above.
|
| Aside - Yang felt more like a figure the tech world would put
| forward as a solution, but as a result he felt too self-
| referential to the problem to be a good representative. but,
| I wonder if he is a spark that leads towards more tech-
| informed public discourse.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _" Cybernetics" as a descriptor went out of style by the
| 2000's I think._
|
| A bit off topic, but in the 'science of automatic control
| systems' sense -- one could argue today it could be pronounced
| 'kubernetes'.
|
| But imagine the consternation when we first collectively
| realized k8s had no cybernetics, no auto-governance (another
| related word*) of tech running on it. This is why a few of us
| met with CoreOS in the mid-2010s to talk about the idea that
| would turn into _Operators_ : put the cybernetics back in
| kubernetes.
|
| Disappointed even today that so much mindshare and effort is
| around standing up and running k8s itself, or 'declaring' what
| runs in it (tbc, this part is good), and much less on
| 'Operators' so k8s could run your SaaS _for_ you (which would
| be better).
|
| The original public introduction of the concept:
|
| - Brandon Philips @ CoreOS, Nov 2016:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170129131616/http://coreos.com...
|
| A more recent take:
|
| - RedHat, 2020: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/kubernetes-
| operators
|
| ---
|
| * Note: _"The word 'governance' came from the Latin verb
| 'gubernare', or more originally from the Greek word
| 'kubernaein', which means 'to steer'. Basing on its etymology,
| governance refers to the manner of steering or governing, or of
| directing and controlling."_
| convolvatron wrote:
| I read the slides you posted - they seem quite reasonable in
| intent.
|
| why though do you take a jab at declaration as being a worse
| model - it seems like a valid implementation of the general
| operator idea.
| Terretta wrote:
| Sorry, declaration is fantastic. But the blueprint or
| playbook of what to stand up (say, Ansible style) is very
| different from cybernetic control of operating things.
| convolvatron wrote:
| what about declaration for operation?
| dogman144 wrote:
| Actually on topic!
|
| Taking that hypothesis you have on kubernetes, check this
| out...
|
| The Cybernetic Hypothesis book discusses a
| philosophical/systems-thinking/governance obsession with the
| importance of "steering" or "piloting." Foucault taught a
| class on in it in the 80's prior to his death. The train of
| logic is interest in steering all systems that could be
| steered for <various reasons> led to a natural interest in
| cybernetics, as the automation offered a way to codify or
| "steer" this systems.
|
| Kubernetes <- derived from the greek "kubernesis," "the
| action of piloting a vessel."
|
| You're highlighting, I think to the extent I'm still grokking
| this all myself, a common counterpoint to cybernetic thinking
| - it offers a way to steer things, but often doesn't address
| core questions like "well who is steering this, why do we
| want to steer this, what other answer is there beyond
| efficiency for efficiency's sake?"
| _jal wrote:
| > 'science of automatic control systems' sense -- one could
| argue today it could be pronounced 'kubernetes'.
|
| Only if one's view of the world is very constrained.
| Terretta wrote:
| Well, I agree.
|
| And yet, are there any _other_ generalized cyber control
| systems even remotely usable to manage arbitrarily shaped
| workloads _other_ than kubernetes (which isn't that either,
| not yet)?
|
| Why not?
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