The 26th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA)

Activity: Talk or presentationConference PresentationsResearch

Jan Müggenburg - Speaker

Lively Artifacts. BCL-Engineers and their Self-Organizing Machines

“Lively Artifacts: BCL Engineers and Self-Organizing Machines”
Cybernetic research in the 1960s faced a dilemma: On the one hand, there was a growing awareness that human beings share specific organizational principles with nonhuman (biological and technological) systems and that the boundaries between them had started to blur. On the other hand, cyberneticians such as Heinz von Foerster and the members of his Biological Computer Laboratory worried about a future society in which automated technologies could threaten individual liberty and constrain human creativity. As von Foerster famously put it: “If we don‘t act ourselves, we shall be acted upon.” In my talk I will discuss both the abstract models and the material prototypes that members of the BCL designed to address this dilemma. For instance, Ross Ashby intended devices such as the ”Grandfather Clock” to model principles, such as ”self-organization” or ”nontrivialization,” and organizational processes thought to explain certain characteristics of autonomous behavior. Rather than doing repetitive mechanical work, these machines were expected to act creatively and unpredictably. I will argue that we can read these “lively artifacts” as part of a design strategy to reconcile the idea of the free subject with cybernetic research.
27.09.201230.09.2012

Event

26th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts - SLSA 2012

27.09.1230.09.12

Milwaukee, United States

Event: Conference

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  7. § 349 Erklärung des Rücktritts
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  9. Wertwissen
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  13. The early bird catches the worm: an empirical analysis of imprinting in social entrepreneurship
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  16. Straw amendment and nitrification inhibitor controlling N losses and immobilization in a soil cooling-warming experiment
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  20. Ärger in der Freundschaft
  21. Overcoming the crisis
  22. Christianity
  23. "Wissenschaftsgeschichte 3mal anders"
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  25. Im Züchtungswahn? Gottfried Benns „Dorische Welt“
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  32. Trade-offs across value-domains in ecosystem services assessment
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