<div>Dear Mustafa,</div><div><br></div>Though I agree about the role played by capitalism in the early history of cybernetics, I think it is important not to oversimplify the history of cybernetics. Some months ago I was discussing about the origin of electromagnetism with a professor who intended to sustain its very beginnings in Maxwell, forgetting that Schelling mentioned 70 years before the possibility of finding a connection between the two forces as a different manifestation of a common root. Orstead was follower of Schelling, Faraday was indirectly encouraged by the project, etc, etc. What I want to highlight is that the american school of cybernetics is just a manifestation of the system thinking which roots can be traced back at least to Spinoza, and particularly passing through Schelling (R. Zimmermann has a nice book referred to the historical development of this thinking: "Die Kreativität der Materie"). The same thing could be said for many other historicist categorisations of scientific production. The social and historical dimension is often underestimated... But turning back to the case of system-thinking, Bertalanfy represents a significant figure in this picture (with his "Kritische Theorie der Formbildung", 1928), as well as Hermann Schmidt's "Regelungskunde" (1930) -to name but a few-. Segal talks -in the aforementioned book- about some of this in his book devoted about the history of the scientific notion of information... Furthermore, Wiener's letter to the Automotive Unions from 1949 is important to remind for assessing the real position of cyberneticians. Similarly, it is worth recalling the event occurred (the over reaction, could be said) when Peter Fleissner predicted a significant bad development for eastern Germany people's life after its entrance in the market economy using cybernetic models -as it actually was the case according to the variables predicted-...<br>
<br>Best regards,<div>J.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2013/1/24 Mustafa.Ali <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Mustafa.Ali@open.ac.uk" target="_blank">Mustafa.Ali@open.ac.uk</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Greetings, Bob!<br>
<br>
I dispute the necessity of a socialist / progressive / radical interpretation of cybernetics and that it has been co-opted by capitalism; in my view, cybernetics, while not 'neutral' was forged in capitalist contexts, irrespective of whether they were private / individual capital or public / state capital. In this connection, I would refer you to the work of Steve Heims and others who have documented the history of cybernetics, both from US-centric and Soviet-centric perspectives.<br>
<br>
I should also like to refer you to my recently published tripleC article, "Race: The Difference That Makes Difference" which briefly examines cybernetics from a critical race theoretical perspective:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/324" target="_blank">http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/324</a><br>
<br>
Kind regards<br>
<br>
(Syed) Mustafa (Ali)<br>
<br>
The Open University, UK<br>
________________________________________<br>
From: Bob Hughes [<a href="mailto:bob@dustormagic.net">bob@dustormagic.net</a>]<br>
Sent: 23 January 2013 19:57<br>
To: <a href="mailto:discussion@lists.icts-and-society.net">discussion@lists.icts-and-society.net</a><br>
Subject: [ICTs-and-Society] Socialist technologies in the service of capitalism<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
Dear listmembers,<br>
<br>
Linear programming (and other mathematical/cybernetic planning<br>
techniques) were seen by many people in the 1940s and 1950s as<br>
heralding the end of markets, as they offered radically more<br>
efficient means of distribution.<br>
<br>
Instead, I get the impression these techniques ended up helping Big<br>
Capital to push markets to new limits, via Enterprise Resource<br>
Planning (ERP) apps like SAP.<br>
<br>
Certainly, I understand that people trained in cybernetics and OR<br>
during the 1960s increasingly found they could only get work in<br>
corporate situations, where it was impossible to work on 'whole<br>
systems' in the proper, cybernetic sense.<br>
<br>
And linear programming seems to be the basis of the 'combinatorial<br>
auction' systems that have been so very profitably developed for<br>
handling sell-offs of public assets (UK buses in 1995, followed by<br>
the auctions for 3G and now 4G bandwidth, and I guess auctions for<br>
airline routes ... and maybe finding further, similar markets in<br>
countries that come under IMF privatisation-orders).<br>
<br>
If this is the case then there's a ginormously bitter irony here:<br>
what should have led to an age of low-impact abundance ended up being<br>
a power-tool for the manufacture of high-impact scarcity.<br>
<br>
Has anyone researched this, or can anyone point me in the direction<br>
of someone who has? Do you think the above is broadly correct?<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
<br>
Bob Hughes<br>
--<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Dr. Jose Maria Diaz Nafria<br><br><font size="1"><span style="font-family:arial"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Visiting Professor at the <b>Hochschule München</b> (HM, Germany, <a href="http://www.fh-muenchen.de/" target="_blank">http://www.fh-muenchen.de/</a>)</font><div>
<font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"> Postal Adress: Fakultät 13-Studium Generale, </font><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Dachauerstr. 100A, 80663 München, GERMANY</font></div></span><b>Universidad de León </b>(ULE, Spain, <a href="http://www.unileon.es/" target="_blank">http://www.unileon.es/</a>)<br>
Postal address: Esc.de Ingenierías Industrial e Informática, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071 Leon, SPAIN<br></font></font><div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif" size="1"><br>Coordination of <b>BITrum</b> Research Group (<a href="http://bitrum.unileon.es/" target="_blank">http://bitrum.unileon.es/</a>)<br>
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<div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif" size="1"><b>myUniversity</b> research team (</font><a href="http://www.e-myuniversity.eu/ule/" target="_blank"><font size="1" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">http://www.e-myuniversity.eu/ule/</font></a><span style="font-family:'trebuchet ms',sans-serif;font-size:x-small">)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family:'trebuchet ms',sans-serif;font-size:x-small">+34 987 091630</span><font size="1"><span style="font-family:'trebuchet ms',sans-serif">; Fax: +34 987 29 11 35</span><span style="font-family:'trebuchet ms',sans-serif">; +34 657 516306</span></font></div>
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