Suggestions for Session 3

[denisnazarov]

Hey everyone, wanted to start listing some suggestions for readings. Please add yours below and we can filter it down. Or if anyone has a theme they'd like to lead with, feel free!

At one point we we're talking (@frnsys?) about the transition from continuous (classical physics) to discrete (quantum) and it reminded me of another good collection, particularly the essay "the genesis of the quantum theory in the period 1913-1927 " that talks about a paradigm shift (quantum leap :) ) in thinking that was necessary to go from continous to discrete models. It's more "new media" focused but some of the foundational stuff in the beginning is really good and relevant.

The book + the TOC: Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation

Table of Contents:

• As we may think / Vannevar Bush
• The Age of the world picture / Martin Heidegger
• Constituents of a theory of the media / Hans Magnus Enzensberger
• Visualization lost and regained: the genesis of the quantum theory in the period 1913-1927 / Arthur I. Miller
• Machines of the visible / Jean-Louis Comolli --

Representation: Photography and after.

• The Work of culture in the age of cybernetic systems / Bill Nichols
• From the photograph to postphotographic practice: toward a postoptical ecology of the eye / David Tomas
• The Virtual unconscious in postphotography Kevin Robins
• Photography at the interface / Roy Ascott
• The Double helix / Raymond Bellour
• Video, networks, and architecture: some physical realities of electronic space / Kathy Rae Huffman
• Electronic media: the rebirth of perspective and the fragmentation of illusion / Kim H. Veltman
• The Automation of sight: from photography to computer vision / Lev Manovich

Theory.

• Digital apparition / Vilém Flusser --
• Between nodes and data packets / Florian Rötzer --
• Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers / N. Katherine Hayles --
• Thinking the border and the boundary / Siegfried Zielinksi --
• From virtual reality to the virtualization of reality / Slavoj Žižek --
• From kaleidoscomaniac to cybernerd: notes toward an archeology of media / Erkki Huhtamo --
• Metavirtue and subreality / David Blair --
• Cyberwar, God and television: interview with Paul Virilio / Louise K. Wilson
• There is no software / Friedrich Kittler
• The World as interface: toward the construction of context-controlled event-worlds.

Media/Identity/Culture.

• Constructions and reconstructions of the self in virtual reality / Sherry Turkle
• The Art of cyberspace / Pierre Levy --
• The Information war / Hakim Bey --
• Common law for the electronic frontier / Anne W. Branscomb
• Contemporary nihilism: on innocence organized / Adilkno/Geert Lovink --
• The Coming of age of the flesh machine / Critical Art Ensemble.

[frnsys]

Cybernetic planning is really interesting, here are a couple pieces on that:

• The Art of Management, good deeper overview of Cybersyn
• Red Plenty

Also really interested in cybernetics as a tool/method for negotiating modern complexity (the "cognitive mapping" that Jameson calls for: "a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to that vaster and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society's structures as a whole"):

• One of the chapters from Cartographies of the Absolute
• Optimists' Creed: Brave New Cyberlearning, Evolving Utopias (Circa 2041)
• Navigating Neoliberalism
• Losing Sight
• Buckminster Fuller's "World Game"

(I don't think any of those mention cybernetics explicitly)

This is more of an art project but also relevant: An Atlas of Agendas

[frnsys]

if any of you use are.na I have this channel which has some relevant readings: https://www.are.na/francis-tseng/simulation-cybernetics

[denisnazarov]

@frnsys wow awesome collection

[frnsys]

i had some time to put together some stuff we could read for next session -- these readings don't explicitly reference cybernetics but they build on its concepts and worldview

• Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Rittel & Webber, defines "wicked" problems
• Social Traps, John Platt, applies cybernetic concepts (e.g. feedback) to wicked problems
• Anekāntavāda, the "observer effect" of wicked problems is a very old concept
• Navigating Neoliberalism, Nick Srnicek, lays out the "crisis of representation" problem
• Seeing Like a State, chapter 1, James C. Scott, analysis of the authoritarian approach to complex problems
• The Cybersyn Revolution, an ostensibly more democratic/participative approach to complex problems
• Fuller's "World Game", putting complex systems modeling into the hands of more people

this might be too much though?

[benauthor]

I like this wicked problems and some approaches theme. 👍