In this Book

buy this book Buy This Book in Print
summary
How did cybernetics and information theory arise, and how did they come to dominate fields as diverse as engineering, biology, and the social sciences?Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRLOutstanding Academic Title, ChoiceCybernetics—the science of communication and control as it applies to machines and to humans—originates from efforts during World War II to build automatic antiaircraft systems. Following the war, this science extended beyond military needs to examine all systems that rely on information and feedback, from the level of the cell to that of society. In The Cybernetics Moment, Ronald R. Kline, a senior historian of technology, examines the intellectual and cultural history of cybernetics and information theory, whose language of “information,” “feedback,” and “control” transformed the idiom of the sciences, hastened the development of information technologies, and laid the conceptual foundation for what we now call the Information Age. Kline argues that, for about twenty years after 1950, the growth of cybernetics and information theory and ever-more-powerful computers produced a utopian information narrative—an enthusiasm for information science that influenced natural scientists, social scientists, engineers, humanists, policymakers, public intellectuals, and journalists, all of whom struggled to come to grips with new relationships between humans and intelligent machines.Kline traces the relationship between the invention of computers and communication systems and the rise, decline, and transformation of cybernetics by analyzing the lives and work of such notables as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Herbert Simon. Ultimately, he reveals the crucial role played by the cybernetics moment—when cybernetics and information theory were seen as universal sciences—in setting the stage for our current preoccupation with information technologies.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title page, Copyright page
  2. pp. i-vi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. ix-xiv
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-8
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 1 War and Information Theory
  2. pp. 9-36
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2 Circular Causality
  2. pp. 37-67
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 3 The Cybernetics Craze
  2. pp. 68-101
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 4. The Information Bandwagon
  2. pp. 102-134
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 5 Humans as Machines
  2. pp. 135-151
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 6 Machines as Human
  2. pp. 152-178
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 7 Cybernetics in Crisis
  2. pp. 179-201
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 8 Inventing an Information Age
  2. pp. 202-228
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 9 Two Cybernetic Frontiers
  2. pp. 229-244
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Abbreviations
  2. pp. 245-248
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 249-324
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 325-336
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.