Introduction to Focus: Cybernetics

The irreplaceable Michel Foucault, had he survived long enough, would have found himself in the anomalous position of building an addition to the magnificent edifice of épistèmes (semiologygrounded historical epochs doubling as exegetical operating systems) that he had constructed in such works as The Order of Things (1966) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). Foucault was not party to the full range of transformations, staccato and earth-shattering as they came in, wrought by the dissemination of cybernetic devices, procedures, and sensibility. Though this process has been underway nigh three quarters of a century, the arts and the academy are still reeling from its aftershocks. Had Foucault, like the contributors to the following sheaf of reviews of (mostly) recent books bearing on the topic, witnessed the full range of the impact, on information, its archiving, communications, the media, but also on entertainment, social interaction, and even bodily posture, he surely would have been compelled to add a fourth épistème, the cybernetic one, to the magisterial trio by which he accounted for cultural development in the West since the Renaissance.

To the triad of cultural bearings based initially, during that inaugural era, on sytematized analogical thinking; then on the tabulated knowledge dominant throughout the so-called Age of Reason; and finally, at the Romantico-Modern moment, centering on the shifters of Labor, Life, and Language respectively at the core of all modern science, Foucault would no doubt have appended, in his characteristically global fashion, his explicitly cybernetic épistème. This one encompassing, among other phenomena, recursivity, analog-digital shuttling, isomorphic coding, and autopoietic progression— and drawing upon the significant cybernetic structuration already embedded within his antecedent historico-semiological paradigms.

Fortunately for us, a slew of great minds, from Norbert Wiener, Gregory Bateson, Benoît Mandelbrot, Gordon Pask, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Heinz Von Foerster, Anthony Wilden, and Douglas Hofstadter to Gilbert Simondon, Niklas Luhmann, Umberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Lynn Margulis, James Lovelock, James Gleick, and Bruno Latour set out, starting with the post-War period, whether intentionally or not, to fill in this gaping epistemological void. Contributions by the above thinkers, to fields encompassing cybernetics, systems theory, mathematics, the "hard" and social sciences, and media studies have irreversibly and tangibly affected the books under the umbrella of the present Focus. The very fact that the impact of these generative thinkers has become part and parcel of study in the Humanities, joining its contemporary mainstream, registers a seismic shift in the academic division of labor as it was calibrated as recently as the 1990's.

Collectively, the relatively recent contributions folded into our Focus play themselves out as a status report, keyed to 2020-21, on the current drift and bearing of cybernetic phenomena and discourse. At this particular juncture, we find ourselves far less in an epoch of cyber-wonder, incredulity, or befuddlement than of inevitability and retrospect. That is, in the aftermath of a Faustian pact already somewhat recessed in time.

Out of an eye-popping lightshow of compelling cyber-themes soliciting engagement by thoughtful cultural commentators have emerged a surprisingly coherent constellation of concerns and issues: these loop and feed back in interesting ways from one review to the next. Not surprisingly, a respectable chunk of our sample, books including Scott A. Midson's Cyborg Theology: Humans, Technology, and God (2017), reviewed by R. John Williams, and Grant Bollmer's Theorizing Digital Cultures (2018), reviewed by Nina Wexelblatt, addresses the broader cultural impact of cyber-technology and its theoretical reception—particularly within the ethical and aesthetic spheres. Gilbert Simondon's Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, in its sounding to the deep roots of philosophical infrastructure, emerges as a unique entry on our list. Bernard Stiegler's history of technics is among the projects that rescued this magisterial study of the formal and informational subtexts to the process of individuation from its initial obscurity. Its belated availability to English-language readers considerably gains from Bryan Adkins's supple translation. Another of our sample's subgroupings. Another subgrouping, more historical in slant, fosters an appreciation of the current status quo by orchestrating its emergence from first-generation innovations and...