Editing Cybernetics (section)

== Historical Background ==

=== WWII and feedback ===
Cybernetics is forged in the crucible of global apocalyptic industrial warfare. And the men who fought the war fought it with intelligence systems. Codebreaking, models for bomber runs, efficient transmission of information, rocket systems. During the height of '''WWII''', military commands were dealing with the complexity of their battlefields. Developments in aviation technology produced more complex scenarios of payload delivery, as planes began to fly higher and deliver strikes of more complex nature.  

[[Norbert Wiener]], theorist of '''negative feedback''', was one scientist enlisted into this mission. Weiner, with the help of resident engineer Julian Bigelow, formulated the problem as fundamentally one dealing with the interface between human and machine systems- “in order to obtain as complete a mathematical treatment as possible of the over-all control problem, it is necessary to assimilate the different parts of the system to a single basis either human or mechanical.”<ref>Norbert Wiener ''I Am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy'' Doubleday, 1956 pg. 251</ref> In essence it was a problem of  '''feedback systems'''. Humans interface with a machine, the machine does something, how do we maximize the efficacy of the relationship between input and output? Key to this, it turns out, is developing a reliable looping system in which each human input is matched with a machine output, not only in terms of whatever the machine is doing but in terms of feedback to the human operator. 

Now abstract from this the human operator. 

=== Macy Conferences ===
Held from 1941-1960, the Macy Conferences focused on interdisciplinary research in Cybernetics and feedback systems. Prominent academics including as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, and Claude Shannon discussed the nature of communication and control, touching on topics ranging from social psychology to artificial intelligence. The conferences laid the foundation for modern computing and information theory.<ref>Summary: The Macy Conferences (asc-cybernetics.org)</ref>

=== Vietnam ===
<blockquote>On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked, and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer assisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire control. With first round kill probabilities approaching certainty, and with surveillance devices that can continually track the enemy, the need for large forces to fix the opponent becomes less important. I see battlefields that are under 24-hour real or near-real time surveillance of all Tags. I see battlefields on which we can destroy anything we can locate through instant communications and almost instantaneous application of highly lethal firepower ... In summary, I see an Army built into and around an integrated area control system that exploits the advanced technology of communications, sensors, fire direction, and the required automatic data processing.<ref>Quoted: Antoine Bousquet “Cybernetizing the American War Machine: Science and Computers in the Cold War” Cold War History Vol. 8, No. 1, February 2008, pgs. 77-102)</ref></blockquote>General Westmoreland, Commander-in-Chief of US forces in Vietnam, made this famous prophecy of a frictionless and cybernetic form of warfare. 

=== Project Cybersyn ===
[[File:Cybersyn.swag.png|thumb|Contemporary rendering of the imagined Cybersyn control center ]]
This was Allendes short lived attempt to harness cybernetics and internet technology ([[ARPANET]] completed two years earlier in 1969) for the purposes of managing a nationalized economy under siege. In July of 1971 Fernando Flores of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) brought in Manchester cybernetician Stafford Beer. Around 500 telex machines were placed in factories across the country, where they would relate basic data (raw material input, production output, number of absentees, etc.) to a central computer which would make short term predictions and necessary adjustments. It was utilized effectively during the October 1972 CIA/AFL-CIO instigated trucker strike.