Journal articles on the topic 'Cybernetics loops'

Gregory Bateson observed that cybernetics is not essentially about "exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to many disciplines" (Bateson, 1971, p. 23). This paper adopts his line of thought to join the dots between cybernetics and the philosophy of Existentialism, and then interconnect both with contemporary art. It demonstrates that while terminologies may differ, many of the three fields' primary concerns closely cohere. The world's most ground-breaking artists are found to apply and fuse cybernetic paradigms and Existentialist themes, from Robert Rauschenberg and Marina Abramović to Damien Hirst, Stelarc and Anish Kapoor. The research offers the first detailed comparison between cybernetics and Existentialism, and reveals surprising commonalities. Feedback loops, circular causality and negative entropy are not only central tenets of cybernetics, but also of Existentialism. Autonomy, autopoiesis and interactivity equally unite both fields, and each is visionary and forward looking in seeking radical change and transformations. Both explored artistic endeavours, with Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus equally renowned for their powerful novels and plays as their philosophical works, while cybernetic art became a major phenomenon in the 1960s following the landmark exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer in the Arts (1968), and influenced artistic practices thereafter.

Gregory Bateson observed that cybernetics is not essentially about "exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to many disciplines". This paper adopts his line of thought to join the dots between cybernetics and the philosophy of Existentialism, and then interconnect both with contemporary art. It demonstrates that while terminologies may differ, many of the three fields' primary concerns closely cohere. The world's most ground-breaking artists are found to apply and fuse cybernetic paradigms and Existentialist themes, from Robert Rauschenberg and Marina Abramović to Damien Hirst, Stelarc and Anish Kapoor. The research offers the first detailed comparison between cybernetics and Existentialism, and reveals surprising commonalities. Feedback loops, circular causality and negative entropy are not only central tenets of cybernetics, but also of Existentialism. Autonomy, autopoiesis and interactivity equally unite both fields, and each is visionary and forward looking in seeking radical change and transformations. Both explored artistic endeavours, with Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus equally renowned for their powerful novels and plays as their philosophical works, while cybernetic art became a major phenomenon in the 1960s following the landmark exhibition <em>Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer in the Arts</em> (1968), and influenced artistic practices thereafter.

The five principles of self-organization of cybernetic systems are formed in classical cybernetics in the form of two hypotheses of N. Wiener and three hypotheses of W. R. Ashby. The main attention in the development of the theory of a functional system is given to its analysis as an integral unit, and the formation on its basis of the theories of intelligent systems. At the same time, no attention was left to the study of the principle of the mechanism for ensuring compliance with the result obtained and the project established for it. The conformity mechanism, which is formed as part of a functional system, is implemented on the basis of the principle of self-organization of the functional system’s activity at the stage of a future result project’s implementation through double sequential feedback through the “Action Results Acceptor” mechanism. Based on this principle, it is possible to formulate the law of self-organization of an intellectual system in the following form. For functional self-organization of an intelligent system based on a mechanism to ensure compliance with the result of an activity and its project, it is necessary to include an “Acceptor of an action result” in the feedback loop to match the result of an action, a project of a future result of an action, and a management team. The principles of self-organization formed in classical cybernetics turned out to be elements of the clarified single principle of the self-organization of functional systems activity. In this work, it was realized that the meaning of knowledge about the functional systems in the theory and the theory of dialogue control systems of two successive feedback loops and the mechanism of their combination in the “Acceptor of the results of action” was realized. It is thanks to these contours that the principle of functional self-organization of activities is implemented, the founders of classical cybernetics so stubbornly sought and from which they abandoned technical cybernetics. The task of the formation of the goal of the activity can be solved by knowing the mechanism of the formation of the project of a future result based on heuristic self-organization for physiological and cybernetic systems. The solution to this problem will ensure the formation of "smart things" in Industry 5.0. After all, “smart things” should be “intelligent”

Summary Objectives This article presents the 2009 selection of the best papers in the special section dedicated to biomedical informatics and cybernetics. Method Synopsis of the articles selected for the IMIA yearbook 2009 Results Five papers from international peer reviewed journals where selected for this section. Most of the papers have a strong practical orientation in clinical care. And this selection gives a good overview of what is done with “closing loop” approach, particularly during theyear 2008. Conclusion While quite mature for some clinical applications such as mechanical ventilation, it remains a challenge where rules for the decision system could be difficult to identify due to the number of variables. More complex systems with greater Artificial Intelligence approaches will certainly be the next trend for closed-loop applications.

This article develops the concept of «operational media» to think through the deployment of utility/useful cinema in the context of cybernetically informed educational policy. The paper argues that cybernetic concepts of communication, feedback loops and homeostasis were central to the pragmatic installation of media at the center of postwar mass education. Links are made to the dominance of cybernetic ideas in postwar social science, including social psychology, sociobiology and behaviourism. A consideration of the UN’s operational media allows for a reconsideration of the agency’s communicative mandate as biopolitical and governmental. Educational policies influenced by the UN were doubly concerned with technologized classrooms: cybernetic ideas presented themselves as politically neutral, while offering efficiencies in the delivery of content. Cold war citizenship was thus conceived as a form of training that would pragmatically lead to the rebalancing of a volatile international situation. Carrefour de la vie (1949), made by Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck for the United Nations, is presented as an example of the centrality of mental health for citizenship training in postwar biopolitical regimes. In particular, the tension between the film’s humanist and cybernetic strands are considered. Au Carrefour de la vie is considered as a transitional text, presenting a humanist story of childhood in postwar life that simultaneously prefigures the operation of a controlled society.

The article develops a suggestion of how cybersemiotics is pertinent to ecosemiotics. Cybersemiotics uses Luhmann's triadic view of autopoietic systems (biological, psychological, and socio-communicative autopoiesis) and adopts his approach to communication within a biosemiotic framework. The following levels of exosemiosis and signification can be identified under the consideration of nonintentional signs, cybernetics, and information theory: (1) the socio-communicative level of self-conscious signification and language games. (2) the instinctual and species specific level of sign stimuli signifying through innate release response mechanism and sign games, and (3) the level of structural coupling, signal recognition, and languaging, where cybernetic feedback loops evince differences. Signification and communication levels arise whenever autopoietic systems interpenetrate (1) with the language system's semiotic and the psyche's phenosemiotic processes based on imaging, emotion, and volition and (2) between the psyche's phenosemiotic and the body's endosemiotic processes. It is at these two levels that we have the ecosemiotic signification processes of nonintentional signs in nature. Humans are linguistic cyborgs as animals are sign cyborgs because signs at different levels interpenetrate and form our embodied processes. Sign producing and interpreting capability has had selective influence on both animals and humans in evolution.

The Soviet Union had a long and complex relationship with cybernetics, especially in the domain of planning. This article looks at Soviet postwar efforts to draw up plans for the rapidly developing, industrializing, and urbanizing Siberia, where cybernetic models were used to develop a vision of cybernetic socialism. Removed from Moscow bureaucracy and politics, the various planning institutes of the Siberian Academy of Sciences became a key frontier for exploring the potential of cybernetic thinking to offer a necessary corrective to Soviet planning. Researchers there put forth a vision of a dynamic Soviet economy managed through partially automated subsystems, which, while decentralized, would grant the central planning apparatus flexibility, a capacity for emergence, and overall solvency in the face of increasingly complex factors that required consideration.

This paper aims to identify the relationship between cybernetics and the post-war French philosophies or theories known and embraced as structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. Recent research has shown that cybernetics was closely associated with Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism, which was the cool of the new French theory, and that poststructuralism or postmodernism was a response to the technologies of control represented by cybernetics. From this perspective, the misconceptions and prejudices surrounding French theory must be confronted with an understanding of the historical context that gave rise to the phenomenon of postmodernism. This paper looks at French theory as an intellectual movement that emerged out of the reflection on cybernetic technologies in the post-war period centred on the Maginot Line and revisits its theoretical context through the keyword cybernetics. This new examination will allow us to rewrite the genealogy of French theories that emerged after 1950 as a response to cybernetics, whether postmodernism is interpreted as a cultural logic of late capitalism, as an extension of modernism, or as a new epistemology inevitably resulting from the decline of modernity. From this perspective, this paper argues that French theory and its effect, postmodernism, should not be buried in the annals of history as relics of a bygone era but should be recognized as a historical legacy shaping our present reality and should be re-examined.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have multi-domain applications, fixed-wing UAVs being a widely used class. Despite the ongoing research on the topics of guidance and formation control of fixed-wing UAVs, little progress is known on implementation of semi-physical validation platforms (software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop) for such complex autonomous systems. A semi-physical simulation platform should capture not only the physical aspects of UAV dynamics, but also the cybernetics aspects such as the autopilot and the communication layers connecting the different components. Such a cyber-physical integration would allow validation of guidance and formation control algorithms in the presence of uncertainties, unmodelled dynamics, low-level control loops, communication protocols and unreliable communication: These aspects are often neglected in the design of guidance and formation control laws for fixed-wing UAVs. This paper describes the development of a semi-physical platform for multi-fixed wing UAVs where all the aforementioned points are carefully integrated. The environment adopts Raspberry Pi’s programmed in C++, which can be interfaced to standard autopilots (PX4) as a companion computer. Simulations are done in a distributed setting with a server program designed for the purpose of routing data between nodes, handling the user inputs and configurations of the UAVs. Gazebo-ROS is used as a 3D visualization tool.

The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we think about decision, control, and will at a time when technologies of automation are transforming every dimension of human life, from military combat to mental attention, from financial systems to the intimate lives of individuals? This article looks back to a moment in the 20th century when the concept of the political as an independent logic was developed, in a time when the boundaries and operations of the classic state were in question. At the same moment, a whole new technological era was opened up with the emergence of intelligent machines and computers in the postwar cybernetic age. Technology, and cybernetics in particular, loomed large in Carl Schmitt’s articulation of the concept of the political, while the problem of radical open decision was at the heart of influential cybernetic approaches to politics. Linking these was the idea of entropic decay. Schmitt’s invocation of the theological concept of the Katechon, who restrains chaos in the time before Christ’s return, in fact exemplifies the new understandings of order in a cybernetic age facing new challenges of technology in a globalized condition.

Ischemic events are associated with severe inflammation and are here referred to as ischemic inflammatory response (IIR). Recent studies identified the formation of platelet–neutrophil complexes (PNC) as key players in IIR. We investigated the role of extracellular platelet nucleotide signaling in the context of IIR and defined a cybernetic circle, including description of feedback loops. Cybernetic circles seek to integrate different levels of information to understand how biological systems function. Our study specifies the components of the cybernetic system of platelets in IIR and describes the theoretical progression of IIR passing the cybernetic cycle with positive and negative feedback loops based on nucleotide-dependent signaling and functional regulation. The cybernetic components and feedback loops were explored by cytometry, immunohistological staining, functional blocking antibodies, and ADP/ATP measurements. Using several ex vivo and in vivo approaches we confirmed cybernetic parameters, such as controller, sensor, and effector (VASP phosphorylation, P2Y12, ADORAs and GPIIb/IIIa activity), as well as set points (ADP, adenosine) and interfering control and disturbance variables (ischemia). We demonstrate the impact of the regulated platelet–neutrophil complex (PNC) formation in blood and the resulting damage to the affected inflamed tissue. Taken together, extracellular nucleotide signaling, PNC formation, and tissue damage in IIR can be integrated in a controlled cybernetic circle of platelet function, as introduced through this study.

The former energy-wasting lifestyles of developed societies can no longer be sustained. In our age, efficiency is the key to continued sustainability. Increasing efficiency requires the use of infocommunication systems and their regulation. Regulatory modeling is based on the cybernetic loops model. The systems are not closed, so they are constantly suffering from environmental disturbances. External interference can also come from a human resource that covertly exploits the technological and psychic elements of the system to achieve its own goals. Social engineering is also such an intervention. The aims of the present study are to draw a parallel between cybernetic loops and social engineering, then to define social engineering on the cybernetic base.

This article re-examines some of the principal concepts of cybernetics — control, communication, feedback — and its preoccupation with the ‘coupling’ of human and machine in an increasingly automated world. Historically, the rise of cybernetics coincides with the so-called Space Age, where the kind of computerized control systems theorized in cybernetics were essential to the guidance and operation of the complex machinery required to place humans and machines in space. Taking the Apollo programme as a paradigmatic case of accelerated technological evolution, the article looks at aspects of the human-machine relationship in Apollo and more specifically at the modes of interface — ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ — which mediated that relationship. Despite a certain humanism of control which posits the human agent as the ultimate instance of perception, decision and action, it is argued that the evolutionary tendency detectable in the Apollo programme is towards the progressive marginalization, or ‘redundancy’, of the human agent.

Purpose – Business processes have an open and dynamic character and are influenced by internal an external disturbances. Without an adequate use of feedback mechanisms, those processes become unstable and do not achieve the expected performance. The purpose of this paper is to face the challenge and to ensure a competitive quality level, a framework for entrepreneurial quality management is given. Design/methodology/approach – Using the method of analogy formation the transfer of cybernetic approaches to business processes is shown. Especially quality control loops are analysed in order to find appropriate solutions for their design and implementation in enterprises. Findings – As a core element of the paper an approach for the systematic implementation of control loops is given. This approach offers a framework and a description for an operative implementation of quality control loops for stable business processes. Originality/value – The idea to use closed quality control loops for the design of several processes is already known. Anyway, both a robust framework and a appropriate, sufficient and detailed description for an operative implementation is the new aspect and an important further development within the topic.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of the application of cybernetic thinking by the learning and development unit in a national branch of a large multinational company to help move towards its strategic objective of becoming a learning organization. Design/methodology/approach – A work-based action research approach was adopted. Through a series of action research cycles, the paper presents the interplay between developments in the organization and several strands of cybernetic thinking. Findings – Cybernetic thinking was incrementally integrated to create a new support framework for developing a learning organization. Research limitations/implications – As a case study the work reported has limited generality. Users of the support framework need to take account of and, to some degree, replicate the specific conditions that led to its success. These included the strategic aim of becoming a learning organization and supportive senior management. Practical implications – The case study and framework will be of greatest use to other organizations that have the strategic intent of becoming a learning organization, but seek guidance on implementation. Social implications – Cybernetic thinking was used to create feedback loops from internal and external conditions, to enhance learning, performance and adaptivity. This involved all employees in their and their organization's future development. Originality/value – The paper's value offers a concrete instance of applying cybernetic thinking to the creation of a learning organization, a task often found to be difficult in practice. This has been abstracted into a support framework.

This article looks at André Leroi-Gourhan's work on prehistory in the two volumes of Le Geste et la parole (1964), considering it as a continuation of his wider project of a comparative technology. The first volume concentrates on the interaction between body and brain in human evolution. In contrast to interpretations of evolution that focus on the development of the brain as a primary factor, Leroi-Gourhan insists that its evolution is entirely dependent on the adaptive possibilities of body structure. Although cybernetics is never explicitly referenced in this work, its influence on his conceptualization of the evolution and history of technology is clear. For example, he draws on a cybernetically-inflected vocabulary of command and control to describe the coupling of nervous system and body in vertebrae evolution. In the second volume of Le Geste, the conceptual input of cybernetics becomes still more apparent as the focus of analysis is on the question of memory and technics. Leroi-Gourhan argues that the evolution of technology imitates the evolution of living systems, and that the historical development of human society is like the growth of an organism. The influence of cybernetics is evident in the fact that the difference between animal forms is conceived in terms of relative degrees of ‘programming’. Leroi-Gourhan proposes in this way a modelling of biological systems which is typical of cybernetics, drawing attention to the functional similarities between animal and mechanical systems. While not teleological, Leroi-Gourhan's history of technology is deterministic to the extent that the sequence of externalizations is not an arbitrary development but the necessary product of the intersection of the human organism and the material world.

This paper looks at embodiment from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The notion that embodiment is an essential requirement for conscious awareness is explored using both a scientific and religious approach. Artificial intelligence, transhumanism and cybernetics are discussed as they force a pragmatic approach to defining and understanding situated embodiment. The concept of human immortality or extended longevity is also investigated as this further exposes the myths of transcending corporeality and also helps to explain the mission of transhumanism.

One year after the 1967 Summer of Love and at a time of considerable political unrest throughout the United States and Europe, Cybernetic Serendipity—The Computer and the Arts opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London to much critical and popular acclaim. This paper outlines the conceptual framework of this seminal exhibition and looks at some of the accompanying press reception in order to address a key question: how media art deals with its own historicity and the underlying socioeconomic forces that render it possible. Presented 35 years ago and still paradigmatic for the ever-shifting boundaries between art, technology, commerce and entertainment, Cybernetic Serendipity epitomizes some of the complicated dynamics that delineate the gamut of media art today.

The paper looks at the problem of cybersecurity in modern cyber–physical systems and proposes an evolutionary model approach to counteract cyber attacks by self-regulating the structure of the system, as well as several evolutionary indicators to assess the state of the system. The application of evolutionary models makes it possible to describe the regularities of systems behavior and their technical development, which is especially important regarding cyber attacks, which are the cause of a discontinuous evolution of complex systems. A practical example describes a system behavior during attacks and the self-regulation of its structure. The methodological approach consists of using evolutionary models to describe how modern cyber–physical systems can counteract cyber attacks and evolve, building on the experience of past security incidents. The main conclusions and recommendations are presented in the Discussion section, and they consist of the fact that using an evolutionary approach will not only increase the security of cyber–physical systems, but also define the principles of building systems that are resistant to cyber attacks.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find a leading idea of the mid-twentieth century, demonstrating the pervasive nature of some concepts belonging to second-order systems theory. To achieve this objective, the paper looks at the art and literature of this era, to identify the principles developed by Luhmann in his late works. In particular, Escher’s drawings, Calvino’s stories and Luhmann’s concepts seem to express, in different ways, the same functioning mechanism of the complex social system. Design/methodology/approach With reference to theoretical approach and methodology, this paper carries out an interdisciplinary demonstration by alternative modes of logos and mythos. Some of the pillars of general systems theory are examined through the logical articulation of concepts developed by Spencer-Brown, von Foerster, and first of all through the late works of Luhmann, as well as through the analysis of Escher’s artworks and Calvino’s literary works. This paper interprets these artistic and literary works using cybernetic principles and systemic concepts, in particular, “two-sided forms,” “system–environment differentiation” and “second-order observation.” Findings In general, the main finding is the similarity of fascination with paradoxes and forms, with post-ontological reasoning, in twentieth century. The result of the cross-reading of Escher, Calvino and Luhmann reveals the presence of what Simmel called the “hidden king”: a philosophical paradigm of an era. In mid-1900s, this leading idea seems to express itself in the discoveries of biology and cybernetics, such as in Luhmann’s theory, art and literature. Escher’s drawings, Calvino’s stories and the concepts of Luhmann are projections of second-order system theory, in its constructivist value. Originality/value The originality of this paper lies mainly in the demonstration of theoretical concepts through the alternative modes of logos and mythos. These reflections can provide a new perspective to investigate social sciences from a cultural angle. This particular approach allows a deep awareness of the theory. The concrete value is to provide a better understanding to manage complexity.

Problem context. The existing 4x6 matrix model for evaluating the effectiveness, sustainability, risks, and opportunities of economic systems requires modification in the following directions: a) more detailed consideration of stakeholder interests; b) differentiation of model factors into "cardinal" and "basement" factors, with a simultaneous limitation of the maximum number of factors on individual strategic maps and within the model as a whole. Research objective. A modified 7x6 matrix model is proposed, and its functioning is illustrated by a calculation example. Research methodology. In the 7x6 matrix model, the organization model as a cybernetic system is replaced by a supersystem model consisting of key subsystems: a) impact subsystem, b) economic subsystem, c) decision subsystems. From the model's perspective, the supersystem remains a cybernetic system with feedback loops, seeking homeostasis (stable equilibrium). Risks and opportunities in the model act as triggers that initiate or postpone the adoption of antirisk and proopportunity decisions, respectively. Results. A calculation case is constructed in which market contraction, forecasted in a triangularfuzzy form, serves as an adverse effect (AE). An antirisk decision is synthesized, and its low effectiveness is demonstrated, along with proposed adjustments. Conclusion. The modified 7x6 matrix allows researchers to model the organization's relationships with its key stakeholders, implementing a valuesbased management paradigm instead of the traditional goalbased approach.

In the last fifty years the thinking around borderline personality disorder (BPD) shifted from an intra-psychic to a psychoanalytically oriented relational model. The latter described the difficulties associated with this presentation as arising from a disorganisation of the "self" structure in the context of an early caregiving relationship. The concept of inaccurate, or inconsistent "social biofeedback parental affect mirroring" has been pivotal to explain the characteristic failure to mentalize and the interpersonal difficulties associated with a diagnosis of BPD. Nevertheless, far from being the result of a sole linear relationship, these difficulties appear linked to communicative and emotional feedback loops that are reminiscent of cybernetic principles. Furthermore, recent claims have suggested that the communication feedback loops characteristic of the carer–child attachment style represent nothing less that the communication styles of the wider social environment in which the dyad is located. These claims have recently prompted a further shift from mentalizing to epistemic trust and epistemic vigilance, hence departing from a relational model towards a more systemic one. The difficulties associated with BPD are now suggested to be linked to a disorder of social learning, impacted by the rigid nature of the person's information-processing systems. This article reviews this journey.

This article examines contemporary practices of ‘idling’ (playing ‘idle games’) and ‘let’s playing’ (watching ‘Let’s Play’ [LP] videos of performed gameplay) as forms of power and resistance in the attention economy. Through the prism of interpassivity, a theory developed by Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Žižek, it establishes idling as relegating certain enjoyment from gameplay to the machine, while reproducing the anxieties associated with digital work as a whole. LPs, on the other hand, position the viewer as a critical analyst rather than a hands-on player. This vicarious experience of delegating play to others can allow avoidance and disengagement, which in turn may allow for a critical examination of the system as whole. As I will argue in this article, such interpassive practices can thus be seen as forms of resistance enabling users to step outside the controlling mechanism of digital media and the associated cybernetic feedback loops.

Abstract Given the impossibility of binary “yes” and “no” classical general legal rules to anticipate and address the future path of law, this paper imitates the adaptive human nature and frames future legal actions on it. Given this human trait, this paper presents some predispositions for substance and actions that are based on the systemic/cybernetic approach. The latter prioritises values, goals and their weights, with controllable thresholds that, based on feedback loops between events, facts, and intentions, activate different preestablished (legal) scenarios. The paper develops new responses to changed conditions (responsiveness, adaptability, agility and robustness); the first are needed in the law due to inevitability of dynamic changes to present some adaptive regulatory techniques, which could be implemented in practical systems. The paper concludes that such techniques can be used in the law used as sunset clauses, legal experiments, emergent strategies, negative scenarios, adaptable norms, Henry VII clauses, public opinion within collective intelligence and legal experiments. They all can address changed conditions in the environment.

In the later 1950s and 1960s, the American neurologist John Cunningham Lilly (1915–2001) undertook an unorthodox set of experiments on bottlenose dolphins (tursiops truncatus). The centerpiece of this research was their bioacoustic practices, including hearing and phonation. Lilly’s work sits at the crossroads of many vectors in postwar American culture: the birth of the counterculture from the spirit of Cold War militarized science; the cybernetic dream of flattening the differences between animal, human, machine, and alien intelligence; the exploration of otherness through drugs and madness; and the rise to cultural prominence of dolphins as archetypes of intelligent liberated beings. Sound technologies, especially tape, were the conditio sine qua non of Lilly’s cetacean research. He used tape obsessively in his efforts to decrypt dolphin communications and later to liberate human consciousness from its tendency to get stuck in repeating loops. Remarkably, he failed to reflect on the media a priori of his interspecies imagination.

This paper describes the process of analyzing industry resilience using the strategic matrix model of 4x6. It presents the main measures at the government level that can contribute to the restoration of industry resilience in the event of unfavorable impacts such as military, natural, or technological incidents. Methods. The 4x6 matrix is an oriented graph, with nodes representing the matrix indicators distributed across the matrix cells, and edges representing the links between indicators. The model is dynamic and positioned in discrete time, with the unit of measurement being a year. The matrix models the industry as a cybernetic system with positive and negative feedback loops. Negative feedback loops are generated based on antirisk management results. Positive feedback loops arise in two ways: a) reinvesting net profits in business and increasing equity; b) proactive decision making. Results. The paper presents a simple example of an industry matrix consisting of 15 indicators connected by 22 links. It demonstrates the antirisk and proactive management of industry resilience by the state, through publicprivate mobilization partnerships (PPMP). The paper examines the positive impact of the following measures on industry resilience: a) price regulation; b) return industrial mortgage; c) government supply chain factoring; d) government leasing. Discussion. The relationship between efficiency, resilience, risks, and opportunities is ambiguous. It is necessary to research the optimal zones where an acceptable value of all four factors can be preserved at the same time. Resilience is lost in both positive and negative senses; progress occurs in leaps, and new qualitative heights in business are achieved through repeated growth of all types of risk accompanying that business. In this case, stabilizing measures can hinder reaching new heights. Conclusion. The proposed modeling technology allows for the analysis of interindustry interaction, including the creation of interindustry syndicates (clusters).

The report describes a process of analyzing sectoral resilience using the strategic matrix model of 4x6. It presents the main measures at the government level that can contribute to the restoration of sectoral resilience in the event of unfavorable impacts such as military, natural, or technological incidents. Methods. The 4x6 matrix is an oriented graph, with nodes representing the matrix indicators distributed across the matrix cells, and edges representing the links between indicators. The model is dynamic and positioned in discrete time, with the unit of measurement being a year. The matrix models the industry as a cybernetic system with positive and negative feedback loops. Negative feedback loops are generated based on anti-risk management results. Positive feedback loops arise in two ways: a) reinvesting net profits in business and increasing equity; b) proactive decision-making. The report presents a simple example of a sectoral matrix consisting of 15 indicators connected by 22 links. It demonstrates the anti-risk and proactive management of industry resilience by the state, through public-private mobilization partnerships (PPMP). The paper examines the positive impact of the following measures on industry resilience: a) price regulation; b) return industrial mortgage; c) government supply chain factoring; and d) government leasing. The relationship between efficiency, resilience, risks, and opportunities is ambiguous. It is necessary to research the optimal zones where an acceptable value of all four factors can be preserved at the same time. Resilience is lost in both positive and negative senses; progress occurs in leaps, and new qualitative heights in business are achieved through repeated growth of all types of risk accompanying that business. In this case, stabilizing measures can hinder reaching new heights. The proposed modeling technology allows for the analysis of cross-industry interaction, including the creation of cross-industry syndicates (clusters).

The report describes a process of analyzing sectoral resilience using the strategic matrix model of 4x6. It presents the main measures at the government level that can contribute to the restoration of sectoral resilience in the event of unfavorable impacts such as military, natural, or technological incidents. Methods. The 4x6 matrix is an oriented graph, with nodes representing the matrix indicators distributed across the matrix cells, and edges representing the links between indicators. The model is dynamic and positioned in discrete time, with the unit of measurement being a year. The matrix models the industry as a cybernetic system with positive and negative feedback loops. Negative feedback loops are generated based on anti-risk management results. Positive feedback loops arise in two ways: a) reinvesting net profits in business and increasing equity; b) proactive decision-making. The report presents a simple example of a sectoral matrix consisting of 15 indicators connected by 22 links. It demonstrates the anti-risk and proactive management of industry resilience by the state, through public-private mobilization partnerships (PPMP). The paper examines the positive impact of the following measures on industry resilience: a) price regulation; b) return industrial mortgage; c) government supply chain factoring; and d) government leasing. The relationship between efficiency, resilience, risks, and opportunities is ambiguous. It is necessary to research the optimal zones where an acceptable value of all four factors can be preserved at the same time. Resilience is lost in both positive and negative senses; progress occurs in leaps, and new qualitative heights in business are achieved through repeated growth of all types of risk accompanying that business. In this case, stabilizing measures can hinder reaching new heights. The proposed modeling technology allows for the analysis of cross-industry interaction, including the creation of cross-industry syndicates (clusters).

Transhumanism is a social, technological, political, and philosophical movement that advocates the transformation of human nature by means of pharmacology, genetic manipulation, cybernetic modification, nanotechnology, and a host of other technologies. The aim of this movement is to increase physical and sensory abilities, augment intelligence and memory, and extend lifespan. After providing some background on transhumanism, its philosophical heritage, and its goals, the author looks at three arguments against transhumanism, arguing that they are unpersuasive and should be rejected. This paper presents two arguments against transhumanism that have merit. The first argument is an argument from justice that addresses the distribution of benefits and burdens for funding, developing, and employing enhancement technology. The second argument examines a significant assumption held by many transhumanists, namely, that there is an essential “human nature” that can be transcended.

This paper describes a type of project that images a city as it might exist given the integration of hemostatic procedures within pedestrian networks during emergencies requiring full-scale egress from an urban core. It articulates the steps taken to integrate a pre-existing C++ hemostasis model (C. Jacob, 2008) into Maya software in order to describe how the project operates on a computational level. By projecting these agent-based logics directly into/onto each pedestrian in the city (the smallest unit of the system), egress-oriented infrastructure can shift from being extensively predetermined in form (concrete barriers, metal railing, police barricades, etc.), to something more intensively defined, real-time, and locally on-demand. These procedures are situated within a larger schema based on the structural principles of Norbert Wiener's cybernetic feedback loops, that acknowledge and allow for hybrid (top-down + bottom-up) awareness and control within systems. The project attempts to ally itself with emerging forms of network design with similar structural typologies supported through the use of personal mobile devices (PMDs) in urban environments.

Abstract Paul Chan reflects on his experiences as an artist working in and out of domains of technology, from truetype fonts and pirated software to datasets and machine-learning frameworks. He recounts periods of his artistic life when he abandoned technologies as instruments of production. And he offers an idiosyncratic account of a lineage of artists and writers he admires who used and abused technology in aspects of their work—including Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, the Left Bank Group in 1960s, Yvonne Rainer, Theodor Adorno and the Radio Research Project; the bio-cybernetic work of free-jazz musician, programmer, and artist Milford Graves; the pioneering sound work of Maryanne Amacher; and the writer Claudia La Rocco—and how their dynamic and at times contentious relationship with technology proved vital to their understanding of what art under the influence of historical and social progress looks like.

Abstract: The "sentimental" narrator of Hari Kunzru's Red Pill is starting to feel like a self-described "waster."1 Away on fellowship in Berlin at the interdisciplinary Deuter Center for Social and Cultural Research, our writer-in-residence narrator ingests the eponymous capsule and "wakes up" to the obsolescence of literary humanism, a historical "period that was drawing to a close" ( RP 46).2 Instead of using the time afforded by the fellowship to work on his grant winning project––notunironically titled "The Lyric I," and which aims to achieve poetic transcendence through a better understanding of "the construction of the self in lyric poetry" ( RP 15)––the narrator whiles away his days on violent police procedurals and social media doom-scrolling.3 "I was like a miser, fretting about his emotional hoard," he confesses: "I frequently found myself hunched over my laptop, my eyes welling with tears … If the world changed, would I be able to protect my family?" ( RP 6-7). Alternating between sentimental musings and apocalyptic fantasies, he slides into a "mad" state of internet-fueled paranoia and begins to see signs and symbols of "red pill" and Alt-Right ideology everywhere he looks ( RP 280). The "sleepy-eyed cartoon frog" on a stranger's tee shirt slyly signals right-wing in-group belonging, while the OK sign made by the right hand of Carl Spitzweg's "Poor Poet" is reinterpreted as an allusion to contemporary fascist iconography, a cryptic communication from the not-so distant past ( RP 27; 9-10).

This article looks at the reality that exists on Youtube regarding the amount of trance content being watched. This attracts the attention of the author the main factor why netizens make content trance to watch. A large number of Youtube content enthusiasts make writers think that trance content is used by Youtubers to seek profits with so many viewers. Some of the author's findings on several Youtube channels present trance shows and have hundreds of thousands to millions of subscribers. This phenomenon shows that Indonesian netizens like a lot of trance shows. The research method used by researchers is qualitative through a netnography approach. In addition, the reason the author chose the netnography approach is that it is to study cybernetics space from textual information to study culture and netizens. Based on the author's findings, there are 3 characteristics of trance content on Youtube channels that are widely watched, namely: criminality, treatment of patients, and culture. Meanwhile, netizens' responses were mixed regarding trance content on Youtube, such as: not believing, providing support, praying for psychics, happiness, and bullying. Received: 25 August 2022 / Accepted: 20 October 2022 / Published: 5 November 2022

In the fourth paper of this Special Issue, we bridge the theoretical debate on the role of memory and criticality discussed in the three earlier manuscripts, with a review of key concepts in biology and focus on cell-to-cell communication in organismal development. While all living organisms are dynamic complex networks of organization and disorder, most studies in biology have used energy and biochemical exchange to explain cell differentiation without considering the importance of information (entropy) transfer. While all complex networks are mixtures of patterns of complexity (non-crucial and crucial events), it is the crucial events that determine the efficiency of information transfer, especially during key transitions, such as in embryogenesis. With increasing multicellularity, emergent relationships from cell-to-cell communication create reaction–diffusion exchanges of different concentrations of biochemicals or morphogenetic gradients resulting in differential gene expression. We suggest that in conjunction with morphogenetic gradients, there exist gradients of information transfer creating cybernetic loops of stability and disorder, setting the stage for adaptive capability. We specifically reference results from the second paper in this Special Issue, which correlated biophotons with lentil seed germination to show that phase transitions accompany changes in complexity patterns during development. Criticality, therefore, appears to be an important factor in the transmission, transfer and coding of information for complex adaptive system development.

As a concept archive encapsulates different levels of profoundness and has a loaded meaning. This concept has interpenetrated into many disciplines and gained a strong position as a theoretical tool in the late twentieth century. As much as the variety and elasticity of its conceptual elaborations, the imaged existence of the archive in the fiction medium also reflects a certain heterogeneity; archive spaces are depicted in connection with associations such as ‘being buried, accessibility difficulty, security, dusty and old environment’. Dematerialization of its basic unit, the document, leads archive space to lose its materiality as well. This creates an interest and ambiguity for the archive’s future. Among these ambiguities, the study initiates a discussion for the imagination of the future of the archive and looks into the archive’s techno-cybernetic envisagement via analyzing the film Archive (2020). According to this analysis, the meanings associated with the archive are constructed via three distinct levels; these are the architectural features of the facility, the representation of the archive as data storage, finally, its embodiment as a synthetic body, which hints that the archive will evolve from a static repository to a variable and active process between past knowledge and the phantasy of the future. The article argues that without reduction to representations at any one layer, a mental image of the archive arises from their interaction and concludes that the archive is not an object, but a web of relations that is open to reproduction and interaction of what it contains.

Singulation of components determining the innovative activity of enterprises is a complex issue as it depends on both microeconomic and macroeconomic factors. The purpose of this article is to present the results of research on the impact of the mutual interactions between ownership and the size of companies on the achievement of the objectives of innovative activity by Polish industrial processing enterprises in changing cyclical conditions. The importance of innovation barriers was also assessed. Empirical data came from three periods that covered different phases of the business cycle: prosperity 2004–2006, global financial crisis 2008–2010, and recovery 2012–2014. The research used a cybernetic approach based on feedback loops presenting interactions between variables. In addition, two statistical methods were used: the Pearson’s χ2 independence test and correspondence analysis. The following discoveries were made during the research: (1) consideration of the combined impact of ownership and the size of companies on their innovation activities makes it possible to study phenomena that may be overlooked if the impact of these factors is considered separately; (2) public enterprises achieve significantly worse results in terms of innovation than companies from other ownership sectors; (3) the Red Queen effect, which assumes that the best innovative enterprises exert selection pressure on all other companies, applies to industrial processing companies, and in particular public enterprises; (4) the industrial processing section is more sensitive to secular trends than to cyclical fluctuations; (5) confirmation of occurrence of the Polish Green Island effect, which assumes that companies achieve good results in terms of innovation, irrespective of the phases of the business cycle; and (6) statistical evidence is provided that the global financial crisis may be associated with the turn of the Fifth and Sixth Kondratieff waves. Most likely, the role of the communication channel between the world economy and the Polish manufacturing section is fulfilled by foreign ownership, whose percentage of share capital of this section is estimated at 50%.

Brain tumor is a relatively severe human disease type. Its timely diagnosis and tumor type definition are an actual task in modern medicine. Lately, the segmentation methods on 3D brain images (like computer and magnetic resonance tomography) are used for definition of a certain tumor type. Nevertheless, the segmentation is usually conducted manually, which requires a lot of time and depends on the experience of a doctor. This paper looks at the possibility of creating a method for the automatic segmentation of images. As a training sample, the medical database of MRI brain tomography with three tumor types (meningioma, glioma, and pituitary tumor) was taken. Taking into account the different slices, the base had: 708 examples of meningioma, 1426 examples of glioma, and 930 examples of pituitary tumor. The database authors marked the regions of interest on each image, which were used as a tutor (supervised learning) for automatic segmentation model. Before model creation, currently existing popular automatic segmentation models were analyzed. U-Net deep convolution neural network architecture was used as the most suitable one. As the result of its use, the model was obtained, which can segment the image correctly in seventy four percent of six hundred images (testing sample). After obtaining the automatic segmentation model, the Random Forest models for three “One versus All” tasks and one multiclass task were created for brain tumor classification. The total sample was divided into training (70 %), testing (20 %), and examining (10 %) ones before creating the models. The accuracy of the models in the examining sample varies from 84 to 94 percent. For model classification creation, the texture features were used, obtained by texture analysis method, and created by the co-authors of the Department of Biomedical Cybernetics in the task of liver ultrasound image classification. They were compared with well-known Haralick texture features. The comparison showed that the best way to achieve an accurate classification model is to combine all the features into one stack

PurposeThis bibliometric mapping study aimed to provide comprehensive insights into the global research landscape of cybernetics. Utilizing the biblioshiny function in R Studio, we conducted an analysis spanning 1958 to 2023, sourcing data from Scopus. This research focuses on key terms such as cybernetics, cybernetics systems, complex adaptive systems, viable system models (VSM), agent-based modeling, feedback loops and complexity systems.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis leveraged R Studio’s biblioshiny function to perform bibliometric mapping. Keyword searches were conducted within titles, abstracts and keywords, targeting terms central to cybernetics. The timespan, 1958–2023, provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of cybernetics-related literature. The data were extracted from Scopus to ensure a robust and widely recognized source.FindingsThe results revealed a rich and interconnected global research network in cybernetics. The word cloud analysis highlights prominent terms such as “agent-based modeling,” “complex adaptive systems,” “feedback loop,” “viable system model” and “cybernetics.” Notably, the journal Kybernetes has emerged as a focal point, with significant citations, solidifying its position as a key source within the cybernetics research domain. The bibliometric map provides visual clarity regarding the relationships between various concepts and their evolution over time.Originality/valueThis study contributes original insights by employing advanced bibliometric techniques in R Studio to map the cybernetics research landscape. The comprehensive analysis sheds light on the evolution of key concepts and the global collaborative networks shaping cybernetics research. The identification of influential sources, such as Kybernetes, adds value to researchers seeking to navigate and contribute to the dynamic field of cybernetics. Furthermore, this study highlights that cybernetics not only provides a useful framework for understanding and managing major economic shocks but also offers perspectives for understanding phenomena in various fields such as economics, medicine, environmental sciences and climate change.

Abstract This article introduces the Signal to Noise Loops project, which consisted of a series of performances and installations that took place worldwide between 2017 and 2022. The project utilized open data from a network of Internet of Things sensors placed around Dublin, Ireland, in the context of experimental music performance and composition. This network was underpinned by a theoretical framework from the field of cybernetics that united and integrated methods and approaches from the wide-ranging fields of data-driven music, generative music, rhythm analysis, and smart cities research.

In the last decades, streams within posthumanism and new materialism, have turned their attention to the phenomenon of agency. And they have done so in ways which open the phenomenon for social and cultural historical investigations, relevant for cultural studies and literary studies alike. This article uses a concrete case—the melodramatic novel Koloss by Norwegian author Finn Alnæs—in order to speculate on how a literary form can be seen to co-evolve—or in this case, clash—with fluctuations in the cultural history of agency. In the 1960s—the heydays of cybernetics—a discrepancy can be observed, between the nourishment of individualism in politics and advertisement, and the distribution of individual agency in the new emerging technologies of cybernetics, which pushed agency as a question in the forefront of a series of novels, Koloss included. However, the novel’s discussion of agency was ignored by the critics, as well as in the scholarly literature to follow. In an effort to get closer to the co-development of ideas of agency and aesthetic form, the article asks why this has been the case. Did the melodramatic form of the novel stand in the way of its aesthetic reflection on agency? And could the novel and its reception therefore be seen as an example of the existence of complex feedback-loops, between ideas of agency in a given culture and aesthetic form?

IntroductionDesigning artificial intelligence (AI) to support health and wellbeing is an important and broad challenge for technologists, designers, and policymakers. Drawing upon theories of AI and cybernetics, this article offers a design framework for designing intelligent systems to optimize human wellbeing. We focus on the production of wellbeing information feedback loops in complex community settings, and discuss the case study of My Wellness Check, an intelligent system designed to support the mental health and wellbeing needs of university students and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThe basis for our discussion is the community-led design of My Wellness Check, an intelligent system that supported the mental health and wellbeing needs of university students and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our system was designed to create an intelligent feedback loop to assess community wellbeing needs and to inform community action. This article provides an overview of our longitudinal assessment of students and staff wellbeing (n = 20,311) across two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsWe further share the results of a controlled experiment (n = 1,719) demonstrating the enhanced sensitivity and user experience of our context-sensitive wellbeing assessment.DiscussionOur approach to designing “AI for community wellbeing,” may generalize to the systematic improvement of human wellbeing in other human-computer systems for large-scale governance (e.g., schools, businesses, NGOs, platforms). The two main contributions are: 1) showcasing a simple way to draw from AI theory to produce more intelligent human systems, and 2) introducing a human-centered, community-led approach that may be beneficial to the field of AI.

“We may no longer be able to trust technology. A computer program could, without warning, become an uncontrollable force, triggered by a date, an event or a timer.” (Clough and Mungo 223) Introduction In 1991 the Information Security Handbook noted how “society is becoming increasingly dependent on the accurate and timely distribution of information” (Shain 4). This dependence, however, exposed the society to new kinds of dangers, accidents that have to do with information disorders – viruses, worms, bugs, malicious hackers etc. In this essay, I focus on digital viruses as disorderly elements within the digital culture. It is due to certain key principles in computing and computer security that viruses and worms have acquired their contemporary status as malicious software, that is, malware – elements of chaos, accident and disorder. According to my claim, the fear of viruses does not stem just from the contemporary culture of digital technology. It is part of a longer genealogy of modern computing, which has emphasized issues of control, reliability and order. Viruses and worms threaten the conceptual ontology of digital culture in a similar fashion as epidemic diseases have been figures for social disorder throughout Western history. Unlike AIDS or other deadly biological viruses, computer viruses have not been known to cause casualties to humans, yet they have been treated the last years as the “killer viruses of digital culture”, connotating the seriousness of the threat. A “viral perspective” to digital culture reveals how underlying articulations of order are used to construct an all-too-harmonious picture of computers in modern society. Reliability Anti-virus manuals, guidebooks and other such publications have especially contributed to our understanding of viruses as threats to the orderly digital society. The editorial of the first issue of Virus Bulletin (July 1989) sees viruses as a cunning form of vandalism and an indication of ”sabotage mentality”. Viruses destroy information and produce uncontrollability: Rather like Hitler’s V1 ‘flying bomb’, no-one knows when or where a computer virus will strike. They attack indiscriminately. Virus writers, whether or not they have targeted specific companies or individuals, must know that their programs, once unleashed, soon become uncontrollable. (Virus Bulletin 2) Computer viruses mean unreliable and unexpected danger: they are a chaotic element within a system based on security and order. According to a widely embraced view computer security means 1) confidentiality (the privacy of sensitive information), 2) integrity (authorized information and program exchange) and 3) availability (systems work promptly and allow access to authorized users). (E.g. Shain 5). Viruses and other forms of malicious code are, consequently, a direct threat to these values, part of the modern episteme in general. This is what I will here define as “a computational way of thinking”. The concept refers not only to the epistemological and ontological presuppositions in actual computer science discussions, but also to the larger cultural historical contexts surrounding the design, implementation and use of computers. Of course, one has to note that computers have never been those reliable and rational dream-machines they have been taken to be, as they are exposed to various potentials for breaking down of which viruses and worms form only a minor part. Yet, interestingly, reading professional and popular depictions of digital viruses reveals that these sources do consider computers as otherwise integrated, coherent and pristine machines of rationality, which are only temporarily disturbed by the evil occurrences of external malicious software. Control The virus researcher Vesselin Bontchev acknowledges how issues of trust and control are at the heart of computing and the virus threat: “a computer virus steals the control of the computer from the user. The virus activity ruins the trust that the user has in his/her machine, because it causes the user to lose his or her belief that she or he can control this machine” (31). This definition resonates with broader cultural trends of modernization. Zygmunt Bauman has expressed the essence of modern science as an ”ambition to conquer Nature and subordinate it to human needs” (39). Bauman understands this as ”control management”: the moulding of things to suit human needs. The essence of modern technology proceeds along the same lines, defined through values of progress, controllability, subordination of chaos and reification of the world. From the 19th-century on, technology became closely associated with advances in science. The values of order and control were embedded in the machines and technological systems, and with time, these values became the characteristics of modern technological culture. In this vein modernity can be defined as a new attitude towards controlling information. Capitalism and digital culture as historical phenomena share the valuation of abstraction, standardization and mechanization, which were already part of the technological culture of the 19th-century. Similarly, Turing’s universal machine was above all a machine of ordering and translation, with which heterogenous phenomena could be equated. This idea, concretised in typewriters, conveyer belts, assembly lines, calculators and computers served the basis for both digital machines and capitalism. The concrete connection was the capitalist need to control the increasingly complex amount of production, circulation and signs. Rationalism – as exemplified in Babbage’s differential calculators, Taylor’s ideas of work-management and cybernetics – was the image of thought incorporated in these machines (Gere 19–40). Rationalism In general, first order cybernetics fulfilled the project of modern abstract rationalism. In other words, notions of control and order play a significant role in the archaeology of information technological security, and these themes are especially visible in the thinking of Norbert Wiener, the pioneer of cybernetics. Wiener’s cybernetics touches, most of all, upon the question of understanding the world as communication circuits and controlling them via successful feedback loops that maintain the stasis of a system. This theory relates closely the problem of entropy, a classical notion in statistical mechanics from the 19th-century: “Just as the amount of information in a system is a measure of its degree of organization, so the entropy of a system is a measure of its degree of disorganization; and the one is simply the negative of the other” (Wiener 11). Wiener and the modern era share a respect for control and security. As products of modernity, cybernetics, systems theory and information theory are all in a way theories of order and cleanliness. This is the main theme of Stephen Pfohl’s essay “The Cybernetic Delirium of Norbert Wiener”, in which he describes the cultural historical background of modern cybernetic culture. To Pfohl, cybernetics does not mean a purely academic discipline but “a term connoting the most far-reaching of ultramodern forms of social control.” Pfohl delineates the genealogy of cybernetics from the early projects on anti-aircraft artillery to the functioning of the contemporary capitalist media culture. For Pfohl, Wiener’s theories connect directly to the power structures of modern society, sacrificing other ways of being, restricting other possible worlds from emerging. Paraphrasing Pfohl, cybernetics regulates and modifies the dynamic flows of the world into fixed, stabilized and controlled boundaries. Noise The engineering problem of logical calculation and communication of signals without noise expands towards the more general cultural fields of power and articulation. I would especially like to pick up the notion of noise, which, as understood by Bauman, means undefinability, incoherence, incongruity, incompatibility, illogicality, irrationality, ambiguity, confusion, undecidability, ambivalence, all tropes of “the other of order” (7). For cybernetics and early computer pioneers, noise meant a managing problem, objects in the way of transmitting signals. Noise as the most important problem for the rise of modern discourse networks was not solved once and for all in any historical phase, but remained part of the communication acts ever since, and the only resolution to the problem of non-communication was to incorporate it within the system (Kittler 242). Computer viruses can be understood as contemporary instances of this notion of noise. They are software that short-circuit the “normal” operations of a computer and connect themselves to the basic functioning of the machine. Viruses mean short-term wiring of noise to the components of a computer. By definition, viruses have been conceived as a threat to any computer system for a) virus activity is always uncontrollable, because the actions of the virus program are autonomous and b) viruses behave indeterminately and unpredictably (Lamacka 195). In a much more positive vein, this coupling of computing order and viral disorder has been noted by recent net art projects. According to the net artist Jaromil the digital domain produces a form of chaos – which is inconvenient because it is unusual and fertile – on which people can surf. In that chaos, viruses are spontaneous compositions which are like lyrical poems in causing imperfections in machines ”made to work” and in representing the rebellion of our digital serfs. Jaromil takes noise as the starting point and articulates how viruses function also as forms of resistance to the contemporary informational capitalist ideology of the digital. Charlie Gere’s analysis of the connections between modern technology and capitalism is apt in this regard as well: the abstract, standardizing and mechanizing machines of modernization serve the basis for both the cult of the digital and contemporary capitalism in a way that makes these two almost siblings. Thus, also accidents of this techno-capitalist culture are not solely technical, but social in that they are articulated on a plane of society and cultural interaction. Viruses can thus be understood as those “unwanted bads” that are a by-product of post-industrial culture of production of goods (Van Loon), as well as they can be viewed alongside other mass mediated apocalyptic monsters threatening the order of contemporary Western culture, as Luca Lampo from the net art group _[epidemiC]_ suggests: We feel that “The Virus” is the “stranger”, the “other”, in our machine, a sort of digital sans papier—uncontrollable diversity. Once Hollywood, like Empire, finished killing “Indians” and the “Soviet Russians”, the Hollywood propaganda machine had to build other anti-Empire monsters to keep alive the social imaginary of 2001: aliens, meteors, epidemic… so many monsters. In this light, while being technical bits of code that from time to time cause trouble for users, viruses act also as social signs which can be activated in various contexts. For representatives of the official computer culture viruses and worms are signs of disorder, chaos and crime that undermine the presumed reliability of digital culture, which would otherwise function “normally.” Yet, according to some commentators, viral disorder should not mean solely anarchy but a space for variation and experimentation that resist the one-way ideology of computer rationalism. (See Sampson; Cohen; Deleuze.) For some, that ideology has been crystallized in the figure of Microsoft, a popular target for virus attacks. This view accentuates that the genealogy of computers and rationalism analysed above is but one potential history. There is always the possibility to write the counter-memory of the disorderly, accidental, probabilistic and contingent nature of technological culture. Hence, viruses might prove out to be also intellectual tools, with which to create new concepts and viewpoints to digital culture and the cultural history of computing and technology in general. Already Martin Heidegger (§ 16) proposed that modern technology reveals itself at the moment of its breaking. In this sense, viruses reveal the functioning of a certain ideological or micro-political constitution of digital order. The challenge is not to take any notion of a “healthy” cultural network without disturbances as the starting point, but to see elements of break-up as part and parcel of those systems. Even if we are used to thinking of systems as orderly and harmonious, “[i]n the beginning there was noise”, as Serres (13) notes. This emphasizes the conceptual space we should give to the parasites who reveal the networks of power that otherwise are left unnoticed. References Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995 Bontchev, Vesselin. “Are ‘Good’ Computer Viruses Still a Bad Idea?” EICAR Conference Proceedings 1994, 25–47. Clough, Bryan and Mungo, Paul. Approaching Zero: Data Crime and the Computer Underworld. London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1992. Cohen, Fred. It’s Alive! The New Breed of Living Computer Programs. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. Deleuze, Gilles. “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle” In: Pourparlers 1972–1990. Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1990, 240–7. Gere, Charlie. Digital Culture. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Albany: New York University Press, 1996. Jaromil. “:(){ :|:& };:” ‘I love You’ – exhibition catalogue, 2002, http://www.digitalcraft.org/index.php?artikel_id=292> Kittler, Friedrich. Draculas Vermächtnis: Technische Schriften. Leipzig: Reclam Verlag Leipzig, 1993. Lamacka, Pavel. “Harmless and useful viruses can hardly exist.” Virus Bulletin Conference Proceedings 1995, 193–8. Lampo, Luca. “When The Virus Becomes Epidemic.” An Interview with Luca Lampo by Snafu and Vanni Brusadin, 18.4.2002, http://www.epidemic.ws/downJones_press/THE_THING_ Interview_files/index_files/display.forum> Pfohl, Stephen. “The Cybernetic Delirium of Norbert Wiener.” C-Theory 30.1.1997 http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=86>. Sampson, Tony. ”A Virus in Info-Space.” M/C Journal http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/07_Sampson.html>. Serres, Michel. The Parasite. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Shain, Michael. ”An Overview of Security”. Information Security Handbook. Eds. Michael Caelli, Dennis Longley & Michael Shain. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994 (1991). Van Loon, Joost. Risk and Technological Culture: Towards a Sociology of Virulence. London & New York: Routledge, 2002. Virus Bulletin, “Editorial”, July 1989. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd edition. (1st edition 1948). New York & London: The M.I.T. Press and John Wiley & Sons, 1961. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Parikka, Jussi. "Viral Noise and the (Dis)Order of the Digital Culture." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/05-parikka.php>. APA Style Parikka, J. (Jan. 2005) "Viral Noise and the (Dis)Order of the Digital Culture," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/05-parikka.php>.

Transhumanism looks to utilise science and technology to move humans beyond the limitations of their natural form. Recent scientific advances have, for the first time, presented plausible genetic interventions for the directed evolution of humans. In separate developments, electromechanical innovations, including miniaturisation of components and improvements in bio-compatible materials, have seen breakthroughs in brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) that potentiate a cybernetic dimension, in which mechanical devices would be under the direct control of the mind. This article offers insight into the most important of these recent advances, with particular emphasis on genome editing and therapeutic uses of BMIs in which the same technology might be employed for enhancement.

Taking A Cybernetic Model for Advertising proposed by Chris Miles (2007) as its starting point, this paper argues that the principles of dialogic relationships should be applied to the construction of advertising communication models. A dialogic model for advertising looks at self/other relationships within the advertising system through the Bakhtinian perspective of dialogic relationships. Taking into account the time/space factor, a dialogic model provides explanation of how various actors communicate in the advertising system. The paper considers the concept of control and examines how it influences the communication process between different actors. It argues that none of the actors involved in communication can have dominating and permanent control over the message creation process. Furthermore, it shows that in communication, there is no transmission, but only co-creation of the message.

The paper expresses the opinion on possibilities of self-assembly of advanced clock-controlled system with feedback loops in the frames of time set by the evolutionary hypothesis, i.e. max. 400 million years. The main difficulty is that the circadian system of the oldest living cell (cyanobacteria) is dependent on gene expression and photosynthesis, both of them controlled by the circadian system. Moreover, without fully developed clock and functional machinery a cianobacterial cell is unable to switch from daytime to dark regime, which sets new limitations on the evolution time. Even though the process of automation in industry began ca. 60 years ago, it is widely recognized that a mechanical clock should be treated as a structurally complex cybernetic device even though its behavior is in principle simple [1,2]. In my opinion, this applies even more to the circadian clocks in biosystems of living organisms, since the researchers point out the features like auto-regulatory loops and programming [3,4]. Circadian clocks are found in organisms ranging in complexity from unicells to mammals, where they play important role to control daily rhythms in cellular activities and behavior [5]. Researchers found out that the “extensive circadian clock networks regulate almost every biological process in plants” [6]. It is a common view that the organisms “have developed the ability to measure time on a 24-hour basis” and thus to adapt their lives to cycles of light/dark and warm/cold [7]. The question rises, however, how they developed this kind of ability, and how long did it take to produce and to assemble the parts into the working circadian clock system?