No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is about the ontology of living beings as natural systems, their behavior, and the way in which said behavior, under special conditions of social coupling, may give rise to mental phenomena. The guiding questions of the thesis are: 1) What kinds of systems are living beings such that they behave the way they do? 2) How, through what kinds of mechanisms and processes, do living beings generate their behavior? 3) How do mental phenomena appear in the life of certain living beings? 4) What are the natural conditions under which certain living beings exhibit mental phenomena? To answer these questions the thesis first assumes, then justifies and defends, a Strict Naturalistic (SN) stance with respect to living beings. SN is a metaphysical and epistemological framework that, recognizing the organizational, dynamic and structural complexity and peculiarity of living beings, views and treats them as metaphysically ordinary natural systems; that is, as systems that, from the metaphysical point of view, are not different in kind from rivers or stars. SN holds that if in natural sciences rivers and stars are not conceived as semantic, intentional, teleological, agential or normative systems, then living beings should not be so conceived either. Having assumed SN, and building mainly on the second-order cybernetic theories of Ross Ashby and Humberto Maturana, the thesis answers question 1) by saying that living beings are (i) adaptive dynamic systems, (ii) deterministic machines of closed transitions, (iii) multistable dissipative systems, and (iv) organizationally closed systems with respect to their sensorimotor and autopoietic dynamics. Based on this ontological characterization, the thesis answers question 2) by showing that living beings’ behavior corresponds to the combined product of (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv). Points (i) and (ii) support the idea that living beings are strictly deterministic systems, and that, consequently, notions such as information, control, agency or teleology—usually invoked to explain living beings’ behavior—do not have operational reality but are rather descriptive projections introduced by the observer. Point (iii) helps to understand why, despite their deterministic nature, living beings behave in ways that, to the observer, appear to be teleological, agential or “intelligent”. Point (iv) suggests that living beings’ sensorimotor dynamics are closed circuits without inputs or outputs, where the distinction between external and internal medium is, again, an ascription of the observer rather than a functional property of the system itself. Having addressed the basic principles of living beings’ behavior, the thesis explores the possible origin of (truly) mental phenomena in the particular domain of social behavior. Complementing Maturana’s recursive theory of language with Vygotsky’s dialectic approach the thesis advances, though in a still quite exploratory way, a sociolinguistic hypothesis of mind. This hypothesis answers questions 3) and 4) by claiming that the essential properties of mental phenomena (intentionality, representational content) appear with language, and that mind, as a private experiential domain, emerges as a dialectic transformation of language.

The history of the Cold War has rarely been looked at through the eyes of the smaller powers, especially ones in the Balkans. Works have also often ignored the actual workings of the international socialist market, and the possibilities it created for some of these small countries. The conventional wisdom has also prevailed that the Eastern Bloc was irreversably lagging technologically, and its societies had failed to enter the information age after the 1970s, one among a myriad of reasons for the failure of socialism. Using the prism of a commodity history of the Bulgarian computer and an ethnography of the professional class that built it and worked with it, this dissertation argues that such narratives obscure the role of small states and the importance of technology to the socialist project. The backward Bulgarian economy exploited the international socialist division of labour and COMECON’s mechanisms to set itself up as the “Silicon Valley” of the Eastern Bloc, garnering huge profits for the economy. To do so, it did not hue a politically maverick road but exploited its political orthodoxy and Soviet alliance to the full, securing huge markets. Importantly, this work also shows that the state facilitated massive transfers of knowledge and technology through both legal and illicit means, using its state security and economic organisations to look to the West. This made the Iron Curtain much more porous for a growing cadre of technical intellectuals who were trusted by the regime in order to create the golden exports of the country. This transfer and mobility helped create an internationally plugged-in and fluent class of engineers and managers, at odds with most of the rest of the economy. At the same time, the Global South became an important area of exchange where these specialists competed with both nascent protectionist regimes and international firms. Using India as a case study, this dissertation shows how Bulgarian met the First World on the grounds of the Third and learned to market, negotiate, advertise, and service customers – a skillset that was then applied to its socialist dealings. Finally, the dissertation examines the domestic impact of such policies. The regime wished to use cybernetics and computing to solve the problems of its lagging economic growth, as well as usher in communism. It introduced both the widespread discourse of technological revolutions to its population, and robots and automation to some of its factories. This created both anxieties and hopes among workers, as well as vibrant philosophical debates about the future roles of humans in the information society, among both technical and humanistic intellectuals. Ultimately, however, the economic inefficiency undermined the promise and this failure was utilised by some technical managers to call for reforms, playing a hand in the end of the regime. They managed to negotiate the transfer to capitalism better than most, utilising their financial and business links, while thousands of engineers also found a better life than the vast majority of Bulgarian workers, through emigration or their possession of cutting edge skills. Using Bulgarian, Russian, Indian archives as well as interviews with living actors, the dissertation thus intervenes in both the view of the Iron Curtain as an impenetrable barrier for ideas, and 1989 as a convenient end point for communism’s legacies. It shows both the creation of new professional classes and how they were plugged into global developments, arguing that some people in the socialist bloc did enter the information age, and it is by paying attention to their actions and interests that we can get a better understanding of the developments of late socialism and its end.

This study introduces logistical media and considers one example of such--radar. Innis (1972; 1951), Mumford (1970; 1934), Carey (1988), Virilio (1997; 1989; 1986) and others are discussed as preparing an understanding of logistical media as subtle but powerful devices of cognitive, social, and political coordination that affect our experience of time and space. Radar is presented as significant because of its progressive-catastrophic potential. Radar was invented for national defense and to remotely survey the earth and its atmosphere, but it also allows new collisions with "others." American radar was primarily developed at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT during the 1940s. Historical objects, principally from the MIT Radiation Laboratory Historian's Office, are arranged and discussed according to Walter Benjamin's (1999) historical method. Benjamin theorized that historical debris can be arranged as a dialectical image or constellation that can momentarily disrupt our sense of chronological progress and denaturalize ideology. Benjamin described this disruption as the interruption of the present with the now. Radar is considered in terms of authoritarian modernity, and as contributing to a politics of distance, speed, angle, movement, and perception. Objects from radar history are marshaled to illuminate radar's pre-history, its use of feedback to identify and coordinate objects, and its susceptibility to error and disruption. Present understandings of the 9/11 attacks are challenged by the now of these objects, and an understanding of logistical media is furthered.

No description available.

The landscape is under constant threat from human kind and cannot evolve fast enough to protect itself adequately. By augmenting an ecosystem’s natural resilience with cybernetic technology, it will be better equipped to ensure its survival in an urban setting. This practicum will investigate the creation of a cybernetically-enhanced ecosystem, the cyborg landscape, and how this organism(s) will know and understand the world around it. This practicum has been inspired by the idea of the cyborg, research on plant intelligence, installations, artistic interventions and ideas of chance and performance introduced by composer John Cage. The cyborg plant is a strategy used to expand on the limitations of a plant allowing adaptation to situations and environments. To become a cyborg, is to have an intimate bond between technology and organism, both functioning as one to overcome limitations limiting survival in the environment.

Habilitationsschrift--Munich. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-216) and index.