Cybernetics – The Macy Conferences 1946–1953. The Complete Transactions - Softcover

Pias, Claus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3037345985 ISBN 13: 9783037345986

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Synopsis

Between 1946 and 1953, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation sponsored a series of conferences aiming to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary community of scholars and researchers who would join forces to lay the groundwork for the new science of cybernetics. These conferences, known as the Macy conferences, constituted a landmark for the field. They were the first to grapple with new terms such as information and feedback and to develop a cohesive and broadly applicable theory of systems that would become equally applicable to living beings and machines, economic and cognitive processes, and many scholarly disciplines. The concepts that emerged from the conferences come to permeate thinking in many fields, including biology, neurology, sociology, ecology, economics, politics, psychoanalysis, linguistics, and computer science. This book contains the complete transcripts of all ten Macy conferences and the guidelines for the conference proceedings. These transcripts are supplemented with an introduction by Claus Pias that charts the significance of the Macy conferences to the history of science.

About this title

About the Author:

Claus Pias is professor of the history and epistemology of media at the Leuphana University of Luneburg, where he directs the Institute for Advanced Study in Media Cultures of Computer Simulation, the Centre for Digital Cultures, and the Digital Cultures Research Lab.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 3037345985
• ISBN 13: 9783037345986
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 736