4. computer ENIAC [Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer] was the first general-purpose electronic computer... capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems... ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory... announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a "Giant Brain.” [Wikipedia]
5. the antiaircraft gun is not an isolated mechanism.... The gun pointer is a human element.... The actual fire control is a system involving human beings and machines at the same time. It must be reduced, from an engineering point of view, to a single structure, which means either a human interpretation of the machine, or a mechanical interpretation of the operator, or both. (67-68)
Cyborg, or cybernetic organism In a larger sense about the interfaces between technologies and ideas, between humans and machines
started during WWII (like the internet) fundamentally different way of thinking about machines
Programmable machine vs. single-purpose machine self-regulating system linked to environment rather than particular observable results (note woman programmer)
Weiner tells the origin story of his theory of cybernetics -- military problem of ballistics Came to seem that there wasn’t much difference in the way machine systems work and the way human systems work
End of autonomy
i.e. Wiener’s scientific ethics (averting a doomsday scenario) PAUSE FOR QUESTIONS
BRAINSTORM: what is a cyborg (according to Haraway) -- what boundaries does it cross? this is a dense and highly intertextual text -- going to try to explain some broad concepts that it relies on
Haraway’s informatics of domination
AFFINITY politics (could have done separate slide) On to Haraway’s intervention... Important: BOTH domination and resistance in one Legacy of cyborg theory Call back to cybernetics