Workshop: Cybernetics in Late Soviet Culture
The discourse on cybernetics is one of the most inspiring and thought-provoking intellectual currents in post-war science. As a truly interdisciplinary approach linking physics, psychology, computer science, sociology, philosophy and many disciplines more, its influence is topical in current epistemological understandings of “systemic” thinking. Although the history of cybernetics has been studied for the Western and Latin American context, cybernetics in the East European context has been brought to our fore only to some extent. Our workshop aimed to address cybernetics from an interdisciplinary point of view, linking historical and philosophical approaches with insights from literary and cultural studies. It is centered on the period from the early 1950s to the late 1970s and wants to draw attention to the peculiarities of Soviet and Socialist cybernetic thinking.
The Workhop took place on June 17, 2019 in Room JK 32/121, Habelschwertder Allee 45, Freie Universität Berlin.
Programme:
13:00-13:00 Adress: Willi Reinecke
Panel 1 Chair: Ekaterina Tewes
13:30-14:15 Maxim Waldstein (Amsterdam): Soviet Cybernetics and the Structuralist Sturm und Drang: 1955-1963
14:15-15:00 Giulia Rispoli (Berlin): Cybernetics as aUniversal Theory of Nature: The Work of Axel Berg
Panel 2 Chair: Georg Witte
15:30-16:15 Clemens Günther (Berlin): Engineers of the Society: 'Social Cybernetics' in Dissident Discourse
16:15-17:00 Diana Kurkovsky West (Evanston): Analog Cybernetics': Did Second-Order Thinking Exist in the Soviet Union?
17:15-18:00 Benjamin Peters (Tusla): The Soviet Internet: Beyond the Vook
18:30-20:00 Matthias Senkel (Berlin): Dark Numbers (Reading in KL 29/208)