Edmund C. Berkeley: Giant Brains, or Machines That Think (1949/1961)

Giant Brains is one of the first books on electronic computers for a general audience.

In it, the co-founder Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Edmund Berkeley described the principles behind computing machines (called then “mechanical brains”, “sequence-controlled calculators”, or various other terms), and then gave a technical but accessible survey of the most prominent examples of the time, including machines from MIT, Harvard, the Moore School, Bell Laboratories, and elsewhere.

Originally published by Wiley & Sons, 1949
Publisher Science Editions, New York, 1961
292 pages

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Cybernetic: The Magazine, Vol 1-2 (1985-1986)

Editorial board: Gordon Pask, Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster, Terry Winograd, Larry Richards (Vol 2 only)
Editor Paul Trachtman (Vol 1)
Publisher The American Society for Cybernetics
ISSN 0883-4202

Download (Vol 1, No 1, Summer-Fall 1985, 148 pp)
Download (Vol 2, No 1: “Social Violence”, 1986, 82 pp)

Constructivism and Kinetic Art: Exat 51, New Tendencies, catalogue (1995) [English/Croatian]

Catalogue for an exhibition of the works of Exat 51 and New Tendencies from the collection of Gallery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia.

Curated and edited by Marijan Susovski
With texts by Leonida Kovac, Marijan Susovski
Publisher City Gallery, Zagreb, June 1995
ISBN 9536043033
154 pages
via Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

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Eden Medina: Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile (2011)

In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile’s experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile’s economy. Neither vision was fully realized–Allende’s government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented–but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics.

Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government–which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network’s Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies.

Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.

Publisher MIT Press, 2011
ISBN 0262016494, 9780262016490
326 pages

Cybersyn at wikipedia
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Download (removed on 2013-1-29 upon the request of the publisher)
related: Miller Medina, Jessica Eden: “Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile” (2006)

Arte y Cibernética, catalogue (1970) [Spanish]

A catalogue of the first computer art exhibition in Argentina, organised by Jorge Glusberg. With texts by Jasia Reichardt, Angel Kalenberg, Jorge Glusberg, Luis Osin, and Ricardo Ferraro.

Publisher Centro de Arte y Comunicacion (CAC), Buenos Aires, June 1970
via Pablo Colapinto

Download (no OCR)
View discussion on cybernetics in Latin America (Yasmin mailing list)

Situation Room: Designing a Prototype of a Citizen Situation Room (2010) [English/Spanish]

The term Situation Room is normally used to designate a secret place used in times of crisis to assess and monitor data for decision making purposes. Its origins can be traced back to World War II with the invention of computers, digitalization, and the collaboration of architects and the military. These rooms are equipped with monitors and data boards used to control everything from flows crossing the strait of Gibraltar to nuclear fission processes in Nuclear Power plants and the life support mechanisms on board the International Space Station.

“Rather than being afraid of control, and technologies in general, we prefer to think in terms of social appropriation and implementation with research and creativity; we even think that, as Cybersyn shows, the source of technological creativity actually lies in social cooperation, and that it is only later captured by the military or capitalism.” -Hackitectura

Idea: José Pérez de Lama y Pablo de Soto
Editors Pablo de Soto & Hackitectura
Publisher dpr-barcelona, June 2010
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License
ISBN 9788461415045
112 pages

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Jane Pavitt: Fear and Fashion in the Cold War (2008)

From Barbarella’s bikini to vinyl radiation suits to high-tech jewelry, the Cold War’s impact on fashion was unmistakable.

Atomic anxieties, the space race, technological developments, and the first forays into “super-reality” led to innovations in materials, the cybernetic visions of the 1960s, and a range of surprising responses from artists, filmmakers, scientists, and designers. With a stunning selection of images, including photographs by fashion luminaries such as John French, Fear and Fashion in the Cold War explores how the image of the body was shaped by Cold War concerns between 1945 and 1970. In this engaging book, Jane Pavitt incorporates military, political, and scientific research in an engrossing discussion of how countercultural theories and experiences in the later 1960s shaped an alternative view of the “Cold War Body.”

Publisher V&A, London, 2008
ISBN 1851775447, 9781851775446
128 pages
via Royal College of Art

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