Norbert Wiener: The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950–) [EN, FR, BR-PT, RU, ES, SC, IT, GR]

“Founder of the science of cybernetics—the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system—Wiener was widely misunderstood as one who advocated the automation of human life. As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits. At the same time he realized the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His book examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as he anticipates the enormous impact—in effect, a third industrial revolution—that the computer has had on our lives.”

Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1950
241 pages

New edition
With an Introduction by Steve J. Heims
Published by Free Association Books, London, 1989
ISBN 1853430757
xxx+199 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (English, 1950, added on 2021-4-8)
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (English, 1950/1989, updated on 2021-4-8)
Cybernétique et société: l’usage humain des êtres humains (French, 1952/2014, EPUB, added on 2021-4-8)
Cibernética e sociedade: o uso humano de seres humanos (BR-Portuguese, trans. José Paulo Paes, 2nd ed., 1954/1968, added on 2013-12-12)
Kibernetika i obshchestvo (Russian, trans. E.G. Panfilov, 1958, DJVU, added on 2021-4-8)
Cybernética y sociedad (Spanish, trans. José Novo Cerro, 1958, added on 2021-4-8)
Kibernetika i društvo: ljudska upotreba ljudskih bića (Serbo-Croatian, trans. Ljubomir Radanović, 1964, added on 2021-4-8)
Introduzione alla cibernetica: l’uso umano degli esseri umani (Italian, trans. Dario Persiani, 1966, added on 2021-4-8)
Kyvernētikē kai koinōnia: ē anthrōpinē chrēsimopoiēsē tōn anthrōpinōn ontōn (Greek, trans. Giannē Iōannidē, 1970, DJVU, added on 2021-4-8)

Lewis Mumford: Technics and Civilization (1934-) [English, Spanish]

The book gives the history of technology and its interplay in shaping and being shaped by civilizations. Mumford asserts that the development of modern technology, rather than springing up during the Industrial Revolution, has its roots in the Middle Ages. He argues it is the moral, the economic, and the political choices we make, not the machines we use that has produced a capitalist industrialized machine-oriented economy, whose imperfect fruits serve the majority so imperfectly. The development of technology is divided into three overlapping phases: ecotechnic, paleotechnic and neotechnic.

First published in England, 1934
Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, Seventh impression, 1955
496 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

Technics and Civilization (English, 1934/1955, updated on 2014-3-19)
Tecnica y civilizacion (Spanish, trans. Aznar de Acevedo, 1971/1992, updated on 2014-3-19)

Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, No. 1-4 (2006-2008)

Collapse Vol. IV: Concept Horror
May 2008

Collapse IV features a series of investigations by philosophers, writers and artists into Concept Horror. Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. This unique volume continues Collapse’s pursuit of indisciplinary miscegenation, the wide-ranging contributions interacting to produce common themes and suggestive connections. In the process a rich and compelling case emerges for the intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought.

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-3-4
403 pages

more

PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)

Collapse Vol. III: Unknown Deleuze [+ Speculative Realism]
November 2007

Collapse III contains explorations of the work of Gilles Deleuze by pioneering thinkers in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, music and architecture. In addition, we publish in this volume two previously untranslated texts by Deleuze himself, along with a fascinating piece of vintage science fiction from one of his more obscure influences. Finally, as an annex to Collapse Volume II, we also include a full transcription of the conference on ‘Speculative Realism’ held in London in 2007.

The contributors to this volume aim to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, Deleuze’s contribution to philosophy: in what does his philosophical originality lie; what does he appropriate from other philosophers and how does he transform it? And how can the apparently disparate threads of his work to be ‘integrated’ – what is the precise nature of the constellation of the aesthetic, the conceptual and the political proposed by Gilles Deleuze, and what are the overarching problems in which the numerous philosophical concepts ‘signed Deleuze’ converge?

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Dustin McWherter
ISBN 978-0-9553087-2-7
458 pages

more

PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)

Collapse Vol. II: Speculative Realism
March 2007

Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, and involving them in unforeseen and productive syntheses, Collapse II features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and cinéastes, and searching interviews with leading scientists.
Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics – the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its “end”, the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency – both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-1-2
330 pages

more

PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)

Collapse Vol. I: Numerical Materialism
September 2006

Collapse I is an unprecedented collection of work by leading practitioners in diverse fields of enquiry. Conceived as a meticulously compiled and compendious miscellany, a grimoire or instruction manual without referent, as a delirious carnival of sobriety, Collapse operates its war against good sense not through romantic flight but through the formal insanity secreted in the depths of the rational (“the rational is not reasonable”).

Collapse aims to force unforeseen conjunctions, singular correspondences, and unnatural cross-fertilisations; to diagram abstract regions as yet unnamed.

The first volume of Collapse investigates the nature and philosophical uses of number through interviews with philosophers scientists and mathematicians, essays on the mathematics of intensity, terrorism, the occult and information theory, and graphical works of multiplicity.

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editors: Ray Brassier, Michael Carr
ISBN 978-0-9553087-0-4
288 pages

more

PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)