Heinz von Foerster: Understanding Understanding. Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition (2003)

“In these essays Heinz von Foerster discusses some of the fundamental principles that govern how we know the world and how we process the information from which we derive that knowledge. Included are path- breaking articles concerning the principles of computation in neural nets (1967), the definition of self-organizing systems (1960), the nature of cognition (1970), as well as recent expansions on these themes (e.g. “How recursive is communication,” 1993). Working with Norbert Wiener, Warren McCullough, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, von Foerster was one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, which has had profound effects both on modern systems theory and on the philosophy of cognition. At the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois he produced the first parallel computers and contributed to many other developments in the theory of computation and cognition.”

Publisher Springer, 2003
ISBN 0387953922, 9780387953922
xii+362 pages

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Raul Espejo (ed.): Kybernetes. The International Journal of Systems & Cybernetics: Tribute to Stafford Beer (2004)

This special double issue is a tribute, in memoriam, to Stafford Beer, patron of this journal, President of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) and one of the leading cyberneticians and systemists of his generation. He was not only a great academic and thinker but a man of wide ranging interests and activities that are well-known to his friends and colleagues, but not necessarily to a wider audience. This issue, therefore, reflects in its tributes to him, his unique contributions not only in academia but also to society at large.

Many of the contributions included in this commemorative issue were based on presentations given at the event to celebrate his life held at the London School of Economics (UK) in March 2003 (Celebration of Stafford Beer’s Life and Work, 2003).

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Volume 33 Number 3/4 2004
ISBN 0-86176-940-6 ISSN 0368-492X

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Flo Conway, Jim Siegelman: Dark Hero of the Information Age. In Search Of Norbert Wiener–Father of Cybernetics (2004)

In the middle of the last century, Norbert Wiener–ex-child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician–founded the science of cybernetics, igniting the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. Wiener was the first to articulate the modern notion of “feedback,” and his ideas informed the work of computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, and anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. His best-selling book, Cybernetics, catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism. So why is his work virtually unknown today? And what, in fact, is his legacy? In this book, award-winning journalists Conway and Siegelman set out to rescue Wiener’s genius from obscurity and to explore the many ways in which his groundbreaking ideas continue to shape our lives.

Publisher Basic Books, 2004
ISBN 0738203688, 9780738203683
423 pages

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