[iDC] reading list

Brian Holmes brian.holmes at wanadoo.fr
Fri Sep 1 15:51:03 EDT 2006


Here's my current reading list (won't necessarily get to all 
of it). Basic or even retro cybernetics, with a few 
prolongations:

--Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics + The Human Use of Human Beings
--Shannon and Weaver: Mathematical Theory of Communication
--Ross Ashby: Introduction to Cybernetics
--Steve Joshua Heims: The Cybernetics Group + John von 
Neumann and Norbert Weiner (the double biography)
--Ludwig Von Bertalanffy: General System Theory
--J.W. Forrester: Industrial Dynamics + Urban Dynamics
--Paul Edwards: The Closed World
--Gregory Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind
--Heinz von Foerster: Understanding Understanding
--H. Maturana & F. Varela: Tree of Knowledge
--Felix Guattari: Chaosmosis + Cartographies Schizoanalytiques
--N. Katherine Hayles: How We Became Posthuman
--Tiziana Terranova: Network Culture

Three questions:

1. What happens when I make a plane reservation, then go 
through security?

2. How did cybernetics become THE applied social science of 
the postwar period?

3. Were the most interesting 60s-70s cultural experiments a 
series of second-order revolts against cybernetic systems? 
If so, what were the consequences on those systems?

All this, to write a text on Guattari's notion of 
overcoding. But also, to develop a more general theory of 
collective art practice at grips with the control society.

best, Brian






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