A modest footnote in the mid-century annals of digital communication sciences, this article observes several strange loops in the dual biographies of Norbert Wiener, a primary founder of cybernetics – an American-born computer-compatible communication science that later took root in the Soviet Union – and his father, Leo Wiener, a Byelostock émigré who began Slavic studies in America. It proceeds in two parts: first, a biographical reflection on Norbert Wiener's method by analogy, which he first developed under his father as a youth, and second, a reflection on how Wiener's mature cybernetics combine analogy, feedback, and their contradictions ripe in biographical mind–body tensions. Among other notes, this article contends that the origins of a leading theory of digital communication may best be understood not as a disembodied abstraction of information, but rather in the messy world of biographical influences that helped usher in a cold war era of calculating communication.
%0 Journal Article
%1 peters_toward_2013
%A Peters, Benjamin
%D 2013
%J Russian Journal of Communication
%K biography cybernetics externalist historiography intellectual russia united-states wiener
%N 1
%P 31--43
%R 10.1080/19409419.2013.775544
%T Toward a Genealogy of a Cold War Communication Sciences: The Strange Loops of Leo and Norbert Wiener
%V 5
%X A modest footnote in the mid-century annals of digital communication sciences, this article observes several strange loops in the dual biographies of Norbert Wiener, a primary founder of cybernetics – an American-born computer-compatible communication science that later took root in the Soviet Union – and his father, Leo Wiener, a Byelostock émigré who began Slavic studies in America. It proceeds in two parts: first, a biographical reflection on Norbert Wiener's method by analogy, which he first developed under his father as a youth, and second, a reflection on how Wiener's mature cybernetics combine analogy, feedback, and their contradictions ripe in biographical mind–body tensions. Among other notes, this article contends that the origins of a leading theory of digital communication may best be understood not as a disembodied abstraction of information, but rather in the messy world of biographical influences that helped usher in a cold war era of calculating communication.
@article{peters_toward_2013,
abstract = {A modest footnote in the mid-century annals of digital communication sciences, this article observes several strange loops in the dual biographies of Norbert Wiener, a primary founder of cybernetics \textendash{} an American-born computer-compatible communication science that later took root in the Soviet Union \textendash{} and his father, Leo Wiener, a Byelostock {\'e}migr{\'e} who began Slavic studies in America. It proceeds in two parts: first, a biographical reflection on Norbert Wiener's method by analogy, which he first developed under his father as a youth, and second, a reflection on how Wiener's mature cybernetics combine analogy, feedback, and their contradictions ripe in biographical mind\textendash{}body tensions. Among other notes, this article contends that the origins of a leading theory of digital communication may best be understood not as a disembodied abstraction of information, but rather in the messy world of biographical influences that helped usher in a cold war era of calculating communication.},
added-at = {2019-08-29T01:56:31.000+0200},
author = {Peters, Benjamin},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/284a98895baa3041e7d6fbd036693972a/jpooley},
doi = {10.1080/19409419.2013.775544},
interhash = {33ebe5692000459964498f99cc1bc8fc},
intrahash = {84a98895baa3041e7d6fbd036693972a},
journal = {Russian Journal of Communication},
keywords = {biography cybernetics externalist historiography intellectual russia united-states wiener},
month = apr,
number = 1,
pages = {31--43},
timestamp = {2019-08-29T01:56:31.000+0200},
title = {Toward a {{Genealogy}} of a {{Cold War Communication Sciences}}: {{The Strange Loops}} of {{Leo}} and {{Norbert Wiener}}},
volume = 5,
year = 2013
}