Analog, digital, and the cybernetic illusion  --  Claus Pias

Full Citation and Summary Pias, Claus. `Analog, Digital, and the Cybernetic
Illusion'. Kybernetes 34.3/4 (2005): 543 - 550. Emerald Insight.

Notes Cybernetics as a Utopian Science (pp. 543-545)
- Introduction of the breadth of cybernetics in the 50s and 60s, nearly every
 discipline reflecting upon itself through cybernetic framework; discussion
 formatted through Pias' examination of the Macy Conferences as "primal scene"
 (pp. 543)
- Transposition of wartime "interdisciplinarity" to so-called cold war
 "peacetime"; notes how carefully the interdisciplinarity was constructed
 through who was invited to Macy Conferences (pp. 543)
- Introduces Heiz von Foerster and his theories of reflective self-regulation
 through second order analysis (pp. 544)
- Introduces the utopian reconciliation of all knowledge to a single, unified
 source theory (pp. 544)
- The abstraction of synaptic activity to logic circuits makes thinking  symbol
 manipulation; externalization/eternalization/naturalization of Boolean logic
 in a Platonic gesture, logic as something that is implemented; the
 non-media-specificity of information (content) (pp. 544)
- Not media-tech. as "extensions" (McLuhan, Freud, etc.), and different from
 Nietzsche's "hardware" of philosophy, but more intensive subversion of
 hierarchical differences (pp. 544)
- Blur between human-non-human, subject-object, psyche-techne, man-apparatus
 since now the human is but one implementation of an information processing
 machine (pp. 544)
- Hope for new "order of things" where there is no splits, a sphere of
 "technical being" beyond mind-nature (pp. 544)
- Characterizes this as "experimental epistemology" where knowledge is
 reorganized to be unified around roots in information and feedback (rather
 than the 18th century "human sciences") (pp. 544)
- Mentions Leibniz and formalizes systems in the jump to examining discrete
 symbols/reference (pp. 545)

Analog, digital, and the "productive evil" (pp. 545-547)
- Moves to an examination of the notions "analog" and "digital" at the 10 Macy
 Conferences, notes how heated the debate around them was (pp. 545)
- Emphasizes three aspects of the discussion, each represented by a speaker
- 1) von Neuman [everything is digital]: "the engineer's point of view" which
 is economically pragmatic and in the interests of entrenched governmental
 politics -- digitality gets faster computers, more economically, for military
 purposes (pp. 545)
- 2) Wiener [everything is analog]: balance of power between digital and analog
 aspects -- boundaries between "digital" and "analog" are floating; there is
 no strict antagonism between them; digital and analog devices are interoperable
 (they can control each other); the world is analog, but the introduction of
 "artificial" digitality can bring some advantages (pp. 545-546)
- 3) Stroud [analog and digital are a practical binary]: danger of the
 "forbiddem middle"; camouflage and non-naming of that middle as a "practical"
 move which must be enforced for discursive stability (pp. 546)
- General conclusion that early cybernetics was "built on specific ways of
 forgetting, neglecting, and ignorance" of the materiality (analog aspects) of
 its objects and therefore most of their states (pp. 546)
- Suppression of the interesting an productive expansion of analog into the
 forbiddem middle of the digital-analog binary in favour of practical
 computing (von Neuman) and discursive stability (Stroud) (pp. 546)
- In cybernetics, "matter does not matter" since the processing of information
 abstracted from implementation is seen as more fundamental (pp. 547)

The Cybernetic Illusion (pp. 547-549)
- Difference between analog and digital examined through Kant's term "illusion"
 from Critique of Pure Reason (pp. 547)
- Outlines the term: intellect and senses are never pure, all knowledge depends
 on both; the relation btwn them is a "function" (in maths sense) with all
 knowledge located at some point (i,s); that function of relation is "illusion"
 (pp. 547)
- One cannot gain any knowledge without illusion, one cannot get rid of
 illusion to approach pure intellect, illusion is essential for reason to work
 (pp. 547)
- First remark: discussion of cybernetic digital-analog can be mapped to
 "illusion" w/ analog=senses and digital=intellect (pp. 547)
- Wiener and Stroud's positions respect the illusory function by paying
 attention to material (analog) substrate (pp. 547)
- von Neuman, Shannon, etc. attempt forget/get rid of the illusory function by
 neglecting analog/material and trying to gain error free judgements (pp. 548)
- Second remark: focus on broader use of the term "illusion" through Foucault's
 diagnosis of "Man" as illusion in Mots et Choses (pp. 548)
- Foucault as cybernetician through modes of formalization and demystification;
 if metaphysical illusion  anthropological illusion (Foucault) then
 anthropological illusion  cybernetic illusion (pp. 548)
- Three open questions/speculations
 - 1) if information is neither matter nor energy, then it fulfills the same
   definition Foucault proposed of Man as an "empirical/transcendental doublet"
   (pp. 548)
   - "information" and "data" are now in the same ambiguous position as "Man" was
   for the so-called Human Sciences (pp. 548)
 - 2) If the above is the case, then Cybernetics is just as limited and "unjust"
   to its subjects as Man was before, but just in a different way (due to the
   change of reference) (pp. 548)
   - There cannot be a non-contradictive unity of technology without illusions of
     its own (pp. 549)
 - 3) If the above is true, then there must also be a process of
   "self-naturalization" and control through technologies of power and knowledge
   that regulate Information as Man was regulated through bio-power (pp. 549)
   - Shift from hypothetical machines and thought experiments to instrumental
     hardware and institutions; from questions about in-between to certainties
     (pp. 549)
- Notes the disappearance of cybernetic discourse in the mid-70s; notes the
 appellant rise of such disciplines as "informatics" as engineers/applied
 mathematicians/economists against cybernetics towards "industry" (pp. 549)

Final Remarks (pp.549-550)
- Cybernetics as a world of "epistemtic objects" (Latour) and not a mono-causal
 story of faster von Neuman machines (pp. 549)
- Brings in von Foerster's work again as a counter narrative in cybernetics at
 its very inception against the illusion that one can get rid of illusion in
 knowledge (pp. 549)
- Plea 1) against repressing the analog/ignorance of the material, 2) against
 totalization of the world as numerically understandable/solvable, 3) for
 keeping cybernetics experimental rather than instrumental (pp. 550)

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