The Cybernetic Prediction

This chapter explores the often overlooked area of cybernetic prediction, a form of prediction conceptualized by the ‘father’ of cybernetics, the US mathematician Norbert Wiener, during the 1940s–1960s. Although critical interest in the cultural and political histories of cybernetics is growing, the notion of scientific prediction, which is central to cybernetic control, is insufficiently examined. This chapter argues that this form of prediction is not a mere technical cog in the epistemology of the future, but a complex concept. It demonstrates that Wiener’s epistemology of cybernetic prediction emphasizes the role of uncertainty and does not replace materiality with information. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the useful lessons offered by Wiener’s concept of cybernetic prediction for future-oriented practices within the broader fields of contemporary science, governance, and politics.

Effortful Emotion Regulation as a Unique Form of Cybernetic Control

Emotion regulation is important for psychological well-being, yet we know relatively little about why, when, and how hard people try to regulate emotions. This article seeks to address these motivational issues by considering effortful emotion regulation as a unique form of cybernetic control. In any domain of self-regulation, emotions serve as indices of progress in regulation and inform the expected value of regulation. In emotion regulation, however, emotions also serve as the very target of regulation. This interdependence gives rise to ironic processes that may render people less likely to exert effort in emotion regulation, precisely when they need it most. The proposed analysis complements and extends existing theories of emotion regulation, sheds new light on available findings, carries implications for psychopathology and well-being, and points to new hypotheses that could lead to theoretical and applied advances in the field.

Ritual, Cult Spectatorship, and the Problem of Women's Flesh in Alejandro Jodorowsky's Midnight Movies

In January 2019, New York's Museo del Barrio canceled a retrospective of the Chilean multimedia artist Alejandro Jodorowsky due to public protest over his claim that he raped the lead actress in his 1970 film El Topo (The Mole). For decades, Jodorowsky's film was synonymous with the cult spectatorship it inspired among its New York audiences, who attended screenings ritualistically. This paper argues for a feminist critique of cult spectatorship that considers Jodorowsky's violence against women as central to the category of cult. By tracing Jodorowsky's evisceration of women's flesh from his early performance practices through his midnight movies, I show how the advent of cult spectatorship marked a historical transition away from classical spectatorship, characterized by absorption and linked to a rational public sphere, toward postmodern spectatorship, characterized by distracted consumption and linked to cybernetic control.

Techno-Terrors and the Emergence of Cyber-Gothic

Inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, cybergothic texts from the late 20th and early 21st century have explored fears of posthuman becomings. While monstrous machineries and techno-hybridizations are, of course, central tropes of the Science Fiction genre, it is within a framework of Gothic textuality that these fears can be explored in a more self-conscious and theoretical manner. This chapter presents a reading of James Tiptree's 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In' (1974) in light of one of the most central questions of cyber-theory - that of control. Harking back to Frankenstein's struggle over narrative, scientific, gendered and otherwise embodied aspects of control, Tiptree's seminal novella proves to be an exemplary text within an emerging self- and theory-conscious, cybergothic mode, addressing questions of genre, gender, techno-embodiment, narrative construction, and the need for (cybernetic) control over our technological monsters in a manner that connects the Gothic with a number of cyber-theoretical concerns.

Development of Myoelectric Robotic/Prosthetic Hands with Cybernetic Control at the Biological Systems Engineering Laboratory, Hiroshima University

This review introduces our developed robotic/prosthetic hands and explains the myoelectric control of the robotic hand with five fingers, which is based on muscle synergy and a motion generation model. To realize a “human-like” robotic hand, it is necessary to fully understand the inherent features of human as well as machine and take a complementary approach with hardware that incorporates advanced engineering technology and software that is compatible with a living body.

Stealing Consciousness

In light of the recent revelations about the electronic surveillance by the US National Security Agency, this essay analyzes such surveillance as part of state strategies to control populations. It also examines the use of terror scares—that is, fear mongering—by states as the rationale for their control practices. It contrasts the origins of terrorism in the French Terror to contemporary terrorism, and shows how cybernetic control and surveillance steal human communications and thereby steal consciousness.

СИНЕРГЕТИЧНІ ДЕТЕРМІНАНТИ РОЗВИТКУ ПРОМИСЛОВОГО ВИРОБНИЦТВА В УМОВАХ ОБРАННЯ УКРАЇНОЮ КУРСУ НА ЄВРОІНТЕГРАЦІЮ

The article discusses the synergistic determinants of industrial production development with a view to recognizing synergetics as the newest positivist approach to the study of any open system with inherent elements of self-organization and cybernetic control, which will be modernized and modernized according to the general principles of synergistic worldview. The expediency of studying the set of determinants of industrial production development as a system revealing the integrity of the object, the unity and interdependence of the components characterized by different types of bonds to achieve a common result of the interaction of elements than the effectiveness of each of them individually, which characterizes the effect of synergy. It is proved that the need for national industrial revival actualizes the process of evaluating the development of industrial production, its determinants, since there is a systemic imbalance, the synergistic action of which impedes development. The most significant of these are: the state's remoteness from managing industrial development; low technological level of production and competitiveness; unsatisfactory export structure and level of support; critical deterioration of fixed assets; separation of banking and financial capital from industry; an avalanche outflow of frames; lack of a full-fledged innovation system; imperfection and incompleteness of legal support. It is proved that it is through the implementation of the State Strategy that the domestic industry will be transformed into a modern competitive complex, which would correspond to the level of a large European state.

Kybernetik und Kontrolle

This paper analyses algorithmic control in labour processes as cybernetization of production. It starts from two empirical cases, the process management system Salesforce and sensor-based feedback systems for industrial production. In both cases, we conducted interviews with managers, developers and workers. From this basis, we argue that feedback-based cybernetic control constitutes a new quality of domination in the context of capitalist labour. The central vision put forward by the steering personnel interviewed by us is one of controlled self-organization of labour processes. This vision in turn is grounded on the elimination of cognitive planning and hierarchical order and therefore contrasted with human reflexivity on the level of the worker as well as the manager. Contrasting visions of cybernetic control with theories of reflexive action, we argue that cybernetics can be understood as the attempt to solve the “reflexivity problem” of modern control systems.

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

Empathy, or the ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others, has long been considered by philosophers and scientists to be an important part of human morality. We present a new framework that explains empathy as resulting from motivated decisions. Drawing on models of cybernetic control, value-based choice, and constructionism, we suggest that empathy shifts depending on how people value and prioritize conflicting goals. We generate novel predictions about the nature of empathy from the science of goal pursuit, and address its apparent limitations. Empathy appears less sensitive to suffering of large numbers and out-groups, leading some to suggest that empathy is an unreliable ethical guide. Whereas these arguments assume that empathy is a limited-capacity resource, we suggest that apparent limits of empathy reflect byproducts of domain-general goal pursuit. Arguments against empathy reflect a misguided essentialism: they mistake our own choices to avoid empathy for intrinsic features of empathy, treating empathy as a capricious emotion in conflict with reason. We suggest that empathy results from a rational decision, even if its rationality is bounded, as in many decisions in everyday life. Empathy may only be limited if we choose to avoid pursuing empathic goals.