Cybernetics and contemporary philosophies of technology

The interdisciplinarity of Cybernetics has been both its strength and its weakness: a strength in that it enabled an originality of thought and a breadth of application not possible within conventional scholarly structures, but a weakness in that it never truly found a home that might institutionalise it, and from which it might reach out to the established disciplines. Its peripatetic constituents and porous, shifting borders makes the direct influence of Cybernetics on contemporary philosophies of technology difficult to establish, though some direct lines of influence can be traced. But any presence of parallels, or overlaps, provides circumstantial evidence of prescient status, if not influence, and such status is indicative of the intellectual significance of Cybernetics, regardless of influence. In this paper we identify key characteristics of Cybernetics that find parallels in contemporary philosophies of technology. These imbrications include: the constructed ontology of beings (and their performances) through information flows; beings as heterogeneous assemblages; the immaterial materiality of being; being and performing as reflexive, recursive and relational; beings seeking homeostasis; and the universality of all of the above.