TY - JOUR
T1 - Building the Black Box
T2 - Cyberneticians and Complex Systems
AU - Petrick, Elizabeth R.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author would like to thank everyone who has worked to make this special issue happen, especially my fellow contributors, John Alaniz, Emily Lee, Alison Lefkovitz, Kyle Riismandel, and the history graduate students in the UC San Diego Science Studies Program who were there at the start of this project. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/7/1
Y1 - 2020/7/1
N2 - In the 1950s and 1960s, cyberneticians defined and utilized a concept previously described by electronic engineers: the black box. They were interested in how it might aid them, as both a metaphor and as a physical or mathematical model, in their analysis of complex human-machine systems. The black box evolved as they applied it in new ways, across a range of scientific fields, from an unnamed concept involving inputs and outputs, to digital representations of the human brain, to white boxes that might be used to replicate black boxes. The diversity of understandings of the black box reflected the diversity of scientific perspectives and goals brought under the label of cybernetics. In this paper, I examine how cyberneticians drew upon the black box in their personal writings and publications. My goal is to unpack what the black box meant to these theorists as a starting framework from which we may understand the initial shape of the black box.
AB - In the 1950s and 1960s, cyberneticians defined and utilized a concept previously described by electronic engineers: the black box. They were interested in how it might aid them, as both a metaphor and as a physical or mathematical model, in their analysis of complex human-machine systems. The black box evolved as they applied it in new ways, across a range of scientific fields, from an unnamed concept involving inputs and outputs, to digital representations of the human brain, to white boxes that might be used to replicate black boxes. The diversity of understandings of the black box reflected the diversity of scientific perspectives and goals brought under the label of cybernetics. In this paper, I examine how cyberneticians drew upon the black box in their personal writings and publications. My goal is to unpack what the black box meant to these theorists as a starting framework from which we may understand the initial shape of the black box.
KW - black box
KW - computer technology
KW - cybernetics
KW - history of technology
KW - metaphor
KW - modeling
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U2 - 10.1177/0162243919881212
DO - 10.1177/0162243919881212
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074066373
VL - 45
SP - 575
EP - 595
JO - Science Technology and Human Values
JF - Science Technology and Human Values
SN - 0162-2439
IS - 4
ER -