Artificial Intelligence is defined by the Principia Cybernetica website as: "A branch of computer science concerned with the programming of computers so that they exhibit apparently intelligent behaviour, e.g., the design of robots, chess playing automata & theorem proving machines. Branches of artificial intelligence are pattern recognition, problem solving, language processing and game playing."
Cybernetics has a much LARGER definition and one that I hope communicates how fascinating this field really is:
"(1) The science of communication and control in animal and machine. (2) Perhaps because the field is still young, there are many definitions of cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, engineer and social philosopher, coined the word "cybernetics" from the Greek word meaning steersman - kybernetes. He defined it as the science of communication and control in the animal and the machine. Ampere, before, him, wanted cybernetics to be the science of government. For philosopher Warren McCulloch, cybernetics was an experimental epistemology concerned with the communication within an observer and between the observer and his environment. Stafford Beer, a management consultant, defined cybernetics as the science of effective organization. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted that whereas previous sciences dealt with matter and energy, the new science of cybernetics focuses on form and pattern. (3) A way of looking at things and a language for expressing what one sees (Margaret Mead)
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The term derives from the Greek word for steersman - kybernetes. Initially, the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine (Wiener). Before this modern definition, the science of government (Ampere). Now an interdisciplinary approach to organization, irrespective of a system's material realization. Whereas general systems theory is committed to holism on the one side and to an effort to generalize STRUCTURAL, BEHAVIOURAL and developmental features of living organisms on the other side, cybernetics is committed to an epistemological perspective that views material wholes as analysable without loss, in terms of a set of components plus their organization (see epistemology, analysis, system). Organization accounts for how the components of such a system interact with one another, and how this interaction determines and changes its structure. It explains the difference between parts and wholes and is described without reference to their material forms. The disinterest of cybernetics in material implications separates it from all sciences that designate their empirical domain by subject matters such as physics, biology, sociology, engineering and general systems theory. Its epistemological focus on organization, pattern and communication has generated methodologies, (see methodology) a logic, laws, theories and insights that are unique to cybernetics and have wide-ranging implications in other fields of inquiry.
In cybernetics, theories tend to rest on four basic pillars: variety, circularity, process and observation. Variety is fundamental to its information, communication and control theories and emphasises multiplicity, alternatives, differences, choices, networks, and intelligence rather than force and singular necessity. Circularity occurs in its earliest theories of circular causation or feedback, later in theories of recursion and of iteration in computing and now involving self-reference in cognitive organization and in autonomous systems of production (see autopoiesis). Traditional sciences have shied away from if not exorcised the use of circular explanations. It is this circular form which enables cybernetics to explain systems from within, making no recurse to higher principles or a priori purposes, expressing no preferences for hierarchy. Nearly all cybernetic theories involve process and change, from its notion of information, as the difference between two states of uncertainty, to theories of adaptation, evolution and growth processes. A special feature of cybernetics is that it explains such processes in terms of the organization of the system manifesting it, e.g., the circular causality of feedback loops is taken to account for processes of regulation and a system's effort to maintain an equilibrium or to reach a goal. Finally, observation including decision making is the process underlying cybernetic theories of information processing and computing. By extending theories of self-reference to processes of observation including cognition and other manifestations of intelligence, cybernetics has been applied to itself and is developing an epistemology of systems involving their observers (see second-order cybernetics) qualitatively unlike the earlier interest in the ontology of systems which are observed from the outside (see first-order cybernetics).
The early contributions of cybernetics were mainly technological (see technology), and gave rise to feedback control devices, communication technology, automation of production processes and computers. Interest moved soon to numerous sciences involving man, applying cybernetics to processes of cognition, to such practical pursuits such as psychiatry, family therapy, the development of information and decision systems, management, government, and to efforts to understand complex forms of social organization including communication and computer networks. The full potential of cybernetics has not yet been realized in these applications. Finally, cybernetics is making inroads into philosophy. This started by providing a non-metaphysical teleology and continues by challenging epistemology and ethics with new ideas about limiting processes of the mind, responsibility and aesthetics. (Krippendorff)"
If any of you take the time to go through it, you will find as I did, that cybernetics is really very much a dynamic and exciting field. And spot on with the kind of things I like to think about and bend my intellect around. If you are hungry for more then go to the Principia Cybernetica website: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html
What you may not have known is that I pretty much wanted to go to only 2 different Universities. Besides Reading, I was also sincerely considering Edinburgh. Edinburgh had bundled it's Artificial Intelligence degree with Philosophy. Something I now look back upon with a sort of terror that I could have gotten it so wrong in terms of my life path. But, as it turned out, Edinburgh felt that I lacked the necessary mathematical achievements to be accepted and so very gratefully I was rejected and I took my second choice of Reading (and originally 1st choice before I'd heard so many good things about Edinburgh).
As you can see from the extensive definition above, I get to do philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics(!?) and MUCH MUCH MORE and still be rather specialised.
In fact, these last few weeks have been unusually synchronous for me. SO much is going so smoothly and falling into place so neatly that it is scaring me and I am having a hard time accepting it. Before I had even said yes to any of my choices, Reading was already sending me brochures on where I could live on campus, international student information and several other topics. They even sent me a form I was required to sign to pledge that I did indeed have the financial means to support myself allowing me to register. BEFORE I had said yes to them. On Tuesday I phoned UCAS and gave them my confirmation for Reading. Continuing on the financial thread, I am so used to being treated as an outsider in general that I assumed I would be charged the rather exhorbitant costs of a foreigner. But I forgot that I was an EU national and as such the amount I had to prove I could cover was less than half what I expected!!! Though this can be be partly blamed on unclear website information.
Because the cost is so significantly reduced, it is very likely that financial assistance from the Swedish government can cover the entire cost of my course. I don't have to be a burden on my parents again!!!
Also, my bosses at work are paying me for a period of work they usually don't pay for. Right now, everyone in Sweden is on holiday and most everyone else at my job already got paid their vacation pay and won't get paid again till August. But I got paid my vacation pay AND I'll be getting paid for working with them for the summer holidays (they are staying open due to economic difficulties).
SO the plan is I move to England around the middle of September, 2 weeks before I need to be in Reading for the orientation week beginning 30th September. I am still researching RyanAir budget from Norkping to Stanstead (but they allow almost no respectable luggage allowance and transport FROM stanstead is expensive and delays frequent at all stages), SAS Air from Arlanda to Heathrow (expensive, but not prohibitively so, decent luggae allowance) or overland by train to Gteborg/Gothenburg and then a Ferry overnight (takes a few days, but lots to see and literally anything-you-can-carry-yourself luggage allowance).
I still haven't got an idea what and how to freight my things (books, stereo system, computer!)...or even where to store them once they get there. Also, haven't figured out where I'm living until the student halls at Reading open.
So vastad is being very typical vastad again and moving and living in yet ANOTHER country. I really love this stuff. It reminds me constantly of how much I hate having possessions though.
Again, I apologise if any of you have taken my absence personally. It just wasn't meant to be.
I'm really quite the satisfied character. I'm generally happy. Excited. Goddam it's been a long time since I looked forward to the future and just enjoyed passing the time.
OOH OOH!!! LOOK! 13th Day of the 7th Month! 2003 = 2 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 23 skidoo!!! 2+3 = 5, 5 is my name number!
Synchronicity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cybernetics has a much LARGER definition and one that I hope communicates how fascinating this field really is:
"(1) The science of communication and control in animal and machine. (2) Perhaps because the field is still young, there are many definitions of cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, engineer and social philosopher, coined the word "cybernetics" from the Greek word meaning steersman - kybernetes. He defined it as the science of communication and control in the animal and the machine. Ampere, before, him, wanted cybernetics to be the science of government. For philosopher Warren McCulloch, cybernetics was an experimental epistemology concerned with the communication within an observer and between the observer and his environment. Stafford Beer, a management consultant, defined cybernetics as the science of effective organization. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted that whereas previous sciences dealt with matter and energy, the new science of cybernetics focuses on form and pattern. (3) A way of looking at things and a language for expressing what one sees (Margaret Mead)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The term derives from the Greek word for steersman - kybernetes. Initially, the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine (Wiener). Before this modern definition, the science of government (Ampere). Now an interdisciplinary approach to organization, irrespective of a system's material realization. Whereas general systems theory is committed to holism on the one side and to an effort to generalize STRUCTURAL, BEHAVIOURAL and developmental features of living organisms on the other side, cybernetics is committed to an epistemological perspective that views material wholes as analysable without loss, in terms of a set of components plus their organization (see epistemology, analysis, system). Organization accounts for how the components of such a system interact with one another, and how this interaction determines and changes its structure. It explains the difference between parts and wholes and is described without reference to their material forms. The disinterest of cybernetics in material implications separates it from all sciences that designate their empirical domain by subject matters such as physics, biology, sociology, engineering and general systems theory. Its epistemological focus on organization, pattern and communication has generated methodologies, (see methodology) a logic, laws, theories and insights that are unique to cybernetics and have wide-ranging implications in other fields of inquiry.
In cybernetics, theories tend to rest on four basic pillars: variety, circularity, process and observation. Variety is fundamental to its information, communication and control theories and emphasises multiplicity, alternatives, differences, choices, networks, and intelligence rather than force and singular necessity. Circularity occurs in its earliest theories of circular causation or feedback, later in theories of recursion and of iteration in computing and now involving self-reference in cognitive organization and in autonomous systems of production (see autopoiesis). Traditional sciences have shied away from if not exorcised the use of circular explanations. It is this circular form which enables cybernetics to explain systems from within, making no recurse to higher principles or a priori purposes, expressing no preferences for hierarchy. Nearly all cybernetic theories involve process and change, from its notion of information, as the difference between two states of uncertainty, to theories of adaptation, evolution and growth processes. A special feature of cybernetics is that it explains such processes in terms of the organization of the system manifesting it, e.g., the circular causality of feedback loops is taken to account for processes of regulation and a system's effort to maintain an equilibrium or to reach a goal. Finally, observation including decision making is the process underlying cybernetic theories of information processing and computing. By extending theories of self-reference to processes of observation including cognition and other manifestations of intelligence, cybernetics has been applied to itself and is developing an epistemology of systems involving their observers (see second-order cybernetics) qualitatively unlike the earlier interest in the ontology of systems which are observed from the outside (see first-order cybernetics).
The early contributions of cybernetics were mainly technological (see technology), and gave rise to feedback control devices, communication technology, automation of production processes and computers. Interest moved soon to numerous sciences involving man, applying cybernetics to processes of cognition, to such practical pursuits such as psychiatry, family therapy, the development of information and decision systems, management, government, and to efforts to understand complex forms of social organization including communication and computer networks. The full potential of cybernetics has not yet been realized in these applications. Finally, cybernetics is making inroads into philosophy. This started by providing a non-metaphysical teleology and continues by challenging epistemology and ethics with new ideas about limiting processes of the mind, responsibility and aesthetics. (Krippendorff)"
If any of you take the time to go through it, you will find as I did, that cybernetics is really very much a dynamic and exciting field. And spot on with the kind of things I like to think about and bend my intellect around. If you are hungry for more then go to the Principia Cybernetica website: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html
What you may not have known is that I pretty much wanted to go to only 2 different Universities. Besides Reading, I was also sincerely considering Edinburgh. Edinburgh had bundled it's Artificial Intelligence degree with Philosophy. Something I now look back upon with a sort of terror that I could have gotten it so wrong in terms of my life path. But, as it turned out, Edinburgh felt that I lacked the necessary mathematical achievements to be accepted and so very gratefully I was rejected and I took my second choice of Reading (and originally 1st choice before I'd heard so many good things about Edinburgh).
As you can see from the extensive definition above, I get to do philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics(!?) and MUCH MUCH MORE and still be rather specialised.
In fact, these last few weeks have been unusually synchronous for me. SO much is going so smoothly and falling into place so neatly that it is scaring me and I am having a hard time accepting it. Before I had even said yes to any of my choices, Reading was already sending me brochures on where I could live on campus, international student information and several other topics. They even sent me a form I was required to sign to pledge that I did indeed have the financial means to support myself allowing me to register. BEFORE I had said yes to them. On Tuesday I phoned UCAS and gave them my confirmation for Reading. Continuing on the financial thread, I am so used to being treated as an outsider in general that I assumed I would be charged the rather exhorbitant costs of a foreigner. But I forgot that I was an EU national and as such the amount I had to prove I could cover was less than half what I expected!!! Though this can be be partly blamed on unclear website information.
Because the cost is so significantly reduced, it is very likely that financial assistance from the Swedish government can cover the entire cost of my course. I don't have to be a burden on my parents again!!!
Also, my bosses at work are paying me for a period of work they usually don't pay for. Right now, everyone in Sweden is on holiday and most everyone else at my job already got paid their vacation pay and won't get paid again till August. But I got paid my vacation pay AND I'll be getting paid for working with them for the summer holidays (they are staying open due to economic difficulties).
SO the plan is I move to England around the middle of September, 2 weeks before I need to be in Reading for the orientation week beginning 30th September. I am still researching RyanAir budget from Norkping to Stanstead (but they allow almost no respectable luggage allowance and transport FROM stanstead is expensive and delays frequent at all stages), SAS Air from Arlanda to Heathrow (expensive, but not prohibitively so, decent luggae allowance) or overland by train to Gteborg/Gothenburg and then a Ferry overnight (takes a few days, but lots to see and literally anything-you-can-carry-yourself luggage allowance).
I still haven't got an idea what and how to freight my things (books, stereo system, computer!)...or even where to store them once they get there. Also, haven't figured out where I'm living until the student halls at Reading open.
So vastad is being very typical vastad again and moving and living in yet ANOTHER country. I really love this stuff. It reminds me constantly of how much I hate having possessions though.
Again, I apologise if any of you have taken my absence personally. It just wasn't meant to be.
I'm really quite the satisfied character. I'm generally happy. Excited. Goddam it's been a long time since I looked forward to the future and just enjoyed passing the time.
OOH OOH!!! LOOK! 13th Day of the 7th Month! 2003 = 2 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 23 skidoo!!! 2+3 = 5, 5 is my name number!
Synchronicity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
i tend to move a lot too. my mantra: you don't own stuff - it owns you. now go sell it or give it away.
synchronicity is good stuff...yes, yes it is.
do you know sakita she's in sweden, too and just a doll of a chick. love her like a sister. you should check her out. thinking about you a lot lately. are you ok? but it's nothing negative that i've dreamt: it's always been you at a party or something festive like that. whatever that means. i just hope you're doing well.
love ya