Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
a great deal of philosophy of various sorts. Much of this is what one
might reasonably expect: Jung; Eastern religion; Native American
thought and myth and so on. But sitting quite comfortably among
these ideas is a great deal of Cybernetics of one sort or another. A
number of topics about Cybernetics and systems theory are recom-
mended, including works by Norbert Wiener and W. Ross Ashby, as
well as works on Artificial Intelligence and connectionism. One of
the reasons that Cybernetics was so attractive to those involved with
the 'Whole Earth' project was that it used 'whole systems thinking'
as a framework in which to think about issues of ecology. Each of the
Whole Earth catalogues started with a section called 'Understanding
Whole Systems' which enframed the issues of ecology, biosystems
and the economy in cybernetic terms. In the original catalogue the
presiding genius who is used to introduce the ideas in this section is
R(ichard) Buckminster Fuller, the maverick engineer, architect and
theorist. Buckminster Fuller, who was notable for the development
of the geodesic dome, a structure composed of geometric elements
that can be built to any size, was also a poet and philosopher, whose
unorthodox ideas about global issues, in particular his concept of
'Spaceship Earth',
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were appealing to a generation becoming aware
of ecological depredation. Fuller emphasized the importance of
information as a negatively entropic source of wealth, that increases
through research and the development of technology.
In the
Epilog
Fuller's place was taken by Gregory Bateson. Bateson
was the son of William Bateson, who was among those who revived
and championed the work of Gregor Mendel in genetics and evolu-
tionary biology. He was trained as an anthropologist, and worked
in New Guinea and in Bali with anthropologist Margaret Mead, who
was also his first wife, but was involved in a number of different
fields, including psychiatry and communications. He did valuable
research after the War in the study of alcoholism and of schizo-
phrenia, as well as in non-human communication. He was also an
important contributor to the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics,
