Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6.10.
Eduardo Kac,
the eighth Day
, 2001. Transgenic artwork with biological
robot (biobot), GFP plants, GFP amoebae, GFP fish, GFP mice, audio, video, and In-
ternet (dimensions variable). The photograph shows the biobot in the studio, with
its internal amoebae already in place, before it was introduced into the transgenic
ecology that constitutes
the eighth Day
. Source: www.ekac.org/8thday.html. Used
courtesy of Eduardo Kac.
The Viable System Model
When Beer's dreams of biological computing came to an end in the early
1960s, this implied not an abandonent of his vision of the cybernetic factory
but a transformation of it. Beginning in 1972, a trilogy of topics developed
his account of what he called the viable system model—the VSM for short:
Brain of the Firm
(1972; 2nd ed., 1981),
The Heart of the Enterprise
(1979), and
