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place of continuing interlinked performances. We could think of the tortoise,
say, exploring its world as a little model of what the world is like in general,
an
ontological icon
. Going in the other direction, if one grasps this ontological
vision, then building tortoises and homeostats stages for us examples of how it
might be brought down to earth and played out in practice, as robotics, brain
science, psychiatry, and so on. The many cybernetic projects we will examine
can all stand as ontological theater in this double sense: as aids to our onto-
logical imagination, and as instances of the sort of endeavors that might go
with a nonmodern imagining of the world.
6
This modern/nonmodern contrast is a key point for all that follows. I want
in particular to show that the consistent thread that ran through the history
of British cybernetics was the nonmodern performative ontology I have just
sketched out. All of the oddity and fascination of this work hangs together
with this unfamiliar vision of the sort of place the world is. And I can immedi-
ately add a corollary to that observation. In what follows, I am interested in cy-
bernetics as ontological theater in both of the senses just laid out—as both an
aid to our imaginations and as exemplification of the fact that, as I said earlier,
ontology makes a difference. I want to show that how we imagine the world
and how we act in it reciprocally inform one another. Cybernetic projects, in
whatever field, look very different from their modern cognates.
From here we can proceed in several directions. I turn first to the “so
what?” question; then we can go into some important nuances; finally, we
can go back to the critique of cybernetics and the politics of ontology.
the essence Of life is its cOntinuOusly changing character; but Our
cOncepts are all discOntinuOus and fixed, . . . and yOu can nO mOre
dip up the substance Of reality with them than yOu can dip up water
with a net, hOwever finely meshed.
WilliAm JAmes,
“bergsOn and intellectualism” (1943 [1909, 1912], 253)
Why should we be interested in cybernetics? Haven't modern science and en-
gineering served us well enough over the past few hundred years? Of course,
their achievements have been prodigious. But I can still think of a few reasons
why it might be interesting and useful to try understanding the world in a
different way:
1. It is an exercise in mental gymnastics: the White Queen (or whoever it
was) imagining a dozen impossible things before breakfast. Some of us find it
