Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.1.
grey walter. Reproduced from
the burden: fifty Years of Clinical and
Experimental neuroscience at the burden neurological institute
, by R. Cooper and
J. Bird (Bristol: white Tree Books, 1989), 50. (By permission of white Tree Books,
Bristol.)
theater and then explore the social basis of Walter's cybernetics and its modes
of transmission. Here we can look toward the present and contemporary work
in biologically inspired robotics. A discussion of CORA, a learning module that
Walter added to the tortoises, moves the chapter in two directions. One adds
epistemology to the ontological picture; the other points to the brutal psy-
chiatric milieu that was a surface of emergence for Walter's cybernetics. The
chapter concludes with Walter's interest in strange performances and altered
states, and the technologies of the self that elicit them, including flicker and
biofeedback. Here we can begin our exploration of crossovers and resonances
between cybernetics and the sixties, with reference to William Burroughs, the
Beats, and “brainwave music.” I also discuss the hylozoist quality of the latter,
a theme that reappears in different guises throughout the topic.
