GREY WALTER - The Cybernetic Brain - page 54

hard to doubt that the tortoise was the model for K-9, the Doctor's robot dog
(which looked just like a tortoise, with a small tail attached). One thinks also of
the Daleks, with their sinister optical scanner, and my recollection is that the
Daleks were first seen in an electronic readout from a human brain which itself
took the form of a TV image—another imaginative version of the cybernetic no-
tion of scanning. What should we make of this popular appeal? It derived, I as-
sume, from the quasi-magical properties of tortoises I mentioned in chapter 1,
as mechanical devices that behaved as if they were alive. We are back in the
territory of the Golem and the Sorcerer's Apprentice, and a fascination with
transgression of the boundary between the animate and the inanimate. This
animation of the inanimate hangs together, of course, with the implementa-
tion of the cybernetic ontology just discussed: the tortoises appeared so lively
just because of their autonomy and sensitivity to their environment.
Brain science, psychiatry, robotics, toys, TV sci-fi: these are some of the
areas that the tortoises contributed to. This list starts to establish what I
mean by the protean quality of cybernetics, and as the topic goes on, we can
extend it.
the Social Basis of Cybernetics
THE mECHANICAl dESIgN [Of A TORTOISE] IS uSuAllY mORE Of A PROBlEm
THAN THE ElECTRICAl. . . . THERE IS NOT A gREAT CHOICE Of mOTORS;
THOSE uSEd fOR dRIvINg SmAll HOmE-CONSTRuCTEd mOdElS ARE AdEquATE
BuT NOT EffICIENT. . . . IT IS OfTEN AdvISABlE TO RE-BuSH THE BEAR-
INgS. . . . THE gEAR TRAINS TO THE dRIvINg ANd SCANNINg SHAfTS ARE
THE mOST AwkwARd PARTS fOR THE AmATEuR CONSTRuCTOR. THE fIRST mOdEl
Of THIS SPECIES wAS fuRNISHEd wITH PINIONS fROm Old ClOCkS ANd gAS-
mETERS.
Grey WaLter, tHE LiVinG bRAin (1953, 290-91)
SO mANY dISCOvERIES HAvE BEEN mAdE BY AmATEuRS THAT THERE muST BE A
SPECIAl STATE Of mINd ANd A PHASE Of SCIENTIfIC EvOluTION wHEN TOO
muCH kNOwlEdgE IS A dANgEROuS THINg. COuld ONE SAY THAT AN AmATEuR
IS ONE wHO dOES NOT kNOw HIS OwN ImPOTENCE?
Grey WaLter, “TRAPS, TRICkS ANd TRIumPHS IN E.E.g.” (1966, 9)
I mentioned in the opening chapter that cybernetics had an unconventional
social basis as well as an unfamiliar ontology, and here we can begin the