Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.16.
Still from a video of John Cage during alpha feedback. Source: Teit-
elbaum 1974, 68.
up the overall ontological vision and exemplifies how that vision might be
distinctively instantiated and developed in real-world practice. The topic of
hylozoism recurs in the following chapters in various guises, at greatest length
in chapter 6, on Stafford Beer. We can pick up the related question of a dis-
tinctively cybernetic stance on design in the next chapter, on Ross Ashby.
85
This is the end of our first close encounter with British cybernetics. In terms
of material technologies, I described Walter's tortoises as specimens of onto-
logical theater, contemplation of which helps one to grasp the performative
and adaptive ontology of cybernetics, and as ontology in action, an instance
of how one might proceed in brain science (and other fields) if one takes that
ontology seriously. The contrast between Walter's robotics and that associated
with AI illustrates my idea that ontology makes a difference—that very dif-
ferent practices can hang together with different understandings of what the
world is like. From the tortoises we moved on to CORA, which staged for us
a performative epistemology, directly geared into the performative ontology
staged by the naked tortoise, and which also made the connection between
Walter's cybernetics and the psychiatric milieu from which it emerged.
Finally, the discussion of flicker and biofeedback touched on other lines of
inquiry into the performative brain and crossovers between cybernetics and
