Report from Thinking and Making Connections: Cybernetic Heritage in the Social and Human Sciences and Beyond, 10-11 Nov 2008

The goal of the conference was to investigate how the cybernetic heritage is administered today, and to review its roots from today’s perspective. Cyber technology is, in fact, an obvious subject for an institution such as CBEES, which to a large degree studies the relationship between what was once East and West. Cyber technology was developed, in remarkable ways, both in the USA and in the Soviet Union.

The first day, participants attended Plenum Lectures at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. Professor Slava Gerowitz, MIT – until the 1990s, a Soviet Union academic – provided thought-provoking historical background on the development within Communist and capitalist systems. Professor Andrew Pickering’s lecture took up problems within the theory of knowledge, and discussed them from a psycho-analytical and Heideggerian perspective. In addition, questions of the relationship between cyber technology and – for instance – emotions, anthropology, continental philosophy and bio-ethics were discussed.

The second day consisted of sessions with shorter presentations, at Södertörn University. About one hundred people from Europe, North America and Russia participated in the conference. It was the result of collaboration between CBEES and the Nobel Museum, and was linked to the Research Themes “Cultural Theory: Kosmopolis, Cultural Technologies & Cultural Public Spheres” and “Knowledge and Sustainability”.