Epstein Secrets

ocess of control via feedback. (“Cybernetics,” from the ancient Greek for “helmsman,” is the etymological basis of our word “governor,” which is what James Watt called his pathbreaking feedback control device that transformed the use of steam engines.) Because he was immersed in problems of control, Wiener sa

rg’s Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses; Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist; and The Global Work of Art. David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics at MIT, and head of its Program in Science, Technology & Society. He is

ntury. 174 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016977 from kuber- to guber—the root of “gubernatorial” and “governor,” another term for masculine control, deployed by James Watt to describe his 19th-century device for modulating a runaway steam engine. Cybernetics thus took ideas that had long analogized people and devices an

, prompting him to ask, “Do we need a new set of guiding metaphors?” 108 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016911 “INFORMATION” FOR WIENER, FOR SHANNON, AND FOR US David Kaiser David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of Physics at MIT, and head of its Program in Science, Technology & Soc

ocess of control via feedback. (“Cybernetics,” from the ancient Greek for “helmsman,” is the etymological basis of our word “governor,” which is what James Watt called his pathbreaking feedback control device that transformed the use of steam engines.) Because he was immersed in problems of control, Wiener sa

rg’s Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses; Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist; and The Global Work of Art. David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics at MIT, and head of its Program in Science, Technology & Society. He is

ntury. 174 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016394 from kuber- to guber—the root of “gubernatorial” and “governor,” another term for masculine control, deployed by James Watt to describe his 19th-century device for modulating a runaway steam engine. Cybernetics thus took ideas that had long analogized people and devices an

ines to seem as smart as a mosquito, forever descending the cosmic gradients to an ultimate goal, whatever that may be. 107 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016327 David Kaiser is a physicist atypically interested in the intersection of his science with politics and culture, about which he has written widely. In the first m