Operational Media: Cybernetics, Biopolitics and Postwar Education
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop the concept of operational media to think through the deployment of utility/useful cinema in the context of cybernetically informed educational policy, and argue that cybernetic concepts of communication, feedback loops and homeostasis were central to the pragmatic installation of media at the center of postwar mass education.
Abstract: This article develops the concept of «operational media» to think through the deployment of utility/useful cinema in the context of cybernetically informed educational policy. The paper argues that cybernetic concepts of communication, feedback loops and homeostasis were central to the pragmatic installation of media at the center of postwar mass education. Links are made to the dominance of cybernetic ideas in postwar social science, including social psychology, sociobiology and behaviourism. A consideration of the UN’s operational media allows for a reconsideration of the agency’s communicative mandate as biopolitical and governmental. Educational policies influenced by the UN were doubly concerned with technologized classrooms: cybernetic ideas presented themselves as politically neutral, while offering efficiencies in the delivery of content. Cold war citizenship was thus conceived as a form of training that would pragmatically lead to the rebalancing of a volatile international situation. Carrefour de la vie (1949), made by Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck for the United Nations, is presented as an example of the centrality of mental health for citizenship training in postwar biopolitical regimes. In particular, the tension between the film’s humanist and cybernetic strands are considered. Au Carrefour de la vie is considered as a transitional text, presenting a humanist story of childhood in postwar life that simultaneously prefigures the operation of a controlled society.
Citations
More filters
400 citations
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: In the past, sexual relations were necessary for the birth of a child and only living persons could have children, except for fathers who died during the nine months between impregnation and birth as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Once upon a time sexual relations were necessary for the birth of a child. Back then the gender and state of health of a baby were known only after it emerged from the womb. The movements of a criminal suspect, a wayward spouse, or an errant teenager could be detected only by physically following them. It was even the case that, with the exception of fathers who died during the nine months between impregnation and birth, only living persons could have children.
392 citations
DOI•
19 Sep 2015
TL;DR: This presentation focuses on some key aspects of the art of teaching today's students, including specific techniques for tapping into student passions, empowering students to stay focused and balanced, shifting from lecture-intensive to learning-focused class sessions, and using new technologies to connect student learning to course content and life goals.
Abstract: Effective teaching may involve scientific understanding of learning processes, but the creation of engaging and rich learning experiences is more art than science. This presentation focuses on some key aspects of the art of teaching today's students, including specific techniques for tapping into student passions, empowering students to stay focused and balanced, shifting from lecture-intensive to learning-focused class sessions, and using new technologies to connect student learning to course content and life goals. Participants will explore course contracts and strategies for redesigning activities in support of a learning objective and share strategies for artfully managing student learning.
256 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present La Volonté de Savoir, the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality, which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as human sciences, the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the "other" in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
Abstract: This writer who has warned us of the “ideological” function of both the oeuvre and the author as unquestioned forms of discursive organization has gone quite far in constituting for both these “fictitious unities” the name (with all the problems of such a designation) Michel Foucault. One text under review, La Volonté de Savoir, is the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality. It will apparently circle back over that material which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as “human sciences,” the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the “other” in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
15,794 citations
"Operational Media: Cybernetics, Bio..." refers background in this paper
...The perfect modern citizen, in that sense, is docile and conservative (Foucault, 1979; Rose, 2010)....
[...]
Book•
17 Apr 2008
TL;DR: Ewald and Fontana as discussed by the authors proposed a Content Index of Notions Index of Names (CIINN) index of names for the content index of the Course Content Index (CICN).
Abstract: Foreword: Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana Introduction: Arnold I. Davidson 10 January 1979 17 January 1979 24 January 1979 31 January 1979 7 February 1979 14 February 1979 21 February 1979 7 March 1979 14 March 1979 21 March 1979 28 March 1979 4 April 1979 Course Summary Course Content Index of Notions Index of Names
4,329 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age, and relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist subject in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the ''posthuman''.
Abstract: From the Publisher:
In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the \"bodies\" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans \"beamed\" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age.
Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist \"subject\" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the \"posthuman.\"
Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems.
Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.
2,603 citations
"Operational Media: Cybernetics, Bio..." refers background in this paper
...First wave cybernetics, a postwar paradigm based on a simplified model of human psychology and an emphasis on the universality of information circulation, rather than the messier world of semantics, was entirely oriented toward pragmatic considerations of operationality (Hayles, 1999)....
[...]
...While these machinic terms could still be used under the humanist banner (as Wiener did), they also blazed a trail to a posthumanist imaginary in which humans and technologies would become horizontally interconnected (Hayles, 1999)....
[...]
...Au Carrefour thus implicitly links psychological normalization with the hope for societies aspiring to homeostasis after the war (Hayles, 1999)....
[...]
TL;DR: A critical history of psychology can be found in this article, with a focus on the history of "the self" and "individualizing" technology of psychology as an individualizing technology.
Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. How should one do the history of 'the self'? 3. A critical history of psychology 4. Psychology as a 'social' science 5. Expertise and the 'techne' of psychology 6. Psychology as an 'individualizing' technology 7. Social psychology as a science of democracy 8. Governing enterprising individuals 9. Assembling ourselves 10. Notes 11. Bibliography.
2,334 citations
"Operational Media: Cybernetics, Bio..." refers background in this paper
...The perfect modern citizen, in that sense, is docile and conservative (Foucault, 1979; Rose, 2010)....
[...]
...…the ascendency both of sociobiology and social psychology, disciplines that emphasized the environmental causes of human behaviour and were closely connected to the emergence of American communications research on propaganda (Haraway, 1991; Alleyne, 2003; Peters & Peters, 2016; Rose, 2010)....
[...]
...The emphasis on education as technique, which played such a central role at UNESCO, also highlights the ascendency both of sociobiology and social psychology, disciplines that emphasized the environmental causes of human behaviour and were closely connected to the emergence of American communications research on propaganda (Haraway, 1991; Alleyne, 2003; Peters & Peters, 2016; Rose, 2010)....
[...]
Book•
01 Jan 1974TL;DR: Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams' analysis of television's history, its institutions, programmes and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of McLuhan's dictum that 'the medium is the message'. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology - not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.
1,950 citations