Cybernetics and Life

Norbert Wiener started a fundamental shift in the way science looks at nature. Nevertheless the theory of cybernetics, understandably, had a stronger impact on engineering. Since last week we entered a new age in the way Science is conducted in the world. The separation between the man made and the natural, became blurred, if not completely obliterated. Artificial life has come to stay  in the business section of the media, whose owners  have bankrolled the efforts of Craig Venter.

From my corner of the woods, I want to tell this story.

I was fortunate to work for Bell Labs, at their Naperville campus in Indian Hill. Now I own one of the extant copies of Francisco J. Varela: "Principles of Biological Autonomy," and I can report that it was taken from the library at Indian Hill, seven times, starting in 1987, and ending in 1996. The book was bought by Bell Labs in 1981, two years after it was published by Elsevier North Holland Inc..

Also I can report that in an internal publication it was printed that Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, were almost alone in a skunkworks kind of operation keeping the flame of Unix alive, when the company had all but given up on the effort. When I found out, I couldn't believe it. The operating system that made the Internet possible almost died, and only the determination of its creators kept the project going.

That is the Real World. You cannot judge on the importance of some work by society's support to the visionaries' dreams.

I feel in my gut, that Francisco J. Varela is going to follow, as I already wrote in this blog, the same fate as that other great Chilean man, Roberto Bolaño. Two Latinamericans that couldn't stand CIA supported fascism in Chile. At least Varela found some safe haven in the US and Europe, otherwise he might have languished in some dungeon in Chile.

Concluding; a new form of Cybernetics is necessary, one that considers autonomous systems. Life forms cannot be controlled like robots. I can understand why the military, and  the industry that goes with it, have not supported "The Principles of Biological Autonomy," but ironically, a Vietnam veteran, Craig Venter, opened the doors for this more advanced science. The Science of Life, as opposed  to what has become, the science of death.