I am going to have to take an extended break from posting on ATS. As a single working parent time is not something I have a great deal of.
Additionally, I am soon to commence a course of study which, I hope, will take me out into much deeper waters and really push me beyond my comfort
zones. I'm kind of bricking it...but in a good way. Anyway, I've had a lot of fun playing here, on this thread, amongst others and The GUT has
been a highly cordial host, I didn't want to leave without expressing my appreciation for what has most definately been a growth experience.
I will of course be back, I am nothing if not a bad penny.
Anyway, the real reason for this visit, I received my course books on Friday and began reading immediately, I am having trouble tearing myself away
from them in all honesty but I was only a few pages in when I was reminded of this thread and I just wanted to share something with you all from
Norbert Wiener, the 'founding father' of Cybernetics.
"To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man's inner life, even as they
belong to his life in society."
For Wiener control and communication "centred not around the technique of electrical engineering but around...the ...fundamental notion of the
message, whether this should be transmitted by electrical, mechanical or nervous means. The message is a discrete or continuous sequence of
measurable events distributed in time."
So that "the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in
their analogous attempts to control entrophy through feedback. Both of them have sensory receptors as one stage of their cycle of operation: that
is, in both of them there exists a special apparatus for collecting information from the outer world at low energy levels, and for making it available
in the operation of the individual or machine.
In both cases these external messages are not taken neat, but through the internal
transforming powers of the apparatus, whether it be alive or dead. The information is then turned into a new form available for the further stages of
performance....This complex of behaviour is ignored by the average man, and in particular does not play the role that it should in our habitual
analysis of society; for just as individual physical responses may be seen from this point of view, so may the organic responses of society itself. I
do not mean that the sociologist is unaware of the existence and complex nature of communications in society, but until recently he has tended to
overlook the extent to which
they are the cement which binds its fabric together."
(Extracted from The Human Use of Human Beings, 1950. Author's italics, my bold.)
For those watching for bells and whistles announcing our effect on the 'control system', I hope that Wiener will aid in the understanding that we
have, already, in the course of our discussions, as well as beyond them, already begun facilitating change. Bear that in mind, keep your chins up and
most of all, be positive.
Ta, ta for now