Abstract
By means of a philosophical reading of Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics, this thesis attempts to derive anew the concepts of internet and control. It develops upon Wiener's position that every age is reflected by a certain machine, arguing that the internet is that which does so today. Grounded by a critical historiography of the relation between the Cold War and the internet's invention in 1969 by the 'network' of J. C. R. Licklider, it argues for an agonistic concept of internet derived from Wiener's disjunctive reading of figures including Claude Bernard, Walter Cannon, Benoît Mandelbrot, John von Neumann and above all, his Neo-Kantian inflected reading of Leibniz. It offers a counter-theory of the society of control to those grounded by Spinoza's ethology, notably that of Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, and attempts to establish a single conceptual vocabulary for depicting the possible modes of conflict through which an internet is determined.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisors/Advisors |
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| Publication status | Accepted/In press - Apr 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Note: This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the Techne doctoral scholarship scheme.Physical Location: This item is held in stock at Kingston University library.
Keywords
- Norbert Wiener
- cybernetics
- The Human Use of Human Beings
- God and Golem Inc.
- Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider
- Paul Baran
- ARPANET
- Walter Cannon
- cyborg
- homeostasis
- social homeostasis
- artificial-homeostasis
- heterarchy
- resilience
- William Burroughs
- Warren McCulloch
- Claude Bernard
- Walter Rosenblueth
- G. W. Leibniz
- Monadology
- echantillons architectoniques
- Thomas Hobbes
- Gilles Deleuze
- Francois Ewald
- Michael Hardt
- Toni Negri
- Michel Foucault
- Eric Alliez
- Maurizzio Lazzarato
- Otto Mayr
- game theory
- John von Neumann
- cryptology
- disinformation
- Kevin Kelly
- swarm
- Spinoza
- John Arquilla
- David Ronfeldt
- netwar
- cyberwar
- Reinhardt Koselleck
- robot
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- Georges Canguilhem
- Hans Jonas
- metabolism
- autopoiesis
- Humberto R. Maturana
- Francisco J. Varela
- N. Katherine Hayles
- Peter Galison
- David Stark
- Fred Turner
- Benjamin Peters
- Luciana Parisi
- Bernard Geoghegan
- dispositif
- Neo-Kantianism
- William James
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Johann Friedrich Herbart
- Lucie Kim-Chi Mercier
- Michel Serres
- internet history
- The Internet Society
- clock
- steam engine
- Maxwell's Demon
- control
- Communication, cultural and media studies
PhD type
- Standard route