A Merger of Two Strategic (Ir)reconcilables, 1962-1980

摘要

Our dialogue originated with the invitation to contribute to a session on the history of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) at its 50th anniversary. Fifty years is a long time. Because our involvement in ASC overlapped, in preparation for this session, we started to communicate to refresh our memories. Then Barry turned out to become unable to participate in the event and asked Klaus to relate his experiences, which he did. When asked to write them down for publication, we realized that it was the dialogue that had helped us to reconstruct and articulate that period of turmoil and hope in which ASC was reborn. Moreover, for us, dialogue, with its multiple circularities and the joining of differences, is the prototypically cybernetic form of communication on cybernetics. So, while writing freezes that process, this paper is as close as we can come to recreate the history of our connection during which cybernetics was at a tipping point.