On the History of Cybernetics

An Interim Report

Abstract

The article starts by reminding on the wide spread popular use of the term ‚cybernetics‘ in composita such as ‚cyberspace‘ which seems to be in apparent contrast with the lacking success of cybernetics in academia. The article deals with the indetermination of cybernetics which always provided a certain amount of openness. A survey of the history of cybernetics is made including ego-documents and oral history as produced by cyberneticians themselves as well as recent contributions from the side of history of science and technology. Against Peter Galison’s widely repeated verdict of cybernetics as a kind of war-science it is argued that cybernetics has an interesting tradition as a social science as well as a source of societal reforms.