Orienting Your Mind in the Realm of Cybernetics

Cybernetics: The theory or study of communication and control in living organisms or machines (Oxford Dictionary Online).




A seed, sprout, and root system; a mainframe, terminals, and bandwidth; a brain, neurons, and ideas. Plants, machines and humans all operate under the same property of expansive networking, explored by studies in Cybernetics. Picture, on one end of a spectrum, a root system and, on the other end, a cyber system (cyberspace). On the first side, you have a system that can be described as sustainable, connected to to processes of Earth, sensitive to Earth's preservation, and empowering man on a micro-scale, which is to say "individual" and/or "community" (assuming harvest is organic). On the other side is the mechanical dimension of cybernetics, described as commercially explicit, motivated by commerce and communication, and empowering man on a macro-scale, meaning "community" and/or "country [nation-state]." Now that you have established the binary in your head - of the organic plant network model and cyberspace - you can place your own cybernetic property into the model. Where do you fit? Where does your mind lay between the two? To answer this question, you can consider three parties: yourself, your collective, and your culture.



(The internet mapped, as of January 16, 2006. Go here for a closeup: http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/com_test/img%5Cdsnl%5Cinternet15jan06.png).


Culture is always trying to place you in your place between these two existential destinations, and it is your [daily!] task to remain aware of how it does this. One thing that allows us to do this is to think of our relationship with either side of the binary, for example, gardening. When we identify only with the Earth's networking capabilities, we become detached from the macro-community that we belong to. On the other hand, if we identify only with the side of cyberspace, we become dependent in regards to our biological presence on this planet, i.e., we neglect our ability to provide for ourselves. However, placement between the two allows for a healthy existence.


Food for thought: Music:


- Relate to the old time farm: the old ways of farming, the detachment from the metropolis: Woody Guthrie, "Pastures of Plenty." (The natural end of the spectrum).
- Relate to your own personal garden: the simplicity of growing, the non-obligatory nature of planting seeds: Tom Hunter, "Seeds."
- Relate to the community garden in the middle of the metropolis: the swirling of chaos and order, the networking of roots underground and the networking of neon bulbs above ground: Goa Gil, "Timelessness." (The machinistic end of the spectrum).


Culture will place you without your having a say if you're not careful; keep that in mind and know where you stand.