Abstract:
To reconstruct the way in which the difference of analog vs digital was introduced in the 1940s and to investigate why this difference was so fundamental to the whole cybernetic epistemology.
First, the difference between “analog” and “digital” resembles the Kantian difference of “senses” and “reason”. Together they form the “illusionary” function, which a digital‐oriented cybernetics tries to abandon. Second, the attempt to get rid of this illusion produces itself a “cybernetic illusion”, that replaces the anthropological illusion established (according to Michel Foucault) in late 18th century.
@article{pias2005analog,
title={Analog, digital, and the cybernetic illusion},
author={Pias, Claus},
journal={Kybernetes},
volume={34},
number={3/4},
pages={543--550},
year={2005},
publisher={Emerald Group Publishing Limited}
}