Hello all,
I have been reading this thread with much interest even if, I am afraid I may
have missed many of the nuances.
I would agree with Felix when he says the airplane’s black box is a cybernetic
device only to the extent that it translates all actions into information.
Felix calls it a forensic device, that seems right, at least until a plane
malfunctions or crashes.
I would like to suggest that the “real” cybernetic device here is the software
that Boeing designed to keep the plane in the air in the face of its poor
aerodynamics. That software, a black box in the sense that it both takes all
sorts of inputs and controls/manipulates outputs, is also a black box in the
sense that its workings (and existence) was kept hidden from the pilots.
This may have been said already but what I find fascinating about this is that
it posits the triumph of bits over atoms (to use MIT’s 90’s information age
lexicon). We have been walking in this direction for a long time - bodies and
objects being upgraded with information processing abilities - but now software
is brought along to counter the laws of physics that dictate that shifting the
location of an airplanes’ engines changes its aerodynamics.
It may well be that this is old news and I have simply not been paying enough
attention but to me this seems both fascinating and scary.
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Ana
---/-/\-\---
Ana Viseu
Associate Professor | Universidade Europeia
Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e Tecnologia | Univ. de
Lisboa
www.anaviseu.org
> On Mar 29, 2019, at 9:19 AM, Felix Stalder wrote:
>
> Thanks Ted, Scott and Morlock, this history is obviously more complex
> and nuanced than the point I was trying to make, which was not
> historical at all, but rather logical.
>
> To my limited understanding, the black box in the airplane is not a
> device to limit the complexity of the pilots' interaction with, or
> understanding of, the plane by reducing a complex process to a simple
> in/out relationship.
>
> No, it's a flight recorder. During the flight, it has no output at all,
> and in no way influences the processes of flying. It simply records
> certain signals, including voice signals.
>
> The plane would fly in exactly the same way if it wasn't there.
>
> In this sense, it's a forensic, not a cybernetic tool. And as that, it's
> function is actually exactly the opposite. It's a tool designed not to
> hide but to reveal complexity, to make transparent what happens inside
> the cockpit.
>
> Just because there are procedural limits as to who is allowed to open
> the box, and therefor it's "black" to some people (the pilots, the
> airline technicians like Scott) doesn't make it a black box in the
> cybernetic sense. Otherwise, every safe would be a cybernetic black box.
>
> And because it's not a cybernetic object, it's not a good object to talk
> about the problems of complexity and if/how we run a ever larger number
> of processes at or beyond the outer limits of complexity that we can
> manage. That was the only point I was trying to make.
>
> But because Scott, who as detailed, first-hand knowledge of these
> things, agrees with the cybernetic reading to plane's black box, I might
> be mistaken here.
>
> Felix
>
>
>> On 29.03.19 02:46, tbyfield wrote:
>> Not so fast, Felix, and not so clear.
>>
>> The origins of the phrase black box are "obscure," but the cybernetics
>> crowd started using it from the mid-'50s. Their usage almost certainly
>> drew on electronics research, where it had been used on a few occasions
>> by a handful of people. However, that usage paled in comparison to the
>> phrase's use among military aviators from early/mid in WW2 — *but not
>> for flight recorders*. Instead, it described miscellaneous
>> electro-mechanical devices (navigation, radar, etc) whose inner workings
>> ranged from complicated to secret. Like many military-industrial objects
>> of the time, they were often painted in wrinkle-finish black paint.
>> Hence the name.
>>
>> Designing advanced aviation devices in ways that would require minimal
>> maintenance and calibration in the field was a huge priority — because
>> it often made more sense to ship entire units than exotic spare parts,
>> because the devices' tolerances were too fine to repair in field
>> settings, because training and fielding specialized personnel was
>> difficult, because the military didn't want to circulate print
>> documentation, etc, etc. So those physically black boxes became, in some
>> ways, "philosophical" or even practical black boxes.
>>
>> Several of the key early cyberneticians
