About this episode
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and implications of cybernetics in the context of the information age.
Misha Glenny and guests discuss cybernetics – the field of study which gave us the prefix ‘cyber’ and helped lay the foundations for the information age. After the Second World War, cybernetics emerged as the study of communication, feedback, and control in both animals and machines. Cybernetics was first defined in 1948 by the American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) and aimed to find a shared universal language which could be used across disciplines. The name drew on an Ancient Greek word for steersman, the person who stands at the helm of a ship to steer or govern its course. Cybernetics saw the world as systems which used loops of information and feedback to adjust their own course of action. Those ideas could be applied to anything from thermostats to the human brain, and arguably laid foundations for the information age. With Jacob Ward Historian of science and technology at Maastricht University Jon Agar Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University College London And Orit Halpern Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden Producer: Martha Owen Reading list: Peter Galison, 'The ontology of the enemy: Norbert…
People in this episode
Host: Melvyn Bragg
Guests: Misha Glenny, Jacob Ward, Jon Agar, Orit Halpern
Topics covered
- cybernetics
- information age
- communication
- feedback
- control systems
Keywords
- cybernetics
- Norbert Wiener
- information systems
- communication theory
- feedback loops
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Maastricht University, University College London, Technische Universität Dresden
Books & works: The ontology of the enemy: Norbert Wiener and the cybernetic vision, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics, Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason
More episodes of In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg
- Joseph Roth · June 4, 2026 · 60 min
- Indian Indentured Labour · May 21, 2026 · 53 min
- M.C. Escher · May 14, 2026 · 55 min
- Handel's Messiah · May 7, 2026 · 56 min
- The Spanish-American War 1898 · April 30, 2026 · 55 min
- Silicon · April 23, 2026 · 53 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg podcast page.