MicroTCA (short for Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture, also: μTCA) is a modular, open standard, created and maintained by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG). It provides the electrical, mechanical, thermal and management specifications to create a switched fabric computer system, using Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMC), connected directly to a backplane. MicroTCA is a descendant of the AdvancedTCA standard. == History == The rapid expansion of mobile telecommunications and their associated services (such as text messages) at the beginning of the millennium increased the demand of processing power in telecommunication systems. The existing "carrier grade" (see RAS) computing architectures were not fit to house the high performance processors of the time. In order to answer those demands, about 100 companies worked together in PICMG, resulting in the Advanced Telecommunications Architecture (AdvancedTCA, ATCA), published in 2002. After the introduction of AdvancedTCA, a standard was developed, to cater towards smaller telecommunications systems at the edge of the network. This standard was geared towards a more compact, less expensive systems, without cutting back on reliability or data throughput. This standard, called MicroTCA, was ratified 2006. MicroTCA systems migrated after its release into non-telecommunication sectors, like defence, avionics and science. This resulted in extensions to the base-standard, called modules. == Modules == === MicroTCA.0 === The base-specification for properties common to all other modules, ratified July 6, 2006. This includes: Mechanical specifications, like possible dimensions of card cages, backplanes and supported AMC-modules Electrical specifications, like power distribution and interface layout Thermal specifications, like possible cooling layouts or available cooling power Management specifications A second revision of the base-specifications was ratified January 16, 2020, containing some corrections, as well as alterations, necessary to implement higher speed Ethernet fabrics, like 10GBASE-KR and 40GBASE-KR4. === MicroTCA.1 === This module adds specifications for ruggedized systems, using forced air for cooling. Possible scenarios for MicroTCA.1-based systems include outside plant telecom, industrial and aerospace environments === MicroTCA.2 === This module adds specifications for more stringent requirements with regards to temperature, shock, vibration and other environmental conditions. These specifications are geared towards use in outside plant telecom, machine and transport industry, as well as military airborne, shipboard and ground mobile equipment. MicroTCA.2 allows the use of air- and conduction-cooled AMC-modules. === MicroTCA.3 === This module adds specifications for even more stringent requirements with regards to temperature, shock, vibration and other environmental conditions. These specifications are geared towards use in outside plant telecom, machine and transport industry, as well as military airborne, shipboard and ground mobile equipment. MicroTCA.3 requires the use of conduction-cooled AMC-modules. === MicroTCA.4 === This module extends the AMC with a Rear Transition Module (RTM), increasing PCB-space and modularity. AMC and RTM are connected with a connector, located in zone 3, defined in MicroTCA.0. These specifications are geared towards use in large-scale scientific devices, like particle accelerators or telescopes. == Components of MicroTCA == === Card Cage === The card cage (also: shelf, crate) houses all the other components and as such has two primary functions: Provide mechanical stability to the other components Ensure sufficient cooling There exist a wide array of card cages. They usually differ in: the type of modules they support (MTCA.0, MTCA.1, ...) the number of slots they provide (typically between 2 and 12) the architecture of the installed backplane (see below) the cooling scheme they use (i.e. airflow front-to-back, bottom-to-top, side-to-side, conductive,...) === Backplane === The backplane is a printed circuit board, mounted directly into the card cage. It connects all other components of a MicroTCA system to each other and provides power, data access and management access to them. Two types of power are distributed over the backplane, Management Power (+3.3 V) and Payload Power (+12 V). Unlike typical backplanes, where power is distributed to all components via a common "powerplane" in the PCB, on a MicroTCA backplane, Management and Payload Power are distributed to each component individually. While Management Power is provided to each module connected to a powered backplane, Payload Power has to be granted by the MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH), after ensuring that the module is MicroTCA-compatible. The standard defines various communication buses, which the backplane can/should provide: Gigabit Ethernet IPMI SATA Fat pipe (can be used for PCIe, SRIO or 10G/40G Ethernet) Point to Point Links Clocks JTAG === Cooling Unit === The Cooling Unit (CU) provides controlled air flow in air-flow-cooled card cages. It usually consists of an array of fans and a controller, which is connected to the backplane. The MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH) can read-out temperature sensors (if present) and fan speed, as well as change fan speed via IPMI. The Cooling Unit is usually fitted to a specific card cage. Some CUs are easily detachable (i.e. for cleaning or replacement), while other card cages come with integrated, non-detachable CUs. === Power Module === The Power Module (PM, also: Power Supply) converts the AC power from the power line to the +3.3 V Management Power (MP) and +12 V Payload Power (PP), both of which are DC. There exist a variety of power modules, which differ in: form factor (i.e. double width, single width) input voltage (110 V, 220 V, both) output power (i.e. 600 W, 1000 W) The power module senses the presence of a module in a slot via a specified pin in the module connector, and immediately provides that module with management power. Payload power is managed by the MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH), which communicates with the power module via IPMI. The power module uses its own type of connector, and can thus only be installed into designated slots, which in turn can't carry any other type of module. Some card cages provide an additional power module slot for redundancy. In such a case, one slot is the primary, which will provide power by default, and the other one is secondary, providing power only, if the primary does not. === MicroTCA Carrier Hub === The MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH) is the central managing device of a MicroTCA card cage. It manages power distribution and cooling. It usually also provides Gigabit Ethernet and/or PCIe/Serial RapidIO switching. Some MCHs additionally provide clocking. As the name indicates, they are the hub of various star topologies (i.e. for Ethernet, PCIe) on the backplane and thus require dedicated slot(s). Some backplanes support two MCHs for redundancy. In this case there are two MCH slots, with one being designated primary, and one secondary. === Advanced Mezzanine Card === Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) is a standard for hot-pluggable PCBs. It was originally developed to be used in AdvancedTCA systems. The standard specifies: the dimensions of the PCB with two width variants (single, double) and three height variants (Compact, Mid-size, Full) type, location and orientation of connectors (i.e. Zone 1, 2, 3) There is a huge variation of functionalities, an AMC can fulfill: Computing (i.e. a module with CPU, RAM, SSD and on-board graphics) Storage (i.e. SSD carrier) Graphics card FPGA card (i.e. for signal processing) FMC carrier Digitizer card (Analog-Digital and Digital-Analog Conversion) Clocking and Triggering and others === Rear Transition Module (MTCA.4 only) === The Rear Transition Module (RTM) was added in the MicroTCA.4 standard. It is connected directly to an AMC via a connector, located in zone 3, requiring a double width AMC and RTM. An RTM has about the same dimensions, as an AMC, basically doubling the available PCB-space per slot in an MTCA.4 card cage. Its power is provided by the AMC. Thus an RTM can not operate on its own, but requires a paired AMC. The zone 3 connector is electrically free configurable, making it possible, that a mechanically fitting AMC-RTM pair is electrically incompatible. To avoid damage due to that incompatibility, a mechanical code-pin was added to MTCA.4-compatible AMCs and RTMs, mechanically preventing the installation of an electrically incompatible RTM to an AMC. The functionality of RTMs includes, but is not limited to: RF-signal pre-/post-processing (i.e. filtering, Up-/Down-conversion, Vector De-/Modulation) Digital signal pre-/post-processing Clock-generation/-distribution Device interfaces Date storage CPU (only MCH-RTM)
BLOOM (language model)
The BigScience Large Open-science Open-access Multilingual Language Model (BLOOM) is an open-access large language model (LLM) released in 2022. It was created by a volunteer-driven research effort to provide a transparently-created alternative to proprietary AI models. With 176 billion parameters, BLOOM is a transformer-based autoregressive model designed to generate text in 46 natural languages and 13 programming languages. The model is distributed under the project's "Responsible AI License". == Development == BLOOM is the main outcome of the BigScience initiative, a one-year-long research workshop. The project was coordinated by Hugging Face using funding from the French government and involved several hundred volunteer researchers and engineers from academia and the private sector. The model was trained between March and July 2022 on the Jean Zay public supercomputer in France, managed by GENCI and IDRIS (CNRS). Unlike GPT-3, BLOOM was trained to be multilingual. The source code is released under the Apache 2.0 license. The model's parameters are released under BigScience's "Responsible AI License" (RAIL), which grants open access and reuse rights but with some usage restrictions. BLOOM was used in the chatbots BLOOMChat and HuggingChat due to its multilingual abilities. BLOOM's training corpus, named ROOTS, combines data extracted from the then-latest version of the web-based OSCAR corpus (38% of ROOTS) and newly collected data extracted from a manually selected and documented list of language data sources. In total, the model was trained on approximately 366 billion (1.6TB) tokens. It was developed using the open-source libraries DeepSpeed Megatron. BigScience then released xP3, a multilingual dataset for LLM supervised learning. It also released BLOOMZ, a variant of BLOOM fine-tuned on xP3 to follow instructions.
Light scanning photomacrography
Light Scanning Photomacrography (LSP), also known as Scanning Light Photomacrography (SLP) or Deep-Field Photomacrography, is a photographic film technique that allows for high magnification light imaging with exceptional depth of field (DOF). This method overcomes the limitations of conventional macro photography, which typically only keeps a portion of the subject in acceptable focus at high magnifications. == Historical background == The principles of LSP were first documented in the early 1960s by Dan McLachlan Jr., who highlighted its capability for extreme focal depth in microscopy and in 1968 patented the process. The technique was revived and further developed in the 1980s by photographers such as Darwin Dale and Nile Root, a faculty member at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the early 1990s, William Sharp and Charles Kazilek, both researchers at Arizona State University, also published articles describing their technique and system setup for capturing SLP images. == Predecessor to stack image photography == Light Scanning Photomacrography offered a powerful analog tool for high-detail imaging in the age of film photography. It provided a comprehensive depth of field, making it invaluable in scientific and biomedical photography. As technology and techniques continue to evolve, LSP has been replaced by digital image focus stacking. This technique uses a collection of images captured in series at different focal depths, which are then processed using computer software to create a single image with a greater focus depth than any single image. == LSP technique and results == LSP involves the use of a thin plane of light that scans across the subject, which is mounted on a stage moving perpendicular to the film plane. The technique utilizes traditional optics and is governed by the physical laws of depth of field. By moving the subject through a narrow band of illumination, the entire subject can be recorded in sharp focus from the nearest details to the farthest ones. This analog process produces sharp and detailed images by slowly recording the image on film as the specimen passes through the sheet of light that is thinner than the effective DOF. Because the image is captured at the same relative distance from the camera lens, the resulting images are axonometric rather than perspective projection, which is what the human eye sees and is typically captured by a film camera. Because all parts of an LSP image are captured at the same distance from the lens, relative measurements can be taken from an LSP photograph and can be used for comparison. == Equipment and setup == A typical LSP setup includes: A stage that can move the subject perpendicular to the film plane. Light sources, in some cases modified projectors, are used to project a thin plane of light. A camera mounted on a stable stand such as a tabletop copy stand. In 1991, Sharp and Kazilek described their SLP system that used three Kodak Ektagraphic slide projectors with zoom lenses to create a thin plane of light. The projectors each had a slide mount with two razor blades placed edge-to-edge to create a thin slit for the light to pass through. The image was captured using a Nikon FE-2 SLR camera mounted above the specimen. Kodachrome 25 slide film was used to record the image and to minimize film grain size and maximize image sharpness == Commercial systems == A commercial SLP instrument was produced by the Irvine Optical Corp. Their DYNAPHOT system was based on a photomacroscope and could capture images on 4x5 film. The instrument came with two or three illumination sources and a motorized specimen stage. The system advertised a 2X – 40X magnification range and the ability to capture images in black and white and color. Other systems have been developed by Nile Root and Theodore Clarke and reported higher magnification (up to 100X). == LSP process == Alignment and Focusing: The light sources are aligned and focused to project a thin, consistent plane of light across the subject. Stage Movement: The subject stage moves at a controlled speed, scanning through the plane of light. Image Capture: The camera shutter is set to a long exposure or can be opened and closed manually. As the subject moves through the illuminated plane, it is recorded on the film. This process is very much like painting an image onto the film using photons instead of paint. == Applications == LSP was particularly useful in biomedical photography, where it was used to document magnified subjects with increased depth of field over traditional macro and micro photography. It has been employed to capture detailed images of biological specimens, such as imaging small insects and their parts. SLP has been used to document shell collections for scientific documentation and research. Other applications include forensic science, mineralogy, and the imaging of fractured surfaces and parts == Advantages and challenges of LSP imaging == === Advantages === Exceptional depth of field: Subjects are rendered in sharp focus throughout. High magnification: Detailed images at significant magnification without sacrificing DOF. Analog precision: Provides a non-digital solution with accurate image representation. Versatility: Can be used for a range of subject sizes, from macro to non-macro scales. === Challenges === Technical complexity: Requires precise setup and alignment. Exposure time: Typically requires long exposure times due to the scanning process. Contrast control: The highly directional lighting can create harsh shadows and high contrast, which may need to be managed. Digital competition: Focus stacking has largely replaced LSP in the digital era due to convenience and flexibility. == DIY contributions == Enthusiasts and researchers have contributed to the development and accessibility of LSP by creating and sharing DIY guides. These contributions have enabled others to build their own LSP systems using readily available materials and components. Nile Root's publications provide detailed instructions and recommendations for constructing an LSP setup. These DIY systems have allowed a wider audience to explore and utilize the benefits of LSP imaging in various fields.
Harmony (software)
Harmony is a Java-based software for creating high-definition music videos with 2D and 3D animations. The application was developed by Digital Chaotics, a company based in San Jose, California and established in 2010 by Ken and Leanna Scott. == History == During a March 1, 2011 interview published by The LIST magazine, Ken explained how he initially got into music and digital entertainment. According to Scott: “I came at it from both the art and the technology side. … I built one of the first digital audio synthesizers as an undergrad project back in 1979. It was a short jump from there to creating visuals with computers, too.” Taking inspiration from Fantasia – which Scott calls, “The greatest music video of all time” – he began writing software code for Harmony in late 2009, finishing the project in mid-2010. However, Scott has also said that the idea for Harmony began much earlier: I read a book in 1978 called Digital Harmony, by John H Whitney, Sr. (Interestingly, he was the father of the president of Digital Productions.) He said that there was a kind of visual art based on motion, and proposed theories about the underlying mathematical structure of visual harmony. So there's the book, combined with my desire to create art with computers-add a taste or two of things commonly used by college students during the 70's - and lots of Pink Floyd. Add it all up, and the seeds for Harmony were planted. My friends in school and at Floating Point Systems listened to me ranting about "making music videos with computers" incessantly. I'm sure it was both maddening and fascinating to see. == Features == Harmony runs on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Currently, Digital Chaotics does not offer a macOS or Linux platform for the software. However, Harmony can be run on these platforms by running it on Windows in a virtual machine. == Harmony 2 == On November 1, 2011, Digital Chaotics released the 2.0 version of the Harmony software. Unlike the original version, the second release featured three product levels: Harmony 2 Express, Harmony 2 Pro, and Harmony 2 Extreme. The "Express" version was positioned as an entry-level, free release to allow users a chance to "test-drive" the software. The "Pro" version currently retails at $197, while the "Extreme" is priced at $397. These two versions, aimed more towards VJ and Fulldome theater usage, featured additional software capability and features such as higher resolution, more video formatting options, and more camera angles.
ARIS Express
ARIS Express is a free-of-charge modeling tool for business process analysis and management. It supports different modeling notations such as BPMN 2, Event-driven Process Chains (EPC), Organizational charts, process landscapes, whiteboards, etc. ARIS Express was initially developed by IDS Scheer, which was bought by Software AG in December 2010. The tool is provided as freeware on the ARIS Community webpage. ARIS Express is notable - having been mentioned in research published by Schumm, Garcia, Krumnow and Greenwood amongst others. == History == ARIS Express was first announced on April 28, 2009 in a press release by IDS Scheer. The first release was on July 28, 2009 in a public beta test on ARIS Community. Only people, who registered before for the beta test were allowed to download and test this beta version. This closed beta test was followed with another public beta test. The official release of ARIS Express 1.0 was on September 9, 2009. In this first stable version, features such as Microsoft Visio import were added, which were not present in the version for the public beta test. On February 26, 2010, ARIS Express 2.0 was released. Major changes compared to version 1.0 include BPMN 2 support, integrated spellchecking and ARISalign integration. On May 25, 2010, version 2.1 of ARIS Express was released. This update improves BPMN 2 support, provides a new online help system for instant feedback, better ARISalign integration and some new symbols in different diagrams. Along with the release, a poster showing the most important modeling concepts supported by ARIS Express was released. In addition, an executable setup is provided for Microsoft Windows-based systems. Beginning of July, an update was released as ARIS Express 2.2, providing bug fixes only. ARIS Express version 2.2 is the current stable release. An official press release published mid of August 2010 said there are more than 50,000 downloads of ARIS Express. On February 2, 2011, version 2.3 of ARIS Express was released. This new version changes the file format of ARIS Express so that models can be shown in an interactive model viewer in ARIS Community. The release announcement contained no details about additional features or changes. == Functionality == === Overview === ARIS Express is a standalone single-user application. It is divided in a home screen and a modeling environment. The home screen is used to create new models or open recently edited ones. The modeling environment is used to edit diagrams. === Supported notations === The following notations are supported by ARIS Express. Users can create diagrams containing an unlimited number of modeling objects. BPMN 2 Collaboration Diagrams Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) Organizational charts Process landscape (value-added chain diagram) Data model in ERM notation IT infrastructure (network diagram) System landscape (component diagram) Whiteboard General diagram === Noteworthy features === Besides common features such as creating new diagrams, saving them as files or adding objects to the modeling canvas, ARIS Express also provides some noteworthy features, which can't be found in most comparable modeling tools. fragments - Often used modeling constructs such as an exclusive decision in a process model can be stored as fragments so that they are available for direct reuse in another model. smart designs - The flow of a process model or hierarchies of other models can be captured in a spreadsheet-like interface. While entering the data in the spreadsheet, the model is generated and laid out in the background while typing. mini toolbar - While moving the mouse pointer over an object in a diagram, a small toolbar is shown allowing quick access to the most important modeling actions. Microsoft Visio import - Diagrams created with Microsoft Visio 2007 or above can be imported to and edited in ARIS Express. A Microsoft Visio export is not provided. ARISalign import - Models created on the online collaboration platform ARISalign can be opened and edited in ARIS Express. === Exports === ARIS Express can export diagrams to different formats such as: PDF JPEG PNG EMF ADF ADF is the file format of ARIS Express. The professional tools of ARIS Platform are able to import diagrams stored in the ADF format. Yet, there are major limitations during import - namely, each object in diagram will be treated as unique object, despite having same type and name, forcing redrawing large sections of diagrams after import. Besides export formats, it is also possible to use the clipboard to copy and paste an ARIS Express diagram into typical office suites such as Microsoft PowerPoint. == Technology == ARIS Express is a Java-based application, which shares some of the features of ARIS Platform products such as ARIS Business Architect and ARIS Business Designer. In contrast to ARIS Platform products, ARIS Express doesn't use a central database for model storage. Instead, each diagram is stored in an ADF file. ARIS Express uses Java Web Start. After download, the application can be started immediately without installation procedure. For Microsoft Windows based systems, an ordinary setup is provided, too. ARIS Express requires Java 1.6.10 or above. On first startup, the user must enter a valid ARIS Community account to register the application. Creating an ARIS Community account is free-of-charge. After installation, no Internet connection is needed to use ARIS Express. ARIS Express uses a mechanism provided by Java Web Start to automatically update the application as soon as a new version becomes available and the user is connected to the Internet during startup. There are reports that this automated update failed while upgrading from version 1.0 to version 2.0. As ARIS Express is based on Java Web Start, it can be installed on any platform supported by Java. The ARIS Community and other Internet sources have reports of successful deployment of ARIS Express on other operating systems than Microsoft Windows. However, ARIS Express is officially supported only on Microsoft Windows. == Miscellaneous == A quick reference sheet is available for ARIS Express. The poster shows all supported diagrams plus the most important modelling concepts for each supported modelling language. ARIS Express contains a hidden game, a so-called Easter Egg. The game can be started by clicking several times on the product logo in the about dialog. Highscores achieved in the game can be submitted to a special page in ARIS Community. A Firefox Personas is available for ARIS Express.
The AI Con
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want is a 2025 non-fiction book by linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna. It argues that much of what is labeled "artificial intelligence" is a misleading term that obscures ordinary automation while concentrating power in a small number of technology firms. The book was published in May 2025 by Harper in the United States and Bodley Head in the United Kingdom. It was developed alongside the authors' long-running podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, which critiques exaggerated claims about AI. == Synopsis == The authors present AI as a marketing umbrella that encourages audiences to infer understanding and agency where none exist. They argue readers should treat such language skeptically and to separate specific automated tasks from broad claims of intelligence. The book describes a recurring hype cycle in which corporate narratives justify data and labor extraction, the replacement of human services with cheaper substitutes, and the diversion of attention from present harms to speculative futures. While acknowledging limited uses such as pattern recognition, the authors argue that contemporary systems are best understood as text and media generators shaped by training data and human labor, not as thinking or reasoning entities. A central theme is the social and environmental cost of scaling these systems, including increased energy and water use, the appropriation of creative work for training, and the outsourcing of ghost work to low-paid data workers worldwide. These costs are linked to workplace effects, with the authors arguing that automation rarely eliminates jobs outright and more often degrades them through surveillance, work intensification, and unpaid oversight. As alternatives to passive adoption, the authors propose concrete responses: asking precise questions about what is being automated and why, demanding transparency about data and evaluation, and practicing what they call strategic refusal when deployment conflicts with evidence or values. The book also develops a vocabulary for public debate, rejecting both boosterish and doomerish narratives as grounded in the same assumption that AI is a singular, autonomous force. The authors recommend reading strategies such as favoring trusted human sources over automated summaries and using humor to deflate inflated claims. They describe a link between language to policy and power, arguing that precise terminology can help policymakers and the public resist austerity-driven automation and demand accountability for errors and harms. == Reception == The Guardian praised the book's myth-busting approach and its analysis of how hype erodes cultural and civic life by normalizing synthetic media as a substitute for human judgment. Kirkus Reviews described it as a contrarian account that catalogs concrete risks while cutting through speculative predictions. An interview in Business Insider highlighted the authors' accessible frameworks, including their proposal to describe chatbots as conversation simulators and to evaluate systems in terms of values, labor, and evidence. Coverage in GeekWire emphasized the book's call for resistance through collective bargaining, stronger data rights, and a norm of rejecting deployments that fail basic standards of necessity and evaluation. Some reviews were more critical. A review in LLRX argued that the book's tone could be overly polemical and that it gave limited attention to potential benefits claimed for generative systems. Coverage in the Financial Times, focused on Bender's broader public scholarship, situated the book within her long-standing critique of anthropomorphic narratives about large language models and her advocacy for more democratic oversight of automated systems.
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent actions. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including engineering, ecological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character means that it intersects with a number of other fields, resulting in a wide influence and diverse interpretations. The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering a ship (the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης (kybernḗtēs) refers to the person who steers a ship). In steering a ship, the position of the rudder is adjusted in continual response to the effect it is observed as having, forming a feedback loop through which a steady course can be maintained in a changing environment, responding to disturbances from cross winds and tide. Cybernetics has its origins in exchanges between numerous disciplines during the 1940s. Initial developments were consolidated through meetings such as the Macy conferences and the Ratio Club. Early focuses included purposeful behaviour, neural networks, heterarchy, information theory, and self-organising systems. As cybernetics developed, it became broader in scope to include work in design, family therapy, management and organisation, pedagogy, sociology, the creative arts and the counterculture. == Definitions == Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, reflecting "the richness of its conceptual base". One of the best known definitions is that of the American scientist Norbert Wiener, who characterised cybernetics as concerned with "control and communication in the animal and the machine". Another early definition is that of the Macy cybernetics conferences, where cybernetics was understood as the study of "circular causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems". Margaret Mead emphasised the role of cybernetics as "a form of cross-disciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other easily in a language which all could understand". Other definitions include: "the art of governing or the science of government" (André-Marie Ampère); "the art of steersmanship" (Ross Ashby); "the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing, and processing information so as to use it for control" (Andrey Kolmogorov); and "a branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect" (Gregory Bateson). == Etymology == The Ancient Greek term κυβερνητικός (kubernētikos, '(good at) steering') appears in Plato's Republic and Alcibiades, where the metaphor of a steersman is used to signify the governance of people. The French word cybernétique was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge. According to Norbert Wiener, the word cybernetics was coined by a research group involving himself and Arturo Rosenblueth in the summer of 1947. It has been attested in print since at least 1948 through Wiener's book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. In the book, Wiener states: After much consideration, we have come to the conclusion that all the existing terminology has too heavy a bias to one side or another to serve the future development of the field as well as it should; and as happens so often to scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek κυβερνήτης or steersman. Moreover, Wiener explains, the term was chosen to recognize James Clerk Maxwell's 1868 publication on feedback mechanisms involving governors, noting that the term governor is also derived from κυβερνήτης (kubernḗtēs) via a Latin corruption gubernator. Finally, Wiener motivates the choice by steering engines of a ship being "one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms". == History == === First wave === The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback processes in biological and technological systems. Two foundational articles were published in 1943: "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow – based on the research on living organisms that Rosenblueth did in Mexico – and the paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts. The foundations of cybernetics were then developed through a series of transdisciplinary conferences funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, between 1946 and 1953. The conferences were chaired by McCulloch and had participants that included Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead, John von Neumann, and Norbert Wiener. In the UK, similar focuses were explored by the Ratio Club, an informal dining club of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers that met between 1949 and 1958. Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and popularized it through the book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. During the 1950s, cybernetics was developed as a primarily technical discipline, such as in Qian Xuesen's 1954 "Engineering Cybernetics". The text was quickly translated into multiple languages and became a foundational text on automation. In the Soviet Union, Cybernetics was initially considered with suspicion but became accepted from the mid to late 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, cybernetics' transdisciplinarity fragmented, with technical focuses separating into separate fields. Artificial intelligence (AI) was founded as a distinct discipline at the Dartmouth workshop in 1956, differentiating itself from the broader cybernetics field. After some uneasy coexistence, AI gained funding and prominence. Consequently, cybernetic sciences such as the study of artificial neural networks were downplayed. Similarly, computer science became defined as a distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s. === Second wave === The second wave of cybernetics came to prominence from the 1960s onwards, with its focus shifting away from technology toward social, ecological, and philosophical concerns. It was still grounded in biology, notably Maturana and Varela's autopoiesis, and built on earlier work on self-organising systems and the presence of anthropologists Mead and Bateson in the Macy meetings. The Biological Computer Laboratory, founded in 1958 and active until the mid-1970s under the direction of Heinz von Foerster at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, was a major incubator of this trend in cybernetics research. Focuses of the second wave of cybernetics included management cybernetics, such as Stafford Beer's biologically inspired viable system model; work in family therapy, drawing on Bateson; social systems, such as in the work of Niklas Luhmann; epistemology and pedagogy, such as in the development of radical constructivism. Cybernetics' core theme of circular causality was developed beyond goal-oriented processes to concerns with reflexivity and recursion, notably in Mead's invocation at the inaugural meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) to apply cybernetics to the activities of the ASC itself. This focus on reflexivity was especially prominent in the development of second-order cybernetics (or the cybernetics of cybernetics), developed and promoted by Heinz von Foerster, which focused on questions of observation, cognition, epistemology, and ethics. The 1960s onwards also saw cybernetics begin to develop exchanges with the creative arts, design, and architecture, notably with the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition (ICA, London, 1968), curated by Jasia Reichardt, and the unrealised Fun Palace project (London, unrealised, 1964 onwards), where Gordon Pask was consultant to architect Cedric Price and theatre director Joan Littlewood. In 1962, Qian Xuesen recruited Song Jian and Guan Zhaozhi to establish China's first cybernetics laboratory with him. Following the Sino-Soviet split, cybernetics was deemed disreputable in China. The field was again favored in the 1970s and 1980s following Deng Xiaoping's emphasis on modernisation. === Third wave === From the 1990s onwards, there has been a renewed interest in cybernetics from a number of directions. Early cybernetic work on artificial neural networks has been returned to as a paradigm in machine learning and artifi