Abstract:

Connecting the dots between Vilém Flusser and Heinz von Foerster, this essay explores the links and somewhat belated co-emergence of media theory and cybernetics as a vanishing mediator in modern literary history and the posthuman turn: first, media theory's cybernetic investments and re-deployments of certain concepts and, second, a much humbler claim for cybernetics, namely, its status as a media theory in all but name. Preeminently, the idea that there's no outside to the Whole, second-order observation, the key piece from von Foerster, is central to Flusserian thinking. There's always an observer observing, and that's in any type of epistemology that's a hard problem of complexity, like a problem that can't be easily resolved. The subject isn't a human per se but a knot and also a not of relations, as Flusser puts it, a juncture for various channels of information that also presents impedances. Von Foerster's transit is from physicist - interested in engineering and a systemic constructivism - to meta-physicist reaching into the impossibilities of the social sphere and cognition.

摘要：

本文将维勒姆·弗卢瑟（Vilém Flusser）和海因茨·冯·福斯特（Heinz von Foerster）之间的点联系起来，探讨了媒体理论和控制论作为现代文学史和后人类转向中消失的调解者的联系和有点迟来的共同出现：首先，媒体理论对控制论的投资和重新部署其次，是对控制论的一个更为卑微的主张，即它实际上是一种媒体理论，只是名义上的。值得注意的是，冯·福斯特的关键部分——整体没有外部的二阶观察——是弗鲁塞思想的核心。总有一个观察者在观察，这在任何类型的认识论中都是一个复杂的难题，就像一个无法轻易解决的问题。主体本身不是人，而是一个结，也是一个非关系，正如 Flusser 所说，这是各种信息通道的结合点，同时也呈现出阻抗。冯·福斯特的转变是从对工程学和系统建构主义感兴趣的物理学家转变为触及社会领域和认知的不可能的元物理学家。