Pias, Claus: Cybernetics | Kybernetik. The Macy-Conferences 1946-1953. Band 1. Transactions/Protokolle, Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes, 2003
Cybernetics | Kybernetik. The Macy-Conferences 1946-1953. Band 2. Documents/Dokumente, Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes, 2004
Textstellen:
In "A Note By The Editors" (Heinz von Förster, Margaret Mead, Hans Lukas Teuber) der Aufzeichnungen über die Neunte "Cybernatics" Macy Konferenz, 1952 heißt es ..."This common ground covered more than the mere belief in the worth-whileness of interdisciplinary discussion.
All of the members have an intererest in certain conceptual models which they consider potentially applicable to problems in many sciences.
By agreeing on the usefulness of these models, we get glimpses of a new lingua franca of science - fragments of a common tongue likely to counteract some of the confusion an complexity of our language.
Chief among these conceptual models are those supplied by the theory of information (Shannon, Wiener). THIS THEORY HAS ARISEN UNDER THE PRESSURE OF ENGINEERING NEEDS:
the efficient design of electronic communication devices (telephone, radio, radar, and television) depend on achieving favorable ´sign-to-noise ratios` Applications of mathematical tools to these problems had to wait for an adequate formulation of ´information´as contrasted to ´noise´."
(in: Cybernetics - Kybernetik, The Macy-Conferrences 1946-1953, Transactions/Protokolle: Hrsg.: Claus Pias, Zürich-Berlin 2003, S. 534)