Cybernetic Culture Research Unit and Temporal (non)linearity

A dive into the occult side of cybernetics to uncover the impact of technology on temporal linearity.

What if I told you there is an esoteric philosophy where the cyberspace culture and cybernetics intersects with occultism? Would you believe it? This is the story of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), and I’d like to share it with you.

The Birth of Cybernetics

The term "cybernetics" was coined in 1948 by mathematician Norbert Wiener. Cybernetics falls within an interdisciplinary field that studies communication and control processes in living, mechanical, and social systems. It explores how information is processed, transmitted, and used to regulate the behavior of complex systems through feedback and adaptation.

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Wiener defined cybernetics as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine," a definition that paved the way for intersections between biology, engineering, psychology, and philosophy. For Wiener, a cybernetic system is not just a machine or a network of parts but a complex "apparatus" functioning like an organism—greater than the mere sum of its parts.

In practice, cybernetics focuses on:

• Self-regulating systems: Both living organisms and machines that use feedback information to maintain balance and respond to environmental changes.

• Feedback and control: The idea that actions performed by a system (such as a thermostat, an organism, or a social network) generate information that is reintroduced into the system to keep it stable or guide it toward a goal.

Since its inception, cybernetics has been a lens to understand the interconnections between technology, biology, and society, offering a model to interpret how systems—technological or living—adapt and evolve in response to external inputs.

A futuristic example of cybernetic study is the "cyborg," short for "cybernetic organism," referring to beings that combine biological and mechanical elements. Cybernetics plays a central role in coordinating and integrating these elements into a functioning system.

The term "cyborg" was coined and popularized in 1960 by scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in an article titled Cyborgs and Space.

The article explored the possibility of using human-machine beings for space exploration, hypothesizing that combining technology and biology could overcome human limitations in hostile environments:

Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space... Artifact-organism systems which would extend man’s unconscious, self-regulatory controls are one possibility.

Through the cyborg, cybernetics merges with the transhumanist idea of evolving humanity by integrating it with technologically regulated systems, such as automatic controls for body functions or even bionic implants.

However, cybernetics isn’t just about machines; it also examines how time, control, and communication intertwine to create self-regulating systems.

Bitcoin as an Example of a Cybernetic System

A less science-fictional example than the cyborg is Bitcoin. The world’s first cryptocurrency can indeed be seen as a self-regulating cybernetic system founded on time, control, and communication: a decentralized and resilient ecosystem that maintains the integrity of the network through its numerous feedback loops.