INFINITE FEEDBACK LOOP OF TIME - With regenerative and frequency modulation circuits in the early and mid 20th Century, Edwin Howard Armstrong employed feedback to great effect. The improvement in fidelity between AM and FM radio being Armstrong’s greatest achievement. One could say Armstrong took a cue from mechanical and electrical thermostats that had evolved over the previous 100 years. The work on the thermostat arguably morphed into the autopilot. All these feedback-based inventions spurred scientific thought, and the birth of Cybernetics under the tutelage of Wiener, McCullough and others.
Overtime, Feedback loops were understood as essential to how natural and artificial systems were regulated to maintain stability. Ultimately, with the term ‘Cybernetics’ well in the rear-view mirror, researchers followed feedback to form the basis for recurrent Neural Networks’ use in Natural language processing.
The neural nets’ ability to analyze sentences and predict the next word to appear in a sequence in turn formed the basis for generative AI and the large language models [LLMs]. Those latter elements form the basis for the AI phenomenon that has dominated news reports, driven stock market fortunes and caused complex geopolitical maneuvering.
Growing up, feedback was always there. The kids in our neighborhood army were deft on bikes, as able as the kids on Sting Rays in ET. “Proprioceptive, visual and tactile Feedback” is a crucial – tho largely unconscious- part of riding a bicycle. It was something that my sister’s disability disallowed her from mastering. For me, feedback was in the imagination too.
When I was young, the thermostat was a marvel; you could take the thermostat faceplate off the hinge, and look at the innards - at bimetal coil – or toy with the little vial of mysterious mercury bubble.
Visiting grandmother in Boston my father exalted in the sound of a Zenith FM radio – he’d buy one once Milwaukee got an FM station. Recall The radio I took apart, leaving tubes on the kitchen floor, while he and ma were at Black Fan pier seeing Uncle Sonny and Aunt Nellie off back to Ireland; my mother affected predictable shock, and my grandmother said: “Leave him alone, he’s fine.”
Fourth of July’s with Billy Little, slipping away from the families’ picnic, getting in Pontiac, setting the ‘autopilot’ for the North Star so we could riff on a higher philosophical plain, wrestle men from Mongo.
When I was assigned a college entrance essay, I chose Cybernetics, Technology and Dehumanization; this topic I’d discovered as I tried to read every new book upstairs from the children’s library where I worked after school. The paper did not impress the University of Chicago, but I carried Cybernetics as a hobby interest ever thereafter, and eventually made a living as a high tech reporter.
I dabbled, but thought I knew a lot. I was amazed recently to learn more about Italo Calvino, a 1960s science fiction writer; to learn he delivered lectures on Cybernetics and Literature in 1967. The lectures discussed much – including early work in machine learning and linguistics, and his hallmark paper deserves attention today, as we as a planet grapple with AI. – Jack Vaughan
I’d like to thank the Google Gemini AI model for its help in this composition.
