"Because the subject matter of cybernetics is the propositional or informational aspect of the events and objects in the natural world, this science is forced to procedures rather different from those of the other sciences. The differentiation, for example, between map and territory, which the semanticists insist that scientists shall respect in their writings must, in cybernetics, be watched for in the very phenomena about which the scientist writes. Expectably, communicating organisms and badly programmed computers will mistake map for territory; and the language of the scientist must be able to cope with such anomalies." (Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", 1972)
"Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly." (Marshall McLuhan, "Take Today: The Executive as Dropout", 1972)
"Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head - my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world. […] Our models usually have a strong congruence with the world. That is why we are such a successful species in the biosphere. Especially complex and sophisticated are the mental models we develop from direct, intimate experience of nature, people, and organizations immediately around us." (Donella Meadows, "Limits to Growth", 1972)
"It follows from this that man's most urgent and pre-emptive need is maximally to utilize cybernetic science and computer technology within a general systems framework, to build a meta-systemic reality which is now only dimly envisaged. Intelligent and purposeful application of rapidly developing telecommunications and teleprocessing technology should make possible a degree of worldwide value consensus heretofore unrealizable." (Richard F Ericson, "Visions of Cybernetic Organizations", 1972)
"The mind is defined as the sum total of all the programs and the metaprograms of a given human computer, whether or not they are immediately elicitable, detectable, and visibly operational to the self or to others." (John C Lilly "Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer" 2nd Ed., 1972)
"When the phenomena of the universe are seen as linked together by cause-and-effect and energy transfer, the resulting picture is of complexly branching and interconnecting chains of causation. In certain regions of this universe (notably organisms in environments, ecosystems, thermostats, steam engines with governors, societies, computers, and the like), these chains of causation form circuits which are closed in the sense that causal interconnection can be traced around the circuit and back through whatever position was (arbitrarily) chosen as the starting point of the description. In such a circuit, evidently, events at any position in the circuit may be expected to have effect at all positions on the circuit at later times." (Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", 1972)
"The pseudo approach to uncertainty modeling refers to the use of an uncertainty model instead of using a deterministic model which is actually (or at least theoretically) available. The uncertainty model may be desired because it results in a simpler analysis, because it is too difficult (expensive) to gather all the data necessary for an exact model, or because the exact model is too complex to be included in the computer."
"Computers make possible an entirely new relationship between theories and models. I have already said that theories are texts. Texts are written in a language. Computer languages are languages too, and theories may be written in them. Indeed, for the present purpose we need not restrict our attention to machine languages or even to the kinds of 'higher-level' languages we have discussed. We may include all languages, specifically also natural languages, that computers may be able to interpret. The point is precisely that computers do interpret texts given to them, in other words, that texts determine computers' behavior. Theories written in the form of computer programs are ordinary theories as seen from one point of view." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)
"Man is not a machine, [...] although man most certainly processes information, he does not necessarily process it in the way computers do. Computers and men are not species of the same genus. [...] No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms. [...] However much intelligence computers may attain, now or in the future, theirs must always be an intelligence alien to genuine human problems and concerns." (Joesph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, 1976)
"The connection between a model and a theory is that a model satisfies a theory; that is, a model obeys those laws of behavior that a corresponding theory explicitly states or which may be derived from it. [...] Computers make possible an entirely new relationship between theories and models. [...] A theory written in the form of a computer program is [...] both a theory and, when placed on a computer and run, a model to which the theory applies." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)
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