A Global History of Cybernetics 49
his public reception, Wiener’s friend Dirk Struik, a Dutch mathematician
and Marxist theoretician, captured the moment for many Soviet cyberneti-
cists with his overstatement, “Wiener is the only man I know who con-
quered Russia, and single-handed at that.”^125 We may claim that by this
process Wiener became known as a foreign founder of Soviet cybernetics.
In Democracy and the Foreigner, political theorist Bonnie Honig introduces
the idea that an iconic “foreign founder,” or an alien recruited for a project
that he or she unsettled, often plays a role in the many political narratives
of identity formation: the kingdom of Oz has its Dorothy of Kansas; the
House of David has a Moabite grandmother, Ruth; the American colonies
were united by the belief that they were no longer British; Europe now
traces its origins to ancient Greece, which was first a Roman idea. Eastern
Europe abounds in similar stories: Russia originates in ancient Rus’, now
in Ukraine; the Ukrainian national anthem claims brotherhood with the
Cossack; and the Polish national anthem praises Lithuania.^126 That Soviet
cybernetics identified Wiener as foreign founder is in context nothing
new. After all, no native can found his or her identity. There is no identity
Figure 1.1
Norbert Wiener with Aleksei A. Lyapunov in Moscow, 1960.
Courtesy of Boris Malinovsky.