Cold War Legacies

de John Beck, Ryan Bishop

Systems analysis, cybernetics, information theory - form the late 1940s through the 80s, these shaped military, business, government and academic thinking. Their influence on the arts is obvious, form the 'systems novels' of the 1960s and 70s to electronic music and from conceptual art to electronic media. The end of the Cold War did not end systems thinking; indeed, given the explosion of computer technologies into every aspect of contemporary life it can be argued that we are living in a world imagined and engineered by the Cold War. This collection connects Cold War material and conceptual technologies to the arts, society and culture.