Ultrastability
Discussion
"The problem of representation and the divergence between the rulers and the ruled, including the classic political-theoretical problem of how to overcome or mediate this divide, has – according to the cybernetic conception of government – become partially obsolete. In fact, it is thought to be resolved by a conception of politics that can continually establish orders through a real-time regulation of crowds, masses and affects. The political task par excellence becomes the (direct or indirect) creation of order(s) from noise, whereby the state’s goal is reduced to its mere systematic survival, what Habermas termed – in a more critical vein – equivalent to ‘the biological base of survival at any cost, that is, ultrastability.’ This term ‘ultrastability’, popularized by Ross W. Ashby in the early 1940s, is derived from the mechanisms of a classic homeostat, a device that reacts to external signals with the aim of self-regulating through constant feedback, thus reaching constant, stable states. More systemically, ultrastability can be defined as the capacity of a system to adapt smoothly to unpredicted changes by reducing noise. Early political cyberneticist Eberhard Lang went so far as to think of the general will as ultimately and solely concerned with the ‘absence of disturbances’ – a notion that seems reminiscent of Khanna’s aim to provide the greatest efficiency of a nation’s people at any cost.
Then, the essential telos of a cybernetic state is precisely not a productive dissensus, let alone a form of democratic-agonistic pluralism, but the other’s integration into to the same, that is, the expansion of the whole via adaptation. Hermann Schmidt, the founder of cybernetics in Germany, affirmatively frames this logic as an imperative: ‘to control everything that is controllable, and to render controllable that which cannot yet be controlled’. The timely political conclusion to be drawn from this is nicely summed up by the authorial collective Tiqqun, who defines the task of cybernetic governance in the era of networks as follows: ‘governing means ensuring the interconnection of people, objects, and machines as well as the free – i.e., transparent and controllable – circulation of information that is generated in this manner.’"