Is it possible for a sole field of study to encompass philosophy, mathematics, biology, cognitive science, computer science, sociology, political science, economics, and more? To attempt to answer some of the most complex questions out there about the diverse systems—biological, social, technological, and more—that govern our lives? That, in a nutshell, is the field of cybernetics—the “antidisciplinary” science that formed the core of Ricardo B. Uribe’s research at the University of Illinois.
BCL Report No. 68.2, Ricardo B. Uribe Papers, University of Illinois Archives, Record Series 11/6/40, Box 2.
Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1935, Uribe studied electrical engineering at the University of Chile before joining the institution’s teaching and research staff. In the early 1970s he worked on Project Cybersyn, a project supported by the Chilean government that employed cybernetic approaches to organize and reform the country’s economy. Political turmoil, however, changed the course of Uribe’s life and career when General Augusto Pinochet seized power in the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Uribe and his family fled, seeking refuge in Illinois where renowned cybernetician Heinz von Foerster (whose papers are also held by the University of Illinois Archives) had created a position for him in UIUC’s Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL).[1]
Education and the ways in which humans understand the systems surrounding them are two threads interwoven throughout Uribe’s work; these reflect both the cybernetic research interests of the time and his own lived experiences. Much of Uribe’s early writing relates to “autopoiesis” —the process by which a system is able to self-maintain, reproduce, and create the components it needs to expand—and the implications of autopoietic systems for relativity, human understanding, and various forms of modeling. A variation on this concept is demonstrated by W. Ross Ashby’s elementary Non-Trivial Machine (NTM), a device contained in the Ricardo B. Uribe Papers. Ashby was a cybernetician contemporary of Uribe; Von Foerster had coined the term “non-trivial machine” to describe any system in which the “input-output relationship is not invariant, but is determined by the machine’s previous output.”[2] The machine does utilize input, but like an autopoietic system has an independent internal state and constantly produces new operations as to maintain a condition of unpredictability.
Ashby’s Non-Trivial Machine, Ricardo B. Uribe Papers, University of Illinois Archives, Record Series 11/6/40.
Ashby’s NTM consists of an aluminum box with two switches and two lights. The observer’s task is to determine the internal structure of the system by flipping the switches and watching the lights. One of the switches, however, changes the internal configuration of the box whenever it is flipped. The purpose of this machine was to exemplify the environment in which an artificial brain may operate, and to demonstrate the difficulty of understanding human cognition—perhaps the ultimate non-trivial machine. Autopoiesis, while not equivalent to cognition, is considered one of the prerequisites of a cognitive system.
Uribe’s views on education were also central to his career and work. In his magnum opus, TractatusParadoxico-Philosphicus: A Philosophical Approach to Education, Uribe described education as a recursive system:
“If humans rather instruct than educate their children, these children will instruct their children even more (educating them even less), and they in turn will similarly do with their own children and so on and on. If humans do not perish at the hands of uneducated leaders, sooner than later they will grow into a population of morons who only obey rules, predictable creatures, ants of an anthill, humans no more. The sad (happy?) end of the story: awareness of their own shortcomings will thoroughly escape them.”[3]
Tractatus Paradoxico-Philosophicus, Ricardo B. Uribe Papers, University of Illinois Archives, Record Series 11/6/40, Box 6.
This passage calls back to the violence and bloodshed Uribe would have witnessed during and after the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, and defines his approach to instruction at the University of Illinois. In addition to his work in BCL, Uribe established the Advanced Digital Systems Laboratory (ADSL) to bring together students across disciplines and encourage creative, collaborative, and unconventional problem solving. ADSL continues today as the Advanced Digital Projects Laboratory, and is an undergraduate/graduate course open to qualified students from all colleges. Uribe’s philosophy also shaped the curriculum of “ECE 110: Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering,” which introduces first year students to ECE principles in a hands-on and explorative manner. The central project of the course—working in groups to design “an autonomous electric vehicle” able to navigate an unknown course—is Uribe’s design.[4]
In addition to TractatusParadoxico-Philosophicusand the NTM, the Archives’ recent donation of Uribe’s papers include years of BCL reprints and reports, manuscripts relating cybernetics to other scientific and humanistic fields, conference materials, American Society for Cybernetics documents, and select course materials. Uribe’s legacy is one of curiosity—asking big questions and encouraging others to think in unconventional ways, question the status quos of both life and learning, and discover for themselves.
[1] James Hutchinson, “Remembering Ricardo Uribe, Founder of ECE’s Advanced Digital Projects Laboratory,”Grainger College of Engineering Electrical & Computer Engineering, last modified October 13, 2019, https://ece.illinois.edu/newsroom/news/4295.
[2] Heinz von Foerster, “Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception,” BCL Publication 198, photomechanically reproduced from Instructional Science, 1, 1, (March 1974): 31-43, Record Series 11/6/40, Box 3, University of Illinois Archives.
[3] Ricardo B. Uribe, “TractatusParadoxico-Philosophicus: A Philosophical Approach to Education,” Red Edition, Copyright 1991-2007, Record Series 11/6/40, Box 6, University of Illinois Archives.
[4] Ricardo B. Uribe et al., “A design laboratory in electrical and computer engineering for freshmen,” IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 37, issue 2 (May 1994): 194-202, doi: 10.1109/13.284994.
The Ricardo B. Uribe Papers were processed with generous funding from the Thomas M. Siebel Endowment for the History of Science.
Students work on arranging and describing Kenneth Appel’s Papers.
From October to November 2017, the Illinois Geometry Lab’s program devoted to showcasing undergraduate Mathematics students’ research worked with the University Archives to arrange and describe Kenneth Appel’s personal papers. In 1976, Kenneth Appel and his colleague Wolfgang Haken (both Mathematics faculty members at the University of Illinois), succeeded in proving the “Four Color Theorem.” This theorem argues that every map in a plane or a sphere can be colored with only four colors in such a way that no two countries of the same color are touching. By that time, mathematicians had been working to prove this theory for over one hundred years. In fact, it took hundreds of hours of computing work for Appel and Haken to prove it. The announcement that the theory had been proven was met with a flood of people writing to them. Some were writing to congratulate the team and others to prove the team wrong.
The students worked alongside the archives staff to learn more about the archival process by appraising the material, arranging and describing it, and rehousing the materials in archival boxes, all while taking an historical approach to mathematics, using primary sources to learn more about Appel, his research, and the ways in which the mathematics community reacted to what was then a controversial finding. Kenneth Appel’s Papers include correspondence relating to the Four Color Theorem that illustrates both in number and in tone, the storm of letters that Appel and Haken were bombarded with at the time. Some notable letters include a teacher that says his eighth graders were able to prove the theory wrong and an account of a $100 bet that was made that the theory could not be solved by July 1976, including a photocopy of the $104 dollar check (the four dollars being paid for “interest”). The record series also includes publicity materials, drafts of papers, and data printouts and computer punch cards, much of which relates to the Four Color Theorem.
On Saturday, November 4, 2017, the students will host an exhibit featuring materials from the collection. The exhibit will be a part of the Illinois Geometry Lab Open House which is being held in conjunction with the Department of Mathematics’ Four Color Fest, an event being held to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the proof. You can also see the exhibit in room 146, University Archives, December 8, 2017-January 31, 2018!
Heinz von Foerster (left) and W. Ross Ashby (right), found in record series 39/1/11, box 3. The W. Ross Ashby Papers are held by the British Library. The University of Illinois Archives preserves the Heinz von Foerster Papers.
Since its establishment in 1963, the University of Illinois Archives has served as the steward of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s institutional memory. Through the preservation of the administrative records that document the development of the University’s colleges, departments, and programs; of faculty papers that shed light on the fascinating twists and turns of research and the light-bulb moments in which ideas emerge; and of the papers of alumni and student groups that allow us to understand the legacy of the University and student life, the materials in the University Archives’ holdings chronicle the achievements, activities, and impact of the University of Illinois’ administrators, faculty, and students over the past 150 years. Continue reading “University of Illinois Archives Celebrates Sesquicentennial”→
A searchable index of publicly available materials regarding the Steven Salaita hiring controversy is now available from the University of Illinois Archives.
The Steven Salaita Reference File and Index is comprised of preservation copies of documents, news stories, blog posts, social media traffic, and other materials, providing the most comprehensive source for material concerning the decision by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 to rescind a job offer to Steven Salaita and the subsequent controversy and lawsuit regarding this decision.
This project was designed and launched in August 2014, with the goal of capturing in real time not only web-available news reports and institutional releases, but especially social media content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like. Controversies create not only internal strife but a flood of reports, counter-reports, news stories, editorials, and blog posts not to mention social media postings. Early on, the Archives realized that if we didn’t capture everything we could about the Salaita affair in real time, we would lose the ability to create an enduring, authoritative record of the controversy.
As of September 6, the resultant Salaita “clipping file” contains direct links to approximately 2,249 distinct documents from 653 sources in 14 separate categories, including news stories, responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, social media postings, videos, etc. The materials are intended for use in private research, teaching, and study. For all other uses, including but not limited to publication, broadcast, and distribution, users must obtain written permission in advance from the original author, creator, or copyright owner.
The University of Illinois Archives has officially re-opened to the public. Our new location, room 146 Main Library is open and ready for visitors. The new location is easy to find and features a large brightly lit reading room, all new furniture, new wireless networking, and outlets at every table.
Over the next few months, we will be working on all the procedural, operational, and technology adjustments that come with any new space.
However, for the moment, contrary to all the naysayers, it has happened, we have moved, and an architect just told me only “Only two years from the program design report to opening day–that’s a land speed record.”
So, come see for yourself, and if you cannot visit sunny Urbana (err, well we have actually moved across the city line even though the zip code is the same), look at the moved-in photos available at the following URL.
It was days like October 8, 2012, when undergraduate researchers and campus scholars crowded our long-superseded reference room, that helped us define the kind of space we wanted to have created for University Archives’ users.
Stay Tuned! Daily Updates on the progress of the move, including new photos, will be added starting May 21!
In 1963 the University of Illinois Archives opened its doors to the public. For 52 years the basement of the Main Library Building has been our home and it has served our needs well, but as the collections grew and as ever more students and scholars came to use the Archives, Room 19 became too cramped and unsuitable for our users. For the past three years, the archivists and the Library’s Assistant Dean for Facilities have been working to create a space more fitting to the Archives’great collections and users.
On May 21, 2015 the University of Illinois Archives will begin to relocate its core collections and public service operations from the basement to the former Applied Health Sciences Library (room 146 Main Library).
New Reading RoomNew Stacks
The new home of the University Archives has been recently remodeled and outfitted with new equipment, large tables, improved wireless connectivity and expanded oversize storage. In addition to new equipment the remodel includes designated archival instruction and exhibit space as well as expanded stations for staff working with born-digital and digitized archives.
To ensure a speedy move our basement location (room 19 Main Library) will close its doors to the public between May 21 and May 29, 2015.
Champaign County On Film, the second event in the Town & Gown Speaker Series, will be held in the Lewis Auditorium at Urbana Free Library, Wednesday, October 15, at 7pm. The Champaign County Historical Archives and the Student Life & Culture Archives will present an evening devoted to the changes of Champaign County from the 1920s through the twenty-first century as captured by the film lens. Continue reading “Champaign County On Film”→
Since December 2012, the University Archives has acquired over 50 new accessions of materials which have augmented the Archives’ holdings that document the College of Engineering’s rich institutional memory. These acquisitions have revealed new sources and insights into the establishment and development of Engineering’s curriculum from the University’s founding in 1867, as well as faculty research and the creation of new research programs and laboratories and their affect on scientific and technological innovations. In addition to being arranged and described, Engineering administrative records and faculty papers have received advanced conservation and preservation treatment, and many records series have been digitized by the Library’s Digital Content Creation Unit. These newly-digitized materials facilitate greater access to the history of science and technology at the University of Illinois. Recently digitized administrative materials include Faculty Minutes, 1897-1902, 1918-2008 and Annual Reports, 1903-1959, 1970-1971, 1987-1988 .These records capture the work of committees, administrators, departments, and laboratories, including Engineering’s unique documentation of its own history through its Historical File, 1908-1996.
