The Culture of Feedback

When we want advice, we often casually speak of reaching out to others to "get some feedback." But how many of us give a thought to what this phrase actually means? The idea of feedback actually dates to World War II, when the term was developed to describe the dynamics of self-regulating systems, which correct their actions by feeding their effects back into the system. For example, antiaircraft weapons systems could "learn" to predict how planes might try to evade them and adjust their firing patterns accordingly. By the early 1970s, feedback had evolved to become the governing trope for a counterculture that was reoriented and reinvigorated by ecological thinking. The Culture of Feedback digs deep into a dazzling variety of left-of-center experiences and attitudes from this misunderstood period, bringing us a new look at the wild side of the 1970s. Belgrad shows us how ideas from systems theory were taken up by the counterculture and the environmental movement, eventually influencing a wide range of beliefs and behaviors, particularly related to the question of what is and is not intelligence. He tells the story of a generation of Americans who were struck by a newfound interest in--and respect for--plants, animals, indigenous populations, and the very sounds around them, knitting this together with cogent insights on environmentalism, feminism, systems theory, and psychedelics. The Culture of Feedback repaints the familiar image of the '70s as a time of Me Generation malaise to reveal an era of revolutionary and hopeful social currents, driven by desires to radically improve--and feed back into--the systems that had come before.