The Cybernetic Plot of Ulysses

Good afternoon. To quote the opening of Norbert Wiener's address on Cybernetics to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in March of 1950, The word cybernetics has been taken from the Greek word kubernitiz (ky-ber-NEE-tis) meaning steersman. It has been invented because there is not in the literature any adequate term describing the general study of communication and the related study of control in both machines and in living beings. In this paper, I mean …

…a cybernetic allegory in which character, action, and text all come through, finally, loud and clear. The book, that is, enacted a Joycean design over which Joyce himself could have had little control, for the book itself recapitulated the Odyssean journey across perilous seas. Pirates, monstrous one-eyed censors, Procrustean editors kept mangling a Protean text. And yet here it is, home free, safely harbored in our minds and in our hearts. Thank you very much.