Cybernetic Brain

A really nice book that digs into the work of the first and second generations of British Cybernetics. The author's background in Science/Technology Studies, means he approaches from a sociological perspective, but is perfectly happy digging into some of the more dense technical stuff (which he explains very well).

In a book of this size there will always be things left out, but he manages to provide enough pointers for the interested reader to dig into random art projects, or how exactly a pond could be made into a computer.

If you want an intro to the work of Stafford Beer (though all of them are interesting), this is the best primer for his work that I know of.

Collective biography about some British second order cyberneticists (g.e. Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, others). The history dances around disciplines like you'd expect cybernetics to. Would also recommend the related episodes of General Intellect Unit (and the podcast in general) as well!