Translational Action in Cybernetic Systems

Sensors, actuators, and controllers are becoming deeply embedded across nearly every aspect of life, from transportation and manufacturing to energy systems, consumer technologies, and healthcare. This expansion of cybernetic systems carries two important implications. First, the category of “computing machines” is broadening in both form and scope, now including a diverse array of computational architectures that sense and actuate across increasingly complex physical environments. Second, the growing integration of cybernetics is driving higher degrees of computational autonomy, enabling systems to operate with greater independence—both augmenting and, in some cases, replacing human agency. At the core of cybernetic systems are translational actions (TAs) that facilitate the detection and transformation of the energies of the physical world, across the strata of technology artifacts, to ultimately become virtualized representations in the computational world. However, the concept of TA remains underspecified, offering scant insight into its concrete forms, the value and costs these different forms create, and ultimately, how physical-digital TAs function in real-world systems. In response, we conducted an inductive study of 188 detection and computational technologies originating from leading scientific research institutions to develop a more nuanced vocabulary of how translational actions govern the relationship between digital representations and their physical referents. Our analysis identifies six distinct TA forms and three hierarchical levels at which they operate, each with specific trade-offs that we characterize as fidelity costs. These insights enable us to theorize how TAs shape the technical construction of data as inputs to digital representations, and, in turn, how such representations attain performative value in the physical world.