Paper short abstract:

Cybernetics was an imperial drive to digitize territories; it imagined the material world and human social life as information systems for capture. In 1970, the U.S. Border Patrol created a “cybernetic border” that was central to nation making and the management of racialized non-citizen bodies.

Paper long abstract:

Before the emergence of our contemporary cybersecurity milieu, the U.S.-Mexico border of the 1970s was an experimental space for the deployment of discrete surveillance systems that abstracted human bodies from their territorial settings and separated them into information flows. After the end of the Bracero Program and passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, federal officials and engineers struggled to institute order and control over the "chaotic" border. In the U.S. public imaginary the lack of control stemmed from a "flood" of immigrants overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol. Cybernetics offered the vocabulary and technologies to secure the management and administration of border life.

At the heart of cybernetics was an imperial drive to digitize territories; it imagined the material world and human social life as information systems open for capture. This drive was manifest in 1970 when the Border Patrol installed its intrusion detection systems—the first instantiation of what I call "the cybernetic border." Tracing discourse networks in government publications and memoranda, technical reports and newspapers, I chart how the cybernetic border was central to U.S. nation-making and the management of racialized non-citizen (Latina/o) bodies.

This paper contributes to the literature on cybernetics by examining it within a borderlands framework—teasing out the production of race and the border as technologies. It puts STS and the history of technology in conversation with Latina/o studies and Digital Media Studies to reframe relations between technology, the state, race and power in nation-making.