Quite a mouthful, that title, but it’s an excellent summary: The connections across those domains are so rich and with so many shared influences, it becomes clear that the history of interaction design—and also its future—is bound up in systems and cybernetics, cultural politics and personalities.
A detailed essay of that title has just been published in the catalog “HIPPIE MODERNISM: The Struggle for Utopia”, coinciding with the opening of the exhibition at Walker Art Center. There is a web version of the essay available, co-authored by Hugh Dubberly and myself.
There is also a PDF version, and a diagram as well as an interactive app of a social graph of relationships explored in the essay. The diagram and interactive graph was an extension of the essay. One goal of this project was to have the PDF for use with our students and to make it available for other faculty and their students. Your feedback is invited in the comment section of the web version.