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Artificial intelligence and data processing systems shape everyday life, but how did they come about? How did mathematicians, engineers, artists, and designers imagine computer-controlled worlds before they were even possible? And how can their ideas help us raise questions about digital rights, data security, and data justice today? We will explore the media history of data processing and its global transformations through computer art, concrete poetry, experimental media and science fiction films from Germany, Latin America, and the Soviet Union from the 1960s to the present. Our theoretical discussions will be grounded in readings on cybernetics, a theory of communication and control that shaped early computing, but also forged interdisciplinary connections with biology, sociology, literature and art through terms such as “feedback” and “self-regulation.” This course is specifically aimed at students who want to discover how the sciences and the humanities interact to gain new, creative impulses for their own thinking.