Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system’s actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent actions. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts including engineering, ecological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing learning, and managing.
Today our disciplinary modality will be The Batman. I have spoken briefly about understanding Cybernetics (Here: Cybernetics Watson! Cybernetics! ) and at length about Batman (Here: Batman, Anglo Saxon Prince of New England - #4 by HAIRCUT / Sidekicks, the ageless wonders / Putting the Bat-Family up for adoption / What continues to be Gotham ) if you desire some reference material for understanding the writing below.
There have been a nearly infinite series of attempts to powerscale Batman, to understand where Batman should begin and end.
To begin here, we will start by establishing that Batman is in fact powerscale-able, unlike Superman, Flash, and Green Lantern, who for a variety of reasons I will not entertain attempts to powerscale in any form except against their equals who are characters that are iterations of themselves in most cases.
Batman is powerscalable principally because he is a detective. This may surprise you, you might even say: He’s a normal guy, wouldn’t that be the main thing that makes him powerscaling material? No, go look at the UFC and the Olympics and decide what he is like physically and get back to me and then go back and look at every UFC champion and every triathalon champion and every linebacker ever and compare them across every physical metric and then get back to me. You will never finish because if you do we will debate about whether Batman would use PED’s (the answer is unambiguously Yes and you will start again with that consideration).
Being not just good, but the “Worlds Greatest” Detective is the most powerscaling friendly thing about Batman. In a previous article I talked about Cybernetics and Sherlock Holmes and what it meant to examine Holmes through the lens of Cybernetics, but lets take it a step further.
Insofar as applied Cybernetics can be considered the study of how humans interfacing with utility machinery to achieve more perfect effects produces more efficient machinery and more proficient humans, we have a considerable study to do of Batman.
In the 1940’s it was basically feasible that Batman could have been a student of (a very old) Sherlock Holmes, and indeed it comes up in the 1970’s as an interaction had (I think in Batman/Green Arrow???) but this only establishes that his basic skillset of deductive reasoning would be at the forefront of what is possible in observing plainly observable evidence and nothing which requires further physical investigation or extraction from a crime scene. At that time being a really good detective would have meant the technology at your disposal had an extremely limited utility if your use case for the technology (because of the technology’s physically bulky and costly nature) was that it was rarely if ever implemented in the field (where Batman does the majority of his work) and so it became necessary that two things happened:
A. Batman is himself a smart guy capable of advanced deductive reasoning.
B. Batman had infrastructure that could conclusively support his deductive conclusions with science.
And so the Batcave is born to house the Batcomputer which is the truly necessary item. Already we are getting somewhere with this Cybernetics stuff. But as we are well aware as children of the modern world, the chief advancement in technology in our time has been miniaturization of physical presence and maximization of effect, driven in no small part (as we understand as Cybernetics enjoyers) because of the focus of the input or the reason the technology was created in the first place. Consumer focus at the level of the infantryman, thank you DARPA.
The Batcomputer of today is all the gadgets in Adam Wests kooky cave and about a million more, or at least a million times more powerful, stuffed under a desk and displayed on a single big screen. Batman when operating in the field in something like the Batman Arkham Games of much fame, is more an agent of the Batcomputer than he is anything else, it drives all his direction during his cases. But this is the focus of Cybernetics, that the man and machine are in complete synthesis producing exactly the desired outcome every time. The failure in that system is that Alfred has to exist to operate the Batcomputer, but the greatest to ever do it: Frank Miller; even innovated this away to complete the loop and made Alfred himself an AI after his death. If you haven’t read all parts of The Dark Knight I highly recommend you do so.
Batman being a “gadget guy” is in the same vein, and I think the divide between some Batman traditionalists and Batman futurists (I use neither of those terms disparagingly) is what they think is an appropriate amount of stuff for Batman to be carrying on his utility belt. The answer can be found in what Batman’s purposes are. If Batman’s best most descript title is “The Worlds Greatest Detective” he should be employing a veritable arsenal of forensic tools. The fantasy of the system really is that Batman can capture and send the information he is able to forensically detect to the Batcomputer in a way that preserves any sort of meaning for interpretation of the crime scene. Only a… Cyborg would be able to talk machine language so efficiently. Interesting.
I began this talking about Powerscaling and to that I aim to return. I think powerscaling is a silly exercise for black youtube anime freaks but it is completely impossible to talk about comic books with normies without being able to speak that language, so we will equip you, the reader, with the tools to succeed.
Batman is best able to succeed when he has sufficient evidence to draw conclusions about his enemy. In normie space we call this “Prep Time”, but our advanced understanding of the philosophy and science of Batman tells us that Batman doesn’t just succeed when he is given a long timeline, he succeeds because Batman is the most efficient user of that time. His toolset, both mental and technological, is geared specifically to draw accurate conclusions about suspects so that he may act pre-emptively to their next crime. This is an interesting segway, do not let it escape your notice that this has roughly upended the common normie argument that Batman is a reactionary force incapable of winning his war on crime because he is forever chasing the tail of costumed criminals. Batman is a proactive force always working to be out ahead of his villains, otherwise he would not bother to have a Batcomputer that holds (As Chris Nolan explores in Batman: The Dark Knight) a morally gray amount of information about the world relevant to his crimefighting crusade.
You could further argue that the martial arts and escape artistry, chemistry and disguise work for which he is otherwise known (absolutely all of which are derived from Sherlock Holmes- not a bad thing just under observed in todays comics) are secondary to his ability to deductively reason about the culprit of the crimes which he investigates, and that the detective work is entirely necessary as conditions setting for him to use his martial arts skills. Most literally in the case of Ras Al Ghul who gives him the moniker of “The Detective”, a title he adorns him only after observing his work, to further challenge him physically in a variety of martial arts.
We can use all of this reasoning to also conclude that the preponderance of items on his utility belt should also then be focused around his detective work.
We can be fair and charitable in equal measure and take the standard items necessary for criminal forensic work in the world today and arraign them against the slots available for the Batman.
We can assume that Batman does notetaking on his immediate observations verbally, recorded by the microphone(s) in his cowl. We will also assume that the cowl can record what it is seeing and that Batman is adept at creating footage he can actually analyze. We could go so far as to say that the cowl can record in different spectrums such as IR, I don’t think that is “unrealistic” for The Batman, nor do I think that live or semi-live measuring tools on the Batcomputer would be out of the question.
We can say that Batmans suit protects him against things like needles, acids, contaminated bodily fluid and gas as well. The first Item I think needs to be on the tool belt is a first aid kit. There exists an excellent real life analogue for his first aid kit in the IFAK or Individual First Aid Kit used by the US Army, which has the following items, fits in one package, and weighs about a pound:
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2 × Combat Application Tourniquet (CAT) — One-handed, windlass-style for extremity hemorrhage.
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1 × Elastic Bandage Kit (e.g., Israeli-style pressure bandage or equivalent).
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1 × Sterile Gauze Bandage (cotton, ~4.5" × 100" or compressed gauze).
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1 × Combat Medic Tape (reinforced, 2" × 100").
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1 × Nasopharyngeal Airway (NPA) — Usually 28 Fr with lubricant.
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2 pairs × Patient Exam Gloves (nitrile).
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2 × Reclosable Plastic Bags (for waste or storage).
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1 × Vented Chest Seal (twin-pack, e.g., HyFin or Bolin-type) — For sucking chest wounds.
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1 × Fox Eye Shield (aluminum, with strap) — For eye protection/injury.
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1 × Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) Card.
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1 × Permanent Marker (fine-tip Sharpie).
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1 × Strap Cutter (or rescue hook/knife).
He would also need to have some method for collecting and preserving evidence. A UV lamp, fingerprint powders and brushes, glue, tape, swabs, bags, sterile fluids and forceps, scalpels or scissors for extraction of evidence from the environment. We will say that would all fit in one pouch, maybe about as big as an IFAK, and consider that he doesn’t need to do any plaster casting if he has sufficient 3D modelling software on the Batcomputer that can extract that sort of laser/shadow measured depth of field data from cowl footage. I think a separate pouch would be needed for things like immediate blood tests and drug or alcohol testing kits.
I think we can assume that if Batman is doing any digital/electro-magnetic forensic investigation it is being executed by whoever is on the Batcomputer back at the Cave, and that like in the Arkham games he is really only able to respond to that sort of analysis once he has collected sufficient evidence for it to produce a conclusion. The Batcomputer would also function as index of calibers, poisons, toxins, venoms, streets, rivers, flora and fauna that could supply him with updates either in the Cowl headset on command or via some sort of visual display- or wrist display which I think would make more sense as an actual bendable liquid touch screen on his wrist than a hologram but whatever.
I think we have taken up half or more of the Bat Utility Belt, and all of the possible functions of the cowl besides whatever minor ballistic and blunt protection it offers. We are left with a Batman operating on an extremely limited supply of batarangs, smoke bombs and repellant sprays (which I suppose is why he stores it in the helicopter and not his belt, but you understand the point I’m making). A Batman of really any pre-modern era has to start off-loading the functions of the Batcomputer on his utility belt and start carrying around source references or a significantly heavier supply of analytical or chemical toolsets.
Batman can really only be properly understood and therefore powerscaled as a Detective first, and everything else second.