I have felt for a long time that Cybernetics (Systems Theory, call it what you will - and perhaps this is part of the trouble) has lost its way: and this upsets me, for I love Cybernetics - the way of thinking, the openness and the way it spans disciplines and interests: its universality, in a word2.
And, in other word, its integrity.
And these are what I fear have been lost.
In our need to show that Cybernetics is valuable, to convince others (who perhaps don't want or need to be convinced) that there actually is something there, we have, I believe, accidentally sold Cybernetics out. By this I mean we have taken a position in which we treat how to use the subject more seriously than the subject itself: we have become corporate raiders, asset strippers of our own subject.
Consider the following metaphor. We have chosen to treat cybernetics as a tool kit. A very nice tool kit, but one where the coherence that makes a collection of tools into a suite is forgotten. That is, just a lot of tools, all together. And we've taken this toolkit to a building site, and left it there for everyone to benefit from. And everyone has benefitted. And, at the end of the day, we've gone back, and found there aren't many tools there: the bos which our tool kit was in has few tools in it now, and no coherence: it's just goet a couple of odds and ends which really don't make a set - wanted to use the tools had finished taking the ones they wanted.
But everyone on the building site is happy, for they've got a nice new tool or two.
Except for us. We are the loosers. Having lost the coherence as well as the contents of our toolkit we are left with nothing. All we can take home from the site is the nearly empty box, the box of Cybernetics.
We could have looked after it. We could have asked others to return our tools, to acknowledge they'd "borrowed" them. We could have said that they were not individual tools, but a set, a suite: something more. We could have insisted they were ours. But we left them alone for others to take, in our desperate need to seem important and relevant to others3.
I asked Heinz von Foerster about this a couple of years ago. His interpretation was that there is no longer any such thng as Cybernetics. The field has vanished. All that it had to offer has been taken up and taken over by other subjects. The exciting way to talk about this is to say that cybernetics is everywhere. The sad way (sad not least because it looses us our field) is to say that Cybernetics is dead: it has evaporated, its wisdom absorbed into other fields without trace.
And if you go to conferences that are purportedly Cybernetics or Systems Theory Conferences, you find that Cybernetics hardly gets a look in. You will find enormous sessions on, for instance, "fuzzy" (nothing necessarily wrong with fuzzy, but fuzzy does not equal systems), or on story-telling, or whatever. But the centre that is cybernetics is rarely approached. Where are the papers on Cybernetics (or systems) per se? Some of the papers presented in this peripherium even seem to ve papers that were rejected elswhere, riding in on the tails of Cybernetics by the addition of a note or two of token abeyance and the hope that this slight will not be noticed (which all too often it isn't!). We shouldn't allow ourselves to be bought so easily!
(And, for that matter, how many of us call ourselves Cyberneticians - even if our jobs make this hard to do).
That is why, when Søren Brier asked me to contribute something to this journal, I eagerly accepted the opportunity. For, for me there is a chance, a slim possibility perhaps, to revive Cybernetics if we examine it for what it is, as its self (as a second order Object). If we will look at Cybernetics as a worthwhile subject in its own right, we may re-discober what is at the heart of it, the coherence that makes (and maintains) it distinct, and the integrity that allows it to take its position as something worthy of attention and love, and of human faith and endeavour. (We might approach this later, for those of you who feel this is over constructed in terms of the "it". But let me plead that there is a time to talk in a shorthand, without having to argue every point in all its doubtable detail).
My project, then, is to (re-)consider different topics, notions, themes, ideas, concepts in or attached to cybernetics. I shall look at them to see what meaning and understanding I can extract, derive, excavate, and I shall present these as a quarterly musing. I shall, on occasion, let the text lead me and follow it to a surprising result (as designers do). I shall try to be informed, maybe even scholarly, but not to overload what I write with reference to the trappings of over-stated academe: for this undertaking is not an academic project of wit, but a project of love and of understanding. If what I do is provocative, then I shall be able to continue to hold my view that there is something in and to Cybernetics, that there is a passion. If there is agreement, then I shall be glad that the coherence I am trying to find is being recognised by others. I shall start from the official beginning, with Wiener's definition, with control and communication in the animal and the machine.
My wish is not to close down but to open up, not to distract from Cybernetics but to focus in on it, to give it the attention I believe it deserves as an area worthy of being seriously considered for what it is, in its own right. I shall welcome comments and contributions whether they agree or disagree, for they will (I hope) indicate that there's life, yet, in the old beast. I trust, I hope not too naively, that all will be nurture. And I hope, also, to provoke, but without malice.
And a note about any responses:
It may be that this series turns into something publishable, in some form, as a collected work. Comments and contributions that come from readers of this series will be treated as coming with permission for their publication and inclusion in such a work unless such permission is specifically denied when they are submitted. If such a publication does occur, credit for such pieces will, of course, be given.
Notes