CYBERNETICS FOR DUMMIES.
We now come to what might be called “Cybernetics for Dummies”.
CYBERNETICS is not about Cyborgs or any kind of science fiction or computer-controlled organisations or societies.
Stafford Beer called it “the science of effective organisation” and the more we think, and act and learn together, the more you will realise the importance of cybernetics in co-creating networks of Viable Innovative Gaian Democracies Enterprises Organisations and Communities.
True, the founding fathers of cybernetics were all whizzes at mathematics and pioneers in artificial intelligence and computers. But don’t be alarmed. As long as you can count up to five that’s all the maths you’ll need to understand why our Democracies Enterprises Organisations and Communities have to be Viable
A Viable System is any complex, biological or quasi-biological system that is organised so as to meet the demands of surviving in a changing environment.
And its a basic rule of cybernetics that all viable systems are RECURSIVE: they all contain and are contained within other – higher and lower level – systems.
Think of any biological organism – you, me, cats. flies. trees, worms, bacteria. We have many lower level systems: muscles, and eyes, nerves and brains stomachs, lungs and lots of other organs, all of which have their own lower-level systems, all with the same DNA, all combining together to be the unique complex adaptive viable systems that are you and me. Within those sub-systems are sub-sub-systems each with their own sub-systems and so on down to individual molecules of matter. That’s what Recursive means.
And in our turn we are sub-systems of other complex, adaptive systems: families, Enterprises Organisations and Communities. They are all recursive systems too.
But are those recursive systems VIABLE? Can our families, our Enterprises, Organisations and Communities meet the demands of surviving in a changing environment or will they only remain viable as long as the environment – which is itself a complex, adaptive system – continues more or less unchanged.
Of course, all viable, recursive, complex, adaptive systems vary constantly as they adjust to variations in their higher and lower systems. Some small degree of variation is normal and natural and necessary to maintain the systems’ viability.
But, if the systems’ environments change in ways that are outside their normal ranges of variation, then the systems and their sub-systems will cease to be viable and they will die, unless they can rapidly adapt to their new environments.
Thus, as global warming forces the Gaian systems to change in ways that are far outside the range of variation that we, and our Democracies Enterprises Organisations and Communities have known for the whole of recorded history, we and they will only continue to be Viable if we and they vastly improve our capacity to adapt to our new environments.
Thanks to the great Stafford Beer, we have a model with which we can think, act and learn together to co-create many thousands of VIGDEOCS that will maximise their capacity to adapt and maintain their viability.
By the time Stafford started applying his Viable Systems Model as a major international consultant he had already been a Production Controller, a Director of Management Science, a Managing Director of various companies. So, his ideas are based on and tested and refined by many decades of applications in the real world, at every level from the individual enterprise to a whole national economy.
The model has Five levels of sub-systems, each of which usually consists of other Viable systems.
System 1 is the level where the rubber hits the road: where, , depending on the kind of system we’re talking about, the patient meets the doctor or gets an operation, the products are designed and made: the city council collects the garbage: the teachers meet the students: the state collects its taxes: the company meets its customers and so on: These are the “primary activities” of a complex system. And you can see that there would be other viable sub-systems within those primary activities. That’s because all viable systems are, of course, RECURSIVE.
Another way of looking at System One is to see it as the boundary between the System as a whole and its environment, which might be the market, or the patient, or the electorate, or, as we now understand, the Gaian systems.
System 2 represents the information channels and bodies that allow the primary activities in System 1 to communicate between each other.
System 3 monitors and co-ordinates the activities within System 1. by establishing the rules, resources, rights and responsibilities of System 1 and also provides an interface with Systems 4 and 5.
System 4 covers the bodies that are responsible for looking outwards to the environment to monitor how the system needs to adapt to remain viable.
System 5 is responsible for policy decisions produced within the other four levels through which the system as a whole maintains its viability.\
The table below summarises how VIGDEOCs might fit with the Viable Systems Model in order for our societies to our societies to be constantly aware of and adapt be the challenges they face.
Over the coming months you’ll have plenty of chances to discuss and modify the chart and relate it to the world we live in, but over the next few minutes let’s try to use it as a basis for clarifying why cybernetics is so important to working out the future of the human family.
| SYSTEM
1 |
SYSTEM2 | SYSTEM3 | SYSTEM4 | SYSTEM5 | |
| GAIA | X | X | X | X | X |
| DEMOCRACIES | X | X | X | X | X |
| ENTERPRISES | X | ||||
| ORGANISATIONS | X | X | X | ||
| COMMUNITIES | X | X |
After Obama?? 