A (cybernetic) musing: the state of cybernetics

Somethings come along at just the right time. I had decided to write about the state of cybernetics (focusing on second order cybernetics) in this issue. And then, in the last issue, there was a delightful interview with Heinz von Foerster, making the whole task easier. In the past, I have bemoaned the way that cybernetics has fragmented and, apparently, disappeared. I don't mean to repeat myself endlessly, so I'd like to start by looking at some of the more popular views of where we are, at either the start of this new millennium, or the end of this old one (depending on how you like to count). A millennium seems to me to provide a wonderful excuse to take stock, to think about what has been achieved, and what might be, so that what might be achieved may be redesignated because we see it in the light not so much of what has been achieved, as what hasn't.

But I will start with a statement of faith, to set my context. I believe cybernetics offers us insights and an approach only approximated by other fields. Especially second order cybernetics, which, to me, takes the role of the conscience of cybernetics: it's where we look at the concepts and assumptions that cybernetics runs on, or which it tries to explain, and attempt to deal with them in a manner that reflects our understandings — ie, cybernetically. That's how the cybernetics of cybernetics actually is the cybernetics of cybernetics! Therefore, I believe, there is an area (perhaps only tiny) where we care for what is at the heart of cybernetics, making sure it's healthy and growing well. It's a sort of parenting. It's a sort of polishing of the jewel. And while this may be a romantic view, it's what I believe and have worked on for the last 30 years, which I hold in a very emotional manner — my grand passion.

Yet I often find that my view of cybernetics is far removed from the views held by others, and it is these views that I mainly wish to look at in my assessment of the State of the Art, for I think that the problems pertinent to the state of cybernetics may lie in these views, or at least how these views and mine differ.