American Society for Cybernetics:Thanks for the Magic, Humberto

It is my opinion that Humberto Maturana's contributions to the state of human knowledge about both humans and their knowledge are nothing short of monumental. At least that's the magnitude of impact his ideas had on me, both as a doctoral student and in my various subsequent roles researching how information technologies interact with human cognitive capacities, interpersonal communication, and directed collaboration, for example. Though already familiar with the work of scholars like Ashby, Beer, von Foerster, Angyal, Bateson, and Pask, I had remained adrift in deciding how best to apply the wisdom of cybernetics to matters like group decision support.