A (cybernetic) musing: variety and creativity
In a previous issue, I promised to return to variety and what it offers us, especially vis-à-vis creativity. I will do that here. What I want to show is that, whereas Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety is usually interpreted as placing a difficult condition on us, there is another way of looking at this law that treats it as (amongst other things) the source of creativity. Just how difficult it is to satisfy the Law is the first thing I show in exploring transcomputability limits and how we have traditionally overcome these (thus satisfying the Law). I then introduce this idea that we do not have to satisfy the Law, and indicate how it works in offering increased variety and, hence, a (potential) improvement in creativity, citing our interaction with the World Wide Web as an example.
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: CyberEthics Research, 52 Lawrence Road, Southsea, Hants PO5 1NY, UK,
Publication date: 01 March 1998
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