Guest Column: In Defence of Pure Cybernetics

Cybernetics aims to be a unifying transdiscipline and a metadiscipline (Scott, 2002). As the science of control and communication, it has a clear role to play in facilitating effective communication and identifying pathologies of communication in human systems (Scott, 1997). As a transdiscipline, cybernetics has a vital role to play in bringing sense and order to the emerging global conversation (Scott, 2010). In his book, Ecological Communication, Luhmann (1989) asserts that there is too much excitement (noise and redundancy) in the marketplace of ideas and a lack of resonance with (a disconnect from) vitally important matters of the moment concerning the ecosystem. In this context, cybernetics can serve as a useful noise filter and variety attenuator.