A common language can emerge from cybernetic perspectives to facilitate cross discipline communication
What does “cybernetic perspective” mean? If we accept that a “system primitive” is as described by Markoff[1] and data is as described by Warren Weaver in his beautiful introductory memorandum[1] then systems of an abstracted “cybernetic nature” as understood to be described[2], emerge, on the observation of the world, unconstrained “out of the mist”. This “cybernetic perspective” can then be used to communicate across silos and disciplines of expertise without the recourse for unduly complex technical language either literary or mathematical.
An exercise to test this assertion in a familiar case would be to take the description of an information system based on a data life cycle expressed as a series of its functional primitive i.e. data in, process, data out [3], compare to its description as a value chain expressed by double-entry accounting and then knit the two descriptions together using a cybernetic perspective.
Bringing a cybernetic perspective to such a case introduces the notions of “boundary and scope” and how such “cybernetic systems” intertwine to produce non-linear and chaotic effects extending their reach to the unknowable, unintended and unexpected e.g. there’s a Letchworth in Queanbeyan. The practical challenge for those seeking utility from cybernetics is to judge the location of the line.
In his seminal text, “Diffusion of Innovations 5th Ed. 2003″[4], Everett Rogers describes his innovation curve. A conjecture might be that the innovation curve for the digital computing machine, now eighty-years old, can be, on closer examination, be seen as a set of fractal innovation curves that are the result of various intertwining cybernetic processes involving technology, commerce, geo-politics and societal imperatives. Are we at the end of this curve or has it just started?
Suss that out!
[1] “The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Shannon and Weaver, 1949
[2] Wiener, N. (1950). Cybernetics. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 3(7), 2–4. https://doi-org.virtual.anu.edu.au/10.2307/3822945
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