The participants were asked to submit personal statements addressing the following 3 points or topics:

1. How I Found Cybernetics
   (I.e., how I became acquainted and engaged with the field or its subject matter)

2. What Cybernetics Means to Me
   (I.e., what value or utility I ascribe to cybernetics in my personal and / or professional life)

3. Description of My Cybernetics
   (a statement describing cybernetics as you see it)

This webpage collates the contributions with respect to topic / point #3.

To review the contributions submitted for topic #1, click HERE

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I have collected my last 25 years of work on that idea in the book "Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough" ...

I don't think in terms of "My Cybernetics" - Whichever distinction I chose it would in practice operate differently according to which conversation I am in. This is not a matter of being wishy washy, or not having a deep sense of it for myself. Its just that the view of the other determines which aspects of me/my-cybernetics connect, and thus this changes not only the emphasis, but what is revealed and what is obscured. In me, whatever I may speak of as "cybernetics" refers to a systemic flow. And the revealing / obscuring itself is a natural, normal flow - this is how cognition operates. It works.

Cybernetics also accepts error. In this it is nearly unique. Cybernetics does not see error as something to be eliminated (it is understood to be inevitable), but to be accepted and worked with. Error can be the engine of growth. It is also the generator of the original cybernetic interest in feedback. Along with error, cybernetics accepts ultimate ignorance and has methods to explain how we can create knowledge from ignorance, and the status of this ignorance.

My approach is, I think, one of scepticism and of removal. I try to do with less. I look at presuppositions and wonder what would happen if they weren't. For instance, can a black box ever be whitened - and, if not, what does that mean?

I've now integrated, FOR MYSELF, several further developments: e.g. 2nd order Cybernetics - Laws of Form - Autopoiesis - Radical Constructivism.

I believe we have serious vocabulary problems with this very deep and broad set of ideas.

And Klaus's dictionary of Cybernetics is an invaluable contribution toward clarity in our conversations. However, IMO Maturana's brilliant work does not share enough common vocabulary with Ernst's RC and Brown's LOF for serving what I think is our bests interests. A kind of incoherence limiting organization potential. The Principia Cybernetica group does about as well as I think possible at this time. Of course what I see is much more consequential than vocabulary, deep epistemological limitations/confusions.

I cannot, at the moment find the exact quote, but somewhere in 'Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Soren Brier is explicit: "I am not a radical constructivist".

Well I AM a RC and I've found the distinctions Ernst makes to be almost impossible to explain to some otherwise brilliant minds. I've never personally discussed this with Soren.

For any who have access to Korzybski's Science and Sanity, on page 99 there's a quote by him written the year I was born (1924). He classifies human thought into three periods. In the third period he says: "Mankind will understand that all that man can know is a joint phenomenon of the observer and the observed."

Long time ago I suggested and recently repeated it in an entry on cybernetics for the International Encyclopedia or Communication that one could think of cybernetics as having four pillars or conceptual commitments: circularity, process, diversity or information, and participation. Generally, I do not theorize without either of them. as Bateson said, linearity is making the mistake of cutting a circle open. Focusing on processes of becoming is far more powerful to me than describing what is. Everything I know has multiple interpretations. We live in diversity not singularities, in multiverses not a single universe. Coherence and consistency is for politicians and dictators.

Regarding participation I probably deviate from some folks in cybernetics. I think the emphasis on observation is a vestige of the enlightenment. Putting the observer in the observed - for which I have cited Heinz often - is not enough. Einstein suggested it long time ago. Ashby preached it (although he falsely is categorized as a first-order cybernetician). In anthropology and sociology we have a reflexive turn. There is not that much new in the idea of observers explaining their observing.

To me, participation goes beyond observation. It means much like Lukas mentioned that one cannot separate one's actions from one's perception, I would say one's constructions from how we dwell in them. To me the crucial feature -- entering Wittgenstein -- is language. I think radical constructivism is too psychological to contribute to society generally, to change the world in which we live.

• Von Glasersfeld's (and Piaget's) project: Understanding how we know and its philosophical and developmental underpinning (Von Glasersfeld is one of the world's experts on Piaget and Piaget is a mainstay of my teaching).

• Bateson's project: Understanding what can be said about "patterns that connect" -- and undermining mind / body dualism wherever he found it.

• Maturana's project: How we know--and its biological / neurophysiological underpinning.

• Watzlawick's project: Understanding how we as humans frame/reframe our experience.

• Heinz's project: Investigating cognition: especially how we know, and underpinning his ideas by learning from and connecting Von Glasersefeld, Maturana, Bateson, etc.

I do not separate my description of cybernetics from my application of it because I see cybernetics as a way of looking and a way of thinking. This is not quite accurate though because "a way of looking and thinking" sounds like given thing rather than a process which itself evolves.

The art of the assurance of the efficacy of action [from Couffignal].

The art of defensible metaphors [Pask].

A science of circularity [after von Foerster].

What we want it to become, that is, cybernetics is to be [Vallée].

My cybernetics is not something in which to "believe". It is something to question and to use to generate questions. When I need an anchor, I turn to my "passions" - dialogue and participation - not to a set of beliefs, and to the idea of a society in which these passions are realized. Since these passions emerged from and are supported by concepts associated with cybernetics, I need cybernetics. My cybernetics offers a vocabulary for talking, and hence thinking, about the dynamics of relations and behavior.

The label "cybernetician" is one to which I can aspire, but choose not to claim at this time. The idea of such labels to designate experts, or members of an elite club, is not compatible with my idea of cybernetics as a way of thinking about ways of thinking (of which it is one). Anytime there is a change in any way of thinking, the set of ways reconfigures itself; cybernetics is (and should be) in constant flux, and I choose to be a participant in that flux. When I attend a cybernetics conference, I choose to do so as one who, although passionate, is not comfortable with what he knows or thinks he knows and definitely not comfortable with the status quo. I am always looking for new twists, new conundrums, new incompatibilities, as well as new projects, new designs, new ideas.

What would the label "cybernetician" need to distinguish for me to aspire to it? If the label was to be applied to anyone and everyone, it would not distinguish anything, and I find those kind of labels to be dangerous. Perhaps, the cybernetician is a craftsperson. There is a difference between knowing a vocabulary and doing it. Doing cybernetics is a craft. What type of craft? If I talk about cybernetics as linking the domain of dynamics with the domain of relations, a concept of "time" is implied. I contend (and here is where the "my" in my cybernetics really kicks in) that time is a human invention. It may have arisen as a required concept in the language in which we live, but it is an invention nonetheless. As an invention, it can be manipulated and changed, and history can be transformed. So, what other label can claim craftsmanship in time (except for the magician or sorcerer, of course)?

Follow-up comments:

I imagine a different society in which everyone is an expert (and hence no one), everyone contributes and, therefore, everyone has a "job". The most important aspect of these jobs is that they would focus on the removal of any un-pleasantries (rather than their perpetuation) so that only the pleasant remains (even when what qualifies as "pleasant" changes). My cybernetics is what I point to as facilitating this thinking (and awareness). If cybernetics became a profession in the current society, I could no longer claim it as pointing to a new and more desirable one.

My cybernetics is not mutually exclusive of any other category of concepts, although it may be incompatible or even opposing to some ideas; in this case, the distinctions become valued as the facilitator of conversations. I think it therefore desirable to draw the distinctions between systems theory and cybernetics, not only to clarify what is being distinguished by these labels, but also to facilitate their interaction in the interest of the "new".

For more on my variant on the theme, please see:

Attached is a diagram (Our conversations shape who we become) which encapsulates some principles underlying the process of conversing.

One of these is initiating conversation with someone you don't know, something which very few people do, in my experience. And yet the outcomes are invariably joyful.

Isn't it a strange feature of human existence that we have not set up the means for people to engage readily with strangers about things that matter?

In my experience, the only widespread instance in which this happens naturally and spontaneously is Youth Hostels. In these travelers enquire from each other while eating or washing up together: What have you found interesting about this place? Do you know where I can find Vegemite? (Only Aussies may appreciate how vital this is) J

There are special places where this does happen. One is Sami Sunchild's marvelous Bed and Breakfast Redvic in San Francisco at which she invites house guests to have breakfast together. I have stayed there in order to experience this lovely opportunity and am booked in to do so again in July when attending the next World Open Space on Open Space.

Another is Ron Sher's Third Place Books in Seattle. This is essentially a private enterprise community center, set up primarily to enable a sense of community to be realized among suburban dwellers. I was present at the opening of this wondrous enterprise in 1998 and am delighted to learn periodically of its remarkable evolution. One element of this is the coming into being of Third Place Commons, co-created by a great friend of mine, Anne Stadler.

Among the many applications that I see for the fundamental notion that high quality relating arises through conversing are:

. The tenets of complexity science are realized. As are those of positive deviance.

. The meaning of 'Intelligence is a property of conversation' (Gordon Pask via Kathleen Forsythe) becomes more understandable.

. People are alive, inspired, connected, surprised, engaged, listened to, heard, empowered, responsible and open to possibility ...

. Being enlivened and banishing banality are key features of living.

In conclusion regarding this description of 'My Cybernetics'

There are particular elements of our humanity that I sense are worth knowing about. Among these are that we are emotioning and languaging creatures and that how we live is integrally influenced by how re respond to our emotioning in particular contexts through our languaging.

A nice example is the manner in which we pose 'Why' questions. For example, these can either express victimhood ie 'Why me?' or they can express curiosity ie 'Why does it work like this?' A fundamental difference it the emotioning that underpins the languaging.

This idea of R.D Laing's has long struck me as being intriguing - and potentially very useful - as an explanation of much of our human experience (We have explanations for everything, according to Humberto).

"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."

In my observation there are three huge elements of our 'modus operandi' as human 'beings' that we 'fail to notice' and, as a consequence, do not put into practice.

Our main 'failure to notice' as a species, in my opinion, is

"Whenever we treat each other well good things happen"

aka the implications of practising the Golden Rule.

I suggest that it is our habitual self 'put downs' - as individuals and communities - which underpin the tragedy of failing to notice this law of life.

Secondly we live as though naming something is the thing. If I call someone 'unfriendly' this implies that this is an inherent characteristic of the person.

What we fail to notice is that naming something is a only construct which serves our purposes as it absolves us from responsibility - after all 'the person is unfriendly. 'Nothing to do with me!'

Thirdly, something that Lucas has recently reminded me of and may well you too if you have the good fortune to be at his presentation at the great BCL Commemoration in Urbana shortly:

'It is the listener, not the speaker, who supplies meaning to an utterance.' From Heinz.

1. I think the development of cybernetics can be described in three stages -- engineering cybernetics, biological cybernetics, and social cybernetics.

2. I find I repeatedly use three models drawn from cybernetics -- regulation (two elements: regulator and system being regulated), self-organization (n elements within an informationally closed system), reflexivity (two levels of analysis -- observation and participation).

3. I find that systems tend to be described using variables, ideas, groups, or events. These can be arranged in a circular pattern that illustrates both reflexivity and Mueller's epigenetic theory (genotype and phenotype). These different descriptions enable "operationalization" of cybernetics. However, each mode of description has different criteria for establishing validity. This does not cause conflict as long as the various descriptions are seen as part of a larger whole.

4. The triangle -- world, description, observer -- shows the relationship among the three stages (see 1 above). Karl Mueller and I agree that "second order cybernetics" should apply to the whole triangle, not just "biological cybernetics."

Papers describing these ideas can be found on my website --

It is this emphasis on the circumscribed that explains cybernetics' intrinsic preoccupation with circularity (in static descriptions) and recursion (in dynamic descriptions). In turn, cybernetics may be described as the field that (a) addresses circularities without going in circles and therefore (b) cannot accept 'loopy' as a pejorative term.