A more useful fly-bottle – systems | cybernetics | complexity in six diagrams

https://playbook.wfjlps.app

Linda Booth Sweeny points out that she needs to replace the online digital copy as some illustrations are missing – she’s also doing a reprint of the Playbook! So go to her in the short term if you want either a digital or physical copy: linda@lindaboothsweeney.net

https://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/ConTeXtures.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gf5hkseRgmRWgrenAfNQAO-Cv-r2lXlr/view

https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/p/systems-practice-patrick-hoverstadt

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/meat-the-machine-or-the-hidden-history-of-cybernetics-the-possible-futures-tickets-1995079941812#_=_

https://default.blog/p/the-sex-organs-of-the-machine-world?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=27459&post_id=214442119&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=slo6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

https://www.wosc.world/event-details/wosc-congress-2026-addressing-planetary-challenges

https://www.nextd.org/post/four-horsemen

h/t Ivo Velitchkov

https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/change-the-number-of-searchers-change-the-efficiency-of-a-quest

https://transduction.systems/systems-thinking/practice/index.html

In our delivery at SCiO (www.systemspractice.org) of the level 7 systems thinking practitioner in the apprenticeship, many apprentices have consistently asked for simple exercise worked examples with answers so they can do ‘dry runs’ of their systems methods learning.

There are some reasons to resist this approach, since systems practice is very much about application in the real world, and the apprenticeship is structured to teach, give worked exercises and examples in workshops, and accompany people along a genuine journey of apprenticing to learn a craft.

However, it’s also the case that exercises such as these can help to develop technical skills and check understanding and give a good basis for systems practice – as long as they aren’t mistaken for the purpose of the exerrcise, or the practice itself!

I previously got lost in a maze of all the material out there, not much of which really meets the specification (outside of system dynamics where the technical skills are perhaps more sharply defined and more closely linked to the practice). Having become giddy with vibe-coding and LLM capability, I have now produced an alpha version which is published and tested on the live site: Systems methods practice.

The pack has 26 free practice pages:

• all 13 core approaches and three theory areas in the public SCiO framework, plus
• ten supporting areas of systemic inquiry and intervention.
• The standards coverage page maps these to SCiO and ST0787, with the depth and limits stated.

Each page provides a fictional scenario, modelling or analysis tasks, worked comparisons, checks with explanations, a defective model to repair, and a changed case to attempt again. There are 102 worked steps and 69 check questions. The system dynamics, VSM and interpretive structural modelling pages also have structured model-checking controls. Learners can save notes locally and export their attempts. No sign-in is required.

The resource register contains 42 annotated free and paid resource entries. It distinguishes actual exercises from explanations, recordings and software. The OU’s defective-map exercises and worked comparisons are linked directly, as are MIT’s paired system dynamics assignments and solutions. Broken or uncertain access is labelled.

The pack is linked from the systems-thinking introduction page https://transduction.systems/systems-thinking/, The Necessary Tangle home page https://transduction.systems/ and navigation, reading routes, and relevant method entries in the Tangle. Its resources and practice connections are also included in the atlas.

You can also download the offline pack. Separate task sheets without answers and worked answers are also available online.

To be clear: this is an ALPHA VERSION; the original teaching material has not had independent specialist pedagogical review. It is NOT an official SCiO publication. Some pages rehearse a defined part of a fuller approach. Technical checks distinguish errors from defensible alternatives; they do not claim to establish professional competence or accreditation.

https://transduction.systems/systems-thinking/practice/index.html

Add your events, feeds, calendars, source locations – and download individual or whole-site calendar entries

https://transduction.systems/events

(part of The Necessary Tangle, inspired by Nick Ananin’s systems thinking events map)

Local government can’t manage complexity one service, target, or programme at a time. This paper by Manuel Riemer and colleagues offers a useful account of what ‘systemic management’ might mean in practice.

It describes cities as service ecosystems: nested within wider systems, made through relationships between many interdependent actors, socially governed, and continually emerging. From that, the authors identify three requirements for management:

• integrative – working across organisational and policy boundaries, noticing interdependence, and attending to consequences elsewhere in the system;

• collective – sharing power, involving the people who shape outcomes, and treating local government as convener and participant rather than controller-in-chief;

• adaptive – looking for early signals, experimenting, learning rapidly, and changing plans as conditions change.

None of this is entirely new. The paper itself draws on Beer, Argyris and Schön, Senge, Ostrom, Human Learning Systems, resilience theory, and several other traditions.

But it puts the argument together well, and makes it unusually concrete for local government. Flexible budgeting. Participatory governance. Measures which expose unintended consequences. Cross-disciplinary teams. Plans treated as revisable commitments, not stone tablets produced for the committee cycle.

The difficulty, of course, is that conventional management persists for reasons. Funding is divided into programmes. Accountability is pushed down organisational tubes. Performance systems reward what can be attributed and counted. Power is protected. Failure may be praised in innovation workshops and punished in actual careers.

So the question isn’t merely how to give managers better systemic practices, it’s how to alter the conditions which keep selecting against them.

‘Systemic Management Practices—Enabling Local Governments to Adapt in Response to Complexity’:

https://doi.org/10.3390/world6020072

---

Abstract

Local governments are increasingly navigating accelerating change and escalating complexity caused by interconnected crises, commonly referred to as a global polycrisis. These crises, including climate change, lack of affordable housing, declining mental health, and geopolitical instability, both shape and are shaped by local conditions. Cities face growing pressure to equitably provide services that are responsive to evolving community needs while contending with the systemic nature of contemporary challenges. However, local governments are often constrained by conventional management frameworks and practices that do not match the complexity of today’s challenges. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore how systems science can be leveraged to define and characterize a transformative new type of management designed to enable local governments to more adequately address emerging complexity. To this end, the authors review the literature on contemporary management practice and explore how management for local government can be reframed in alignment with the insights from systems science, using a service ecosystem lens. The findings point to a needed shift toward systemic management practices that are integrative, collective, and adaptive. The authors illustrate the practical relevance of these three characteristics and conclude with recommendations for research, policy, and practice aimed at building the institutional capabilities required to transition toward systemic management frameworks and practices that match the complexity of the polycrisis.

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/6/2/72

“Norbert Wiener compiled a short list of selected readings on cybernetics in 1952, then an updated short bibliography of cybernetics in 1956”

Credit: Sean Menion, @TheUnjournaling
https://x.com/TheUnjournaling/status/2096060216882139638

Selected readings on Cybernetics

Ashby, W. R. ‘The Behavioral Properties of Systems in Equilibrium.’ American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 59 (1946), 682–6.

Brillouin, L. ‘Life, Thermodynamics, and Cybernetics.’ American Scientist, Vol. 37 (Oct. 1949), 554–568.

Conference on Cybernetics. Transactions of the Sixth Conference on Cybernetics. March 24–25, 1949. New York, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.

Cybernetics. Transactions of the Seventh Conference on Cybernetics. March 23–24, 1950. Heinz von Foerster, Ed. New York, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.

Fano, R. M. The Transmission of Information. M.I.T. Research Laboratory of Electronics. Technical Report No. 65. Part II. Technical Report No. 149.

Weaver, Warren. ‘Science and Complexity,’ American Scientist, Vol. 36, No. 4, 536–544.

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics. Cambridge, Mass. Technology Press. 1948.

Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings. Boston, 1950; London, Eyre and Spottiswoode.

Prepared for:
Mr. Henry Guttmann
30, Brondesbury Park
London, N.W. 6

March 21, 1952

A short bibliography of cybernetics

Ashby, W. Ross, Design for a Brain, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York (Chapman & Hall, Ltd., London), 1952.

Bell, D. A., Information Theory and its Engineering Applications, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London, 1953.

Berkeley, E. C., Giant Brains, or Machines That Think, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1949.

Brillouin, L., Science and Information Theory, Academic Press, New York, 1956.

de Broglie, L., ‘La Cybernétique,’ report of Conference in Paris, 1951, published by Rev. opt. (165 rue de Sèvres, Paris).

Cherry, C., On Human Communication, The Technology Press of M.I.T. & John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, (Chapman & Hall, Ltd., London), 1957.

Conferences on Cybernetics, Transactions, 7th (1950) to 10th (1953), Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, New York.

Gabor, D., Lectures on Communication Theory, published by M.I.T., Cambridge, Mass., 1951.

Goldman, S., Information Theory, Constable & Co., Ltd., London, 1953.

Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behavior, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, (Chapman & Hall, Ltd., London), 1949.

de Latil, P., Thinking by Machine, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1956, translated from La Pensée Artificielle, Librairie Gallimard, Paris, 1953.

Locke, W. N., and A. D. Booth, Machine Translation of Languages, The Technology Press, M.I.T., and John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1955.

Macmillan, R. H., An Introduction to the Theory of Control, Cambridge University Press, London, 1951.

Morse, P. M., and G. E. Kimball, Methods of Operations Research, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1951.

Proceedings Second London Symposium on Applications of Communication Theory, London, 1952, Butterworth Scientific Publication, London, 1953.

Shannon, C. E., and W. Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1949; published earlier in Bell System Tech. J., 27, 1948, pp. 379 and 623.

Walter, G., The Living Brain, Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd., London, 1953.

Wiener, N., Cybernetics, The Technology Press, M.I.T. and John Wiley & Sons, (Hermann et Cie., Paris), New York, 1948.

Wiener, N., The Human Use of Human Beings, The Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1950 and Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York, 1954.

Woodward, P. M., Probability and Information Theory with Application to Radar, Pergamon Press, Ltd., London, 1953.

---

And (credit: Sean Menion, @TheUnjournaling https://x.com/TheUnjournaling/status/2096062602728161423)

Norbert Wiener’s bibliography of popular treatments of cybernetics, c. 1951

Popular Treatments (culled from The Readers’ Guide…)

‘Brain is a Machine,’ Newsweek, Nov. 15, 1948.

‘In Man’s Image,’ Time, Dec. 27, 1948.

‘Machine in Man’s Image,’ Sat. Review, Jan. 8, 1949.

‘Brain is a Machine,’ Science Digest, Feb. 1949.

‘Machines that Think,’ Business Week, Feb. 19, 1949.

C. Eisenhart, ‘Cybernetics, a New Discipline,’ Science, Apr. 22, 1949.

J. B. Thurston, Review of Cybernetics, The Sat. Rev., Apr. 23, 1949.

J. D. Trimmer, ‘Instrumentation and Cybernetics,’ Scientific Monthly, Nov. 1949.

‘Thinking Machine,’ Time, Jan. 23, 1950.

A. Standen, ‘Mind and/or Machine,’ Commonweal, May 27, 1950.

Mark Starr, Review of The Human Use of Human Beings, The Sat. Review, Aug. 19, 1950.

Irwin Edman, ‘Mind in Matter,’ New Yorker, Oct. 14, 1950.

‘Feed back to Idiocy,’ Time, Jan. 8, 1951.

Current Biography, March 1951.

‘If Robots Run the Works,’ J. K. Lagemann, Nation’s Business, March 1951.

Popular Treatments by Wiener:

‘World of Robot Brains,’ Science Digest, Sept. 1949.

‘Electric Brains with Feelings,’ Science Digest, Sept. 1949.

‘Too Big for Private Enterprise,’ Nation, May 20, 1950.

‘Too Damn Close,’ Atlantic Monthly, July 1950.

‘How U.S. Cities Can Prepare for Atomic War,’ with Karl Deutsch, Giorgio de Santillana, etc., Life, Dec. 18, 1950.

The typescript also contains several struck-through duplicate or superseded entries, including ‘Saturday Review, Apr. 23, 1949’, ‘Instrumentation and Cybernetics, Saturday Review, Aug. 19, 1950’, ‘Feed-back to Idiocy’, and a separate heading ‘Mind and/or Machine’.