The first thing Ranulph Glanville taught me about cybernetics would prove in the end to be the most prophetic: namely that Winston Churchill was the first practicing cyberneticians. I suspect that most if not all of the readers of this article are already shaking their heads. What could Lissack be talking about? Ranulph told me this when describing a speech Churchill gave in the House of Lords chamber when the British Commons was discussing whether or not to rebuild the Palace of Westminster. ” On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid, our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when…. We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. Having dwelt and served for more than forty years in the late Chamber, and having derived very great pleasure and advantage therefrom, I, naturally, should like to see it restored in all essentials to its old form, convenience and dignity.” (Winston Churchill, 1943) ” We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. ” In that one sentence were a host of pearls of cybernetic wisdom – the role of context, the role of affordances, the importance of action, ideas shaping action, actions shaping ideas, circularity, and the role of the observer. And, Churchill said it five years before Weiner’s first book. Thus, Churchill was the first practicing cybernetician (under modern usage – ignoring Ampere’s 1834 definition). Ranulph cautioned, however, that Churchill himself would have been opposed to the label. Which was Ranulph’s second lesson to me: many of those who are most successful in incorporating cybernetics into their world view and their affordances for action are highly resistant to the label cyberneticians and often to the very topic of cybernetics. These people live cybernetics. It is a part of who they are and of what they do. They do not study the subject. They do no not write great tracts about critical ideas and alternative formulations. They do not spend time trying to sort out the vagaries of difference between systems science, complex systems, and cybernetics. They never heard of Science 1 and Science 2. And, they do not care. They live their lives. Cybernetically. It was only fitting then that Ranulph’s final ASC conference would be entitled ” Living in Cyberentics. ” To the Ranulph I knew cybernetics was about acting, thinking, and then acting again. It was about life. Paul Pangoro captured this idea in a video which I played at that 2014 conference: I believe that cybernetics is an exceptionally great way of characterizing how the world works. Where by world we mean the world that humans inhabit.