Author Archives: antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:17 am on September 26, 2019  

Requisite visual variety … • Meaning Guide

 

Source: Requisite visual variety … • Meaning Guide

Requisite visual variety …

 Steve Whitla
Most of our consultancy work sits somewhere in the overlap between systems thinking and visual thinking, and in this article I want to share an example of how these two worlds could be interacting with each other.
Visual thinking and Systems thinking

There are so many systems principles I wish someone had sat down and explained to me at the start of my career, but if I had to pick out one, it would probably be Ashby’s law of requisite variety. Stafford Beer called it the managerial equivalent of the law of gravity, and when you really get it, it is a bit of a Newtonian paradigm shift – suddenly a whole load of things make sense that didn’t make sense before.

Ashby’s law can be quite hard to get your head round if you’ve never heard of it before, but here’s a quick summary:

The world (as we perceive it) is made up of zillions of complex interacting systems. How complex is each system? Well, one way of defining that would be to count the number of states each system could be in, which is what Ashby calls the system’s variety. It’s a theoretical notion, because you can’t really count the number of states that anything but the most trivial of systems could be in, but that’s not the point. The point is that you can compare them. Two people have more variety than one person. A 16-bit computer processor has more variety than an 8-bit processor.

Now, Ashby’s law says that ‘only variety can destroy variety’. In other words, if you want to be able to exert control over something (i.e. reduce the number of states that it can be in), you need to be able to match that number of states yourself. You can only reliably manage something to the extent that you can match its complexity.

The problem is that, most of the time, you can’t!

Continues in source: Requisite visual variety … • Meaning Guide

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:44 am on September 26, 2019  

Essential Balances in Organisations – interview with Ivo Velitchkov

 

Source: Essential Balances in Organisations

Essential Balances in Organisations

Interview by:   Frank Turley

With:              Ivo Velitchkov

Date:               September 2019

Essential Balances in Organisations

BIO 4

Frank: Let’s start directly with what are Essential Balances in Organisations?

Ivo: We are used to call organisations only the formal ones – companies, agencies, institutions, clubs. But this form of production is quite new, hardly a couple of centuries old. If we look a bit broader at things that have organisation, not only at those that are organisations, we can learn a lot. And there are good and bad news here.

Frank: What are the good ones?

Ivo: It turns out that organisations have common ways of functioning and remaining viable. So, the good news is that we can learn from thousands of years of evolution. What I find fundamental and yet largely ignored, are three essential balances that are common for organisms and for organisations and doesn’t depend on size, and – when it comes to organisations – whether they are hierarchical or flat, or what is their business model.

The bad news is that although the balances are common and only three are essential, there are infinite ways to maintain them. We cannot extract best practices and develop methodologies.

Frank: How can we use this knowledge then?

Ivo: To develop different thinking habits. I like the glasses metaphor here. We put on a new pair of glasses and we look at our organisations through them.

Frank: What’s the benefit of that?

Ivo: We can diagnose quickly when something is wrong, in the sense bad for the performance and viability of the company. More importantly, we can diagnose it early. As Machiavelli wrote in 16th century – “in the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to detect, while in the course of time, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure.

Frank: Does it mean the skills you teach are only good for diagnosis?

Ivo: Not only. They are applicable for both diagnosis and design.

BIO 1Frank: And what are actually these three balances?

Ivo: The first balance is between autonomy and cohesion.

If there is not enough autonomy in different parts of an organisation, it is not effective, does not adapt quickly enough, and it won’t be resilient. But if there is no cohesion, the organisations are inefficient. They grow silos which pursue their own continuation and growth at the expense of the organisation.

Frank: So, the organisation is either in balance or not. And there is one such balance for each organisation?

Ivo: Unfortunately, not. That balance needs to be kept at various levels. Which means, there are many nested balances. You see, we think because we create organisations, we control them. But in fact, they have a mind of their own. That’s the first complication. And the second is that one organisation is made up of many nested and coupled organisations. And all these organisations have a mind of their own too, which makes them unpredictable. In other words, teams, projects, programs, units, departments, subsidiaries, they all need to maintain the balance, this one and the other two. By the way, although my focus is on the organisations, the importance of that balance does not stop at that level. Beyond organisational level the autonomy is exercised as the freedom of market initiative and action, and cohesion as coordination and regulation. Interestingly, the balance works not only at organisational and market level, but also – if we zoom in – we see it at personal level.

Frank: That’s very interesting. I’m curious to know more how the balance works at personal level, but we’ll leave that for another time. You said, it works equally at project level. For an agile team, there is a lot of autonomy, and no hierarchy or reports to bring cohesion. Then how the balance is achieved?

 Ivo: The cohesion of an agile team comes from the fixed size of sprints, retrospectives, roles and so on. Being agile does not guarantee balance. An agile team may or may not be able to maintain the balance. That’s not well understood. I see dysfunctional agile teams look for the problem at the wrong place like not following properly some kind of agile practice.

Frank: I see. Now, can you tell us about the other two balances?

Ivo: The second balance is that of stability and diversity.

BIO 2Stability in organizations is dynamic, yet viable organisations have the ability to maintain it, and to re-establish it when it is disturbed. When valuable people leave, others are recruited. When market share shrinks, new services are added, or new markets are explored. When a competitor is using and benefiting from a new technology, that or a better one is being adopted. But when organisations are disturbed in a way not experienced before, the balance can only be restored using novel means. That’s one reason for the need for diversity. It could be a diversity of different kind – people, ideas, experiments. Note that that’s not the typical way of looking at diversity, you know, as something solving an ethical issue or – worse – as a compliance problem.

Frank: What’s the third balance?

Ivo: The third balance is that between exploitation and exploration.

BIO 3On one hand, it’s a popular resource allocation dilemma. Should you exploit a resource, refine a technology and extend the offering to the existing clients? Or should you look for alternative resources, new technologies, and explore new markets? But it is equally a viability strategy. An animal needs to eat (exploit) to have the energy to look for more food (explore). A company needs a flow of resources now, so that it could finance research and innovation to ensure its viability in the future.

Frank: What’s the typical disbalance here?

Ivo: Organizations tend to over-exploit and under-explore. That’s natural: the expected results from exploitation are usually known, while the potential results from exploration are always unknown.

Frank: You are going to do a master class on that topic during the PMI Fair next week. What would that be and why you called it BIO?

Ivo: Yes, this will be a condensed 90 min version of the workshop, specially designed for the PMI fair. BIO stands for “Balances in Organisations”. With “bio” I’d like to emphasise the importance of understanding organisations as living beings.

Frank: Before the interview you told me that you are also writing a book.

Ivo: Yes. It’s now the fifth year I’m delivering this workshop but there are many important aspects and details that cannot be communicated this way. They are in the book. It will be published next year.

About Ivo

Dr. Ivo Velitchkov has been working for 23 years in the areas of Enterprise Architecture, Project Management, Business Strategy, Business Process Management, and Data Management. He’s been involved in them in various capacities: as entrepreneur, CEO of a software company, university professor, project and program manager, consultant and researcher.

Ivo is the author of the blog StrategicStructures.com, co-author of the book “Enterprise Architecture for Connected E-Government: Practices and Innovations”

Source: Essential Balances in Organisations

 

 

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:17 am on September 26, 2019  

A live! scientific! debate about data, complexity, experience and social outcomes

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 1:41 pm on September 25, 2019  

The Gut-Brain Axis (Ethical Questions) | Leading in Context – Linda Fisher Thornton

 

Source: The Gut-Brain Axis (Ethical Questions) | Leading in Context

The Gut-Brain Axis (Ethical Questions)

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 LEAVE A COMMENT

By Linda Fisher Thornton

I am a long-time advocate of systems thinking. It has risen in importance as an increasing number of our greatest human challenges can’t be understood or resolved without it.

Today, I’m taking a look at new findings on the human microbiome, which is known to impact the brain in important ways. You may have already seen the recent news about advances in our understanding of the Gut-Brain Axis.

Hidden in the walls of the digestive system, this “brain in your gut” is revolutionizing medicine’s understanding of the links between digestion, mood, health and even the way you think.

— The Brain-Gut Connection, John Hopkins Medicine

The cells that make up our bodies are now better understood, and the current estimate is that only 43% of them are human (Adam Jezard, World Economic Forum). The rest of the cells are referred to as our microbiome.

Not All Bacteria and Viruses are Bad

We have traditionally thought of bacteria and viruses as always bad and tried to kill them off. “There is now a multitude of evidence to suggest that this kill-all approach isn’t working (Adam Jezard, World Economic Forum).”The reason that killing all the bacteria and viruses in our bodies is not good is that some of them are necessary for our health, and can actually help our bodies fight the bad ones. Antibiotics are a kill-all approach that also eliminates the good bacteria. When the good bacteria are gone, it’s easier for the bad bacteria to take over.

A Second Genome

“Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: ‘We don’t have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own” (James Gallagher, BBC). In the article, he goes on to say that what makes us human is “the combination of our own DNA, plus the DNA of our gut microbes (James Gallagher, BBC).” Clearly, we need to use systems thinking (and not cause-and-effect thinking) for this to make any sense.

How the Brain is Impacted

Here are some things we have learned about the multiple ways the microbiome impacts the functions of the brain:

“Insights into the gut-brain crosstalk have revealed a complex communication system that not only ensures the proper maintenance of gastrointestinal homeostasis, but is likely to have multiple effects on affect, motivation, and higher cognitive functions.”

“microbiota influences stress reactivity and anxiety-like behavior.”

Carabotti, Scirocco, Maselli and Severia, The gut-brain axis: interactions between enteric microbiota, central and enteric nervous systems, Annuls of Gastroenterology

There are clearly many reasons to protect the health of our microbiome. How do we do that? We can start by eating a healthy, high fiber diet. If we eat a healthy, high fiber diet, are the good bacteria in our microbiome safe if we don’t take antibiotics? Not so fast. According to a recent study, many of “the world’s rivers are contaminated with antibiotics” (Kara Fox, CNN).

Protecting the Microbiome

Now we know that the health of our microbiome is intricately connected to overall human health. It is not something to be treated as an invader. It should instead be treated with care. Individuals will need to reconsider how their diet and habits will impact the microbiome, and businesses will need to assess the positive or negative impact of their products.

Since our understanding of the microbiome and its importance to our health has advanced, the burden is now on all of us to adapt. Use the list of Ethical Questions below to determine the next steps.

Ethical Questions

  1. What kinds of meals, snacks and drinks are we serving in our food services, meetings, conferences and retreats?
  2. How could our products be impacting the gut microbiome?
  3. Do our products feed the bad bacteria or the good? How high is the sugar content? The fiber content?
  4. As we market our products, are we encouraging habits that support a healthy microbiome or an unhealthy one?
  5. What should we change about our products and marketing to align with new information about the microbiome and its impact on human health?

Resources:

How Your Gut Might Modify Your Mind, Chemical and Engineering News, American Chemical Society

Gut-Brain Psychology: Rethinking Psychology From the Microbiota–Gut–Brain Axis, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience

 

Source: The Gut-Brain Axis (Ethical Questions) | Leading in Context

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:33 am on September 25, 2019  

Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (Tom Froese) | OIST Groups

 

Source: Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (Tom Froese) | OIST Groups

Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (Tom Froese)

What is the mind? Traditionally, cognitive science has approached this question in terms of the hypothesis of a physical symbol system: the mind/brain is a computer, and cognition is computation. More recent approaches to cognitive science have questioned the adequacy of this hypothesis and have begun to advance alternative frameworks that substantially broaden the basis of the mind, leading to the rise of embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition. These approaches develop in different ways a shared core commitment to the claim that agent-environment interaction is a foundational part of cognition, rather than just a secondary product of cognition. Together these approaches are broadly known as embodied cognitive science.

In this unit we pursue the implications of embodied cognitive science from the mind’s most basic expressions in adaptive behavior to its most complex manifestations in abstract thinking. Our interdisciplinary research is framed by a general interest in better understanding the major transitions from minimal cognition to human cognition, and our guiding insight is that changes in environmental mediation, especially sociocultural and technological mediation, have the potential to transform and potentiate the mind.

We employ a diversity of methods that are drawn from the intersection of computer science and complex systems theory: agent-based modeling, artificial neural networks, evolutionary robotics, time series analysis, virtual reality, sensory substitution interfaces, and human-computer interaction.

Latest Posts

Source: Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (Tom Froese) | OIST Groups

 

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:44 pm on September 24, 2019
Tags: ,   

What is systems leadership, and how can it change the world? | World Economic Forum

#systemsleadership makes it to the World Economic Forum (via the CR Initiative (Corporate Responsibility I assume) at the Harvard Kennedy School. Longer report at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcbg/files/Systems%20Leadership.pdf

Source: What is systems leadership, and how can it change the world? | World Economic Forum

Systems leadership can change the world – but what exactly is it?

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gestures during a news conference after a week long preparatory meeting at the U.N. in Geneva February 13, 2015. The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21 or CMP11, will be held in Paris November 30 to December 11, 2015.
Christina Figueres’ leadership helped bring 195 countries together to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement
Image: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
24 Sep 2019
  1. Lisa DreierSenior Program Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Responsibility Initiative
  2. David NabarroDirector, 4SD
  3. Jane NelsonDirector, Corporate Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
How do we build a #sustainableworld?

As world leaders and activists gather in New York this week to address the climate crisis and the faltering rate of progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the calls for systemic change are getting ever louder. Systems change is an inspiring goal – but how can we achieve it?

Transforming a complex system – such as the energy, health or food system – is a monumental task requiring coordinated action by people with very different viewpoints. Systems-change initiatives often engage hundreds of organizations – governments, companies, civil society organizations, worker associations, research institutions and others – combining their capacities to achieve a shared goal.

These large-scale initiatives are often driven and supported by people who fit a certain profile – those who are able to catalyze and empower collective action among others, rather than controlling or directing the action themselves. These people are increasingly described as systems leaders.

A balancing act
A balancing act
Image: Harvard Kennedy School

We studied examples of systems leaders working on diverse issues around the world, and found some striking similarities. Systems leaders – whether they are global leaders or community activists, working in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Americas – often apply a similar set of tactics and have similar experiences leading large, complex initiatives. We summarized some of the key elements and success factors of systems leadership in a new report in the interest of encouraging others in the global community to apply and refine this approach.

Systems leadership: a tool for our times

Systems leadership is a set of skills and capacities that any individual or organization can use to catalyze, enable and support the process of systems-level change. It combines collaborative leadership, coalition-building and systems insight to mobilize innovation and action across a large, decentralized network.

Two very different examples illustrate what it can look like in practice. The 2015 Paris Agreement, signed by 195 countries with support from thousands of organizations, was spearheaded by Christiana Figueres, a global diplomat who emphasized practicality, flexibility and collaboration to bring stakeholders onboard, securing an historic agreement. At a more local level in Richmond, California, a community organizer named Najari Smith founded a new venture called Rich City Rides, galvanizing community members, local businesses and city government to address the interconnected challenges of employment, health and environmental sustainability among low-income communities of color in the city.

These two leaders operated in very different spheres, but they used some similar tactics: combining a deep understanding of the systemic issues they wanted to address; an ability to engage and align diverse stakeholders around shared goals; and an emphasis on empowering action and collaboration by a broad network of organizations.

Systems leaders apply an unusual combination of skills and attributes to mobilize large-scale action for systems change. Like many leaders, they tend to be smart, ambitious visionaries with strong skills in management and execution. Unlike traditional leaders, they are often humble, good listeners, and skilled facilitators who can successfully engage stakeholders with highly divergent priorities and perspectives. Systems leaders see their role as catalyzing, enabling and supporting widespread action – rather than occupying the spotlight themselves.

Systems leadership in action

The systems leadership approach is well-suited to complex challenges that require collective action, where no single entity is in control. However, the approach is challenging – involving high transaction costs, ambiguous outcomes and long timeframes. It is best applied to complex issues that cannot be solved through more direct means.

We distilled five key elements of the systems change process into the ‘CLEAR’ framework for leading systems change. These five elements are not necessarily sequential – they may overlap or repeat in cycles throughout the course of an initiative.

1. Convene and commit

Key stakeholders engage in moderated dialogue to address a complex issue of mutual concern. They define shared interests and goals, and commit to working together in new ways to create systemic change. For example, the We Mean Business Coalition engaged nearly 1,000 leading companies to advocate for ambitious, science-based climate policy, and has made over 1,500 action commitments.

2. Look and learn

Through system mapping, stakeholders jointly build a shared understanding of the components, actors, dynamics, and influences that create the system and its current outcomes, generating new insights and ideas. For example, The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition targets specific gaps in the nutrition system, working to catalyze and scale market-based solutions, and targeting vulnerable populations who are most in need.

3. Engage and energize

Strong stakeholder engagement is built through continuous communication to build trust, commitment, innovation and collaboration. Inspiration, incentives and milestones help drive progress and maintain momentum. For example, the New Vision for Agriculture initiative engaged over 650 organizations and 1,500 individual leaders around the world, catalyzing action in 21 countries including over 90 value-chain projects.

4. Act with accountability

Shared goals and principles set the direction of the initiative, while measurement frameworks help track progress. Coordination and governance structures can be developed as initiatives mature. For example, the Every Woman Every Child movement mobilized hundreds of action commitments towards its global strategy, monitoring progress through a unified accountability framework, with oversight from a high-level steering group and coordination by a global secretariat.

5. Review and revise

Stakeholders review progress regularly and adapt their strategy accordingly. Adopting an agile, flexible, innovative and learning-centered approach allows for evolution and experimentation. For example, the 2030 Water Resources Group evolved its organizational structure through several stages, commissioning external evaluations to both review its progress and recommend opportunities to increase its impact.

While the CLEAR Framework appears quite structured, the reality of the systems change process is often messy and ambiguous. Many stakeholders describe the experience of systems leadership as a journey of discovery that evolves over time, leading to moments of discovery or insight – what we describe as ‘Aha! moments’ – that crystallize each step of the journey.

Mainstreaming the systems leadership approach

While the concept of systems leadership makes intuitive sense to many stakeholders, it is not yet widely embraced and practiced. Mainstreaming its application will require a broader and more coordinated effort to develop research, share knowledge and build capacity. A number of philanthropists, consultancies and academics are active on these fronts, but they are not always well-connected. New platforms are needed to connect practitioners and experts, share insights and accelerate learning to support a wider array of organizations in applying Systems Leadership to advance progress toward the SDGs.

Written by

Lisa Dreier, Senior Program Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Responsibility Initiative

David Nabarro, Director, 4SD

Jane Nelson, Director, Corporate Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

 

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:41 pm on September 23, 2019  

Boids (Flocks, Herds, and Schools: a Distributed Behavioral Model) – background and update by Craig Reynolds

 

Source: Boids (Flocks, Herds, and Schools: a Distributed Behavioral Model)

 

Boids
Background and Update
by Craig Reynolds[You need to be using an Java-enabled browser to see this demo.]
(more information about this applet (and others) is available)

In 1986 I made a computer model of coordinated animal motion such as bird flocks and fish schools. It was based on three dimensional computational geometry of the sort normally used in computer animation or computer aided design. I called the generic simulated flocking creatures boids. The basic flocking model consists of three simple steering behaviors which describe how an individual boid maneuvers based on the positions and velocities its nearby flockmates:

separation diagram Separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
alignment diagram Alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
cohesion diagram Cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates

 

Continues in source: Boids (Flocks, Herds, and Schools: a Distributed Behavioral Model)

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:43 am on September 23, 2019  

EconPapers: The Pretence of Knowledge – Hayek’s Nobel Prize Lecture, 1974

(The paper which Graham Berrisford alleges looks like a riposte to Stafford Beer’s CyberSyn – in any case, a useful and interesting piece of systems thinking)

By Friedrich von Hayek; Abstract: Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11,

Source: EconPapers: The Pretence of Knowledge

pdf: http://pavroz.ru/files/hayekpretence.pdf

Link to journal article: https://econpapers.repec.org/article/aeaaecrev/v_3a79_3ay_3a1989_3ai_3a6_3ap_3a3-7.htm

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:27 am on September 23, 2019  

Towards a heart and soul for co-creative research practice: a systemic approach (multiple authors – 2019)

 

Source (includes pdf download): Towards a heart and soul for co-creative research practice: a sys…: Ingenta Connect

 

Home / Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, Volume 15, Number 3

Towards a heart and soul for co-creative research practice: a systemic approach

The language of co-creation has become popular with policy makers, researchers and consultants wanting to support evidence-based change. However, there is little agreement about what features a research or consultancy project must have for peers to recognise the project as co-creative, and therefore for it to contribute to the growing body of practice and theory under that heading. This means that scholars and practitioners do not have a shared basis for critical reflection, improving practice and debating ethics, legitimacy and quality. While seeking to avoid any premature defining of orthodoxy, this article offers a framework to support researchers and practitioners in discussing the boundaries and the features that are beginning to characterise a particular discourse, such as the one that is unfolding around the concept of co-creation. The paper is the outcome of an online and face-to-face dialogue among an international group of scholars. The dialogue draws on Critical Systems Heuristics’ (Ulrich, 1994) questions concerning motivation (revealing assumptions about its purpose and value), power (interrogating assumptions about who has control and is therefore able to define success), knowledge (surfacing assumptions about experience and expertise) and legitimacy (disclosing moral assumptions). The paper ends by suggesting important areas for further exploration to contribute to the emerging discourse of co-creation in ways that support critical reflection, improved practice, and provide a basis for debating ethics and quality.
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:21 am on September 23, 2019  

I.S.S. – Italian Systems Society

Source: I.S.S. – Italian Systems Society

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:20 am on September 23, 2019  

The Complex Systems Society

 

Source: About CSS

 

What is the

Complex Systems Society?

ABOUT

About Us

The purpose of the Society is to promote the development of all aspects of complex systems science in the countries of Europe, as well as the whole international scientific community. See CSS Statutes and CSS By-Laws.

The Society aims to promote complex systems research pure and applied (What are Complex Systems?), assist and advise on problems of complex systems education, concern itself with the broader relations of complex systems to society, foster the interaction between complex systems scientists of different countries, establish a sense of identity amongst complexity scientists, and represent the complexity community at all international levels.
It is regulated by a CSS Council and by a CSS Executive Committee.

The Society was first launched at a European level on 7th Dec 2004 during The European Conference on Complex Systems at Foundation ISI in Torino, Italy. It became an international society in 2006 during the ECCS06 Conference in Oxford.
Since 2004, the Conference on Complex Systems organized by the CSS, is the most important annual meeting for the complex systems research community.

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:16 am on September 23, 2019  

a large unruly list of systems thinking organisations – Google Docs

Source: a large unruly list of systems thinking organisations – Google Docs

 

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:00 am on September 23, 2019  

About WOSC | World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics

 

Source: About WOSC | World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics

About WOSC

The World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) – World Organization for Systems and Cybernetics (OMSC), is an association of individuals and organizations promoting systems thinking and cybernetics worldwide.

WOSC was founded in 1969 , with the desire to support the communication of individuals and organizations related to systems thinking and cybernetics worldwide. To perform its tasks, it is organized as follows:

President

Teacher. Raúl Espejo (UK)

Advisory Board

Director General:

Dr. Igor Perko (Slovenia)

Board of Directors, assisted by the Director-General

Source: About WOSC | World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics

 

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:54 am on September 23, 2019  

The Search for the Weaver of Dreams by Russell Roberts – YouTube

This talk is my attempt to explain emergent order in economics, what I consider the discipline’s deepest idea–that some things are orderly and that some problems get solved without explicit design from the top down. This talk was given in 2012 at SMU’s O’Neil Center: https://www.smu.edu/cox/centers-and-i…
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:40 am on September 23, 2019
Tags: WOSC2020   

World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics 18th Congress-WOSC2020 Moscow, 16-18 September 2020

 

Source: A manifesto for WOSC 2020 | WOSC 2020

 

World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics

18th Congress-WOSC2020

Moscow, 16th to 18th September 2020

Systems approach and cybernetics, engaging the future of mankind

The significance of systems and cybernetics in the future of societies.

Important world institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are publicly recognizing the highly interconnected nature of our world and therefore the relevance of systemic thinking and cybernetics as leading knowledge foundations to deal with the complexity of economic, social and environmental issues. This recognition by major international agencies of the CyberSystemic nature of policy issues makes apparent that in the context of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics more than ever we need to debate and develop current ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches to understanding the future of humanity.

WOSC is honored that the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) has agreed to be the venue for its 18th Congress (WOSC 2020). Consistent with its scope scientists of this Academy have made important contributions to key issues of human society over the past decades. They have contributed to problems of nuclear disarmament, space exploration, the fight against terrorism, self-organization for strategic projects and many more. More recently, they have been developing aspects of socio-humanitarian cybernetics and of self-developing reflexive-active environments. Indeed, the RAS is a most valuable setting to support further developments of these and other issues.

Our aim in WOSC 2020 is to bring CyberSystemic scientists, and in particular younger researchers, together with politicians and practitioners to debate pressing economic, social and ecological problems of humanity, at all levels from local communities to global societies.

For this purpose, we propose to focus the discussions on the following four themes: philosophical and methodological foundations for the development of the systems approach and cybernetics, the cybernetics of democracy, the cybernetics of hybrid reality, and governance in an increasingly interconnected, ecologically sensitive, world. Short summaries of these themes are introduced below.

1.Philosophical and methodological foundations for the development of the systems approach and cybernetics.

Challenges and threats to the future of humanity are increasing pressure to develop systemic approaches and cybernetics. For this purpose, it is necessary to debate the foundations of the philosophy of science, ontology, epistemology and methodology. New ideas are needed concerning scientific rationality, the observer problem, the transdisciplinary approach, and the problems of complexity, reflexivity and ethics. We must increase the convergence of civilization and cultural specifics in the development of systemic approaches and cybernetics. The inclusion of multiple perspectives in systems thinking enables systems thinking and cybernetics to play a leading role in science diplomacy.

WOSC 2020 invites participants to discuss alternative approaches to recognize the participation of observers in human activities, starting from the traditional approaches of having external observers accepting an objective reality, going to observers as participants in the construction of our situational realities, as we interact with multiple environmental agents, and extending all this to an increased attention to the contextual constraints imposed by ecological and societal aspects to the co-evolution of situational actors and environmental agents.

The latter are relevant to societies to make them more functional and coherent. These meta-contextual aspects are not directly focused on actors and agents, but the framing of their interactions is limiting the free unfolding of situation-environment interactions. This way we can reflect on aspects of societal significance, such as the ecological chains straining resources or the economic inequalities limiting fairness as well as justice. WOSC 2020 wants to make inroads into how to study the mechanisms shaping interactions, communications and relationships in complex systems, whether enterprises, government agencies, small businesses or families. In particular, we want to offer an opportunity for participants to contribute with replicable approaches, emerging from their epistemological and methodological standing, their practical experiences in the life-world of societal, ecological and economic situations. Issues like boundaries, structures, communications and interaction mechanisms can influence good practice and improve our contributions to society.

2. The cybernetics of society ecology and governance

Cybernetics in the development of democracy. Cybernetic models of decentralized control. Cybernetics of self-developing reflexive-active environments. Cybernetic models of self-organizing communities of experts. Network democracy and collective intelligence. Strategic Control and Development Centres in initiating and supporting the consolidation of the state, business and society.

Our democratic models are functioning in the world of big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and algorithms and often are being explicitly used in the top-down direction. This makes it increasingly difficult to bridge global and local constructs and to provide constructive feedback loops. Effective interactions between citizens, experts and policy-makers are a major challenge.

Direct, representative and participative democracies need further development to be effective. We invite discussions of the significant distinction between the “wisdom of the crowd” emerging in citizens minds and evidence-based decisions, resulted from debates supported by experts, think tanks and political parties and also by the media. This distinction touches key aspects of communications in a complex world, today dominated by big data, which in practice implies data overload for citizens and politicians. How do we increase societal capacity to identify, understand and react on the dynamics of their environment? For citizens of a country, big data may support conflating their very local experience of income restrictions, immigration flows into their communities or poor local health services, with deciding whether or not to support global policies. Politicians, also overwhelmed by data -in an uncertain world- may construct and impose their truths influenced by ideology, weak expert advice and short-term political interests.

In WOSC 2020, we invite reflections on how to reduce the gap between sound evidence and emotional constructions. We need to discuss our responsibility to create regulatory procedures to contextualize what we hear in the media and social networks. We invite reflections on the authenticity, legitimacy and truthfulness of the arguments advanced by those forming public opinion. It may be argued that the complexity of social processes makes impossible dealing with these challenges. Complexity management tools such as situation centres for development, social networks and artificial intelligence, are emerging from systems thinking and cybernetics. These tools carry some risks but also have the potential to increase the opportunities for more effective participation in policy and decision-making processes. We need to learn how to keep open checks and balances between multiple viewpoints to bridge gaps between emotional and empirical truths. We need to learn how to construct dialogues enmeshed in multiple moral mazes. This proposed utopia for WOSC 2020 is an invitation for participants to contribute to more transparent societies.

3. Technology and humanity: co-developing a hybrid reality

Hybrid reality is about the close interconnection of technology and people, either individuals or groups, addressing every instance of their behaviour. From a cybernetic perspective, it is a convergence and integration of subject, digital and physical reality. It offers an amplification of individual capabilities as well as an attenuation of the digital representation of the world, actively affecting their lives. Hybrid reality refers to the dynamics of people’s life worlds in smart environments, experiencing the implications of new technologies.

In WOSC 2020, we are inviting contributions on the state of the art of technology research, focusing especially on its implications for people, organizations, societies and the environment. Discussions on computing in design and architecture, smart devices and environments (personal and organisational), big data analytics and sharing, artificial intelligence, situation centres for development, energy and transport related issues, cyber security, health, blockchains and the convergence of technologies. The reasoning on technological feasibility should be advanced with implications for society and the environment: economic justifications, accordance to law, the ethical perspective, effects on the environment, and paths for identifying not yet identified consequences.

People are adapting to huge changes in their surroundings. They are invited to share their experiences and thereby contribute to producing group knowledge, that may become the next meta-level of group consciousness. In the age of human-machine interdependence, the boundaries between individual and group intelligence are redefined, putting technology in everything we do and experience. Reasoning on group consciousness and clarification of these boundaries pose a challenge for WOSC 2020.

Special attention is given to the design of hybrid reality elements. In addition to being subject-supportive, proactive, secure and providing value-added, the seamless supplementing of the natural and artificial in hybrid reality adds to the desired positive user experience.

We think that it is important to use systems thinking to manage the complexity of interactions in the hybrid reality to maximize its synergetic potentials on individuals and organizations and to avoid misuse and mitigate undesired consequences.

4. The creation of new areas of knowledge from the transdisciplinarity of systems sciences and cybernetics

In a world increasingly dominated by interactions, one of the challenges is facilitating self-organization processes for the emergence of desirable values in societies and for the creation and production of related policies from the most local to the most global levels. These are processes, aimed at innovation as well as making more meaningful people’s collective concerns. Good governance increases the opportunities for people’s development. However, at the same time, it has the potential to avoid fragmentation by facilitating the alignment of their interests. For example, citizens’ participation in decision-support systems of distributed situational centers helps increase opportunities for self-organising networks.

We want to open debates to explore governance grounded in people’s interactions, communications and relationships. Through the investigation of institutions and evolving technologies, the Congress’s focus is to discuss contributions that guide, enable and facilitate interactions among available resources to increase society’s requisite variety to deal with social, ecological and economic challenges.

On the one hand, the creativity of people’s communications should help them by branching into all kinds of aspects necessary for a better life, and their moment to moment coordination of actions should help them align their interests. We want participants in WOSC 2020 to explore issues of social concern through deeper and wider appreciation of what is relevant.

As the complexity of societal issues grows the practical need for bringing together people’s concerns grows as well. This is an ongoing process of building ecosystems and making their boundaries operationally meaningful to all those affected.

We are proposing WOSC 2020 as a platform for cyber-systemic contributions to the above themes. We envisage a programme supported by group discussions supporting collective synergy, as well as by presentations of state-of-the-art research by individual researchers.

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