For those interested, there is a particular systems methodology called (for rather obscure reasons) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, or CHAT for short. CHAT was developed by Mike Cole and Yrjö Engestrom. Etienne Wenger later of Communities of Practice and Situated Learning fame, was also involved in the early days. CHAT is based on the idea that if systems approaches are intended to be opportunities for learning, then why not develop a systems methodology based on learning theories. In this case, it was based on Vygotsky’s ideas of learning as a social process. CHAT is a fascinating approach that has strongly influenced my practice, but in essence is based on the idea that an individual’s journey to fulfilling a need is mediated by the tools they use (including language), the rules of the community they are part of and the roles that they play in that community. How an individual learns how to fulfill that need is dependent on how they addresses and resolve the contractions within and between tool, rules, roles and needs. Now expand this into a work setting (ie a community of practice) where people are working on the same activity but fullfilling different needs, and you have a whole bunch more contradictions that need to be addressed, as this article so succinctly describes. CHAT is frequently used in high risk environments especially concerning health and safety issues, where contradictions abound. If anyone is interested to find out more, there is a description of CHAT in my book System Diagrams, along with the questions that CHAT addresses. The book is donationware (ie free but you can pay something if you wish) and can be downloaded from https://bobwilliams.gumroad.com
This inspired me to do a little run on CHAT – and also links to
From Heraclitus’s river to second-order cybernetics — twenty-five centuries of ideas about wholes, parts, flux, feedback, and the organised complexity of the living world.
SYSTEMSLITERACY.ORG The History of Systems Thinking From Heraclitus’s river to second-order cybernetics — twenty-five centuries of ideas about wholes, parts, flux, feedback, and the organised complexity of the living world.
The 19th International Conference of Sociocybernetics will take place in Oaxaca, Mexico, from August 3rd to August 7th, 2026. This event is organized under the theme “Glocal Intersections”
19TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS
Glocal Intersections Oaxaca, Mexico, 3-7 August 2026 (Hybrid Format)
The 19th International Conference of Sociocybernetics will take place in Oaxaca, Mexico, from August 3rd to August 7th, 2026. This event is organized under the theme “Glocal Intersections”
On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B Whether dealing with monkeys, rats, or human beings, it is hardly controversial to state that most organisms seek information concerning what activities are rewarded, and then seek to do (or at least pretend to do) those things, often to the virtual exclusion of activities not rewarded. . . . Nevertheless, numerous examples exist of reward…
[h/t Ivo Velitchkov. This confused me a bit, it started off with the usual systems thinking / system dynamics confusion, then pivoted to cybernetics along with complexity.]
I am pleased to present my latest and last book, a heartfelt plea to take open systems seriously. We are a brilliant species but we have fallen into a very deep hole. If we had had a science which was genuinely always based on reality, we may not be in this hole, and may have a more assured future. While there has always been a strand of science which is based on accurate descriptions and explanations of reality, it has been, in too many circumstances, overtaken by its closed systems relative. Far too many branches of science have succumbed to the hypothesis of mechanism and the first design principle. Here we look at a collection of examples in which science has taken a wrong direction while the alternatives are always available. In many ways, it is a bit of a romp through these problems so I hope you find it enjoyable as well as instructive.
Jill’s framing of the split itself is powerful: cybernetics took humans as an instance of self-organising systems, AI took humans as the self-organising system of concern. Tidy; enormous consequences. It changes what you think needs explaining, what you’re allowed to assume, what’s treated as background and what as the central problem. It’s where the trouble starts.
Once you narrow the question, you can get very good at modelling, classifying, predicting, generating and optimising, while tiptoeing away from purpose, observer, boundary, context and ethics. You can become extremely clever about the banana, even the stick, while losing interest in the cage, the shelf, the zookeeper, the audience, and the poor sod’s changing sense of what counts as freedom. Heinz von Foerster said, ‘cybernetics is not the banana’.
Pangaro’s opening definition: cybernetics is about information as feedback to effective action, and about purpose as something attributed by an observer. The observer is in the picture – so, therefore, is responsibility. So intervention isn’t just technical. It’s ethical and political. A much bigger challenge than ‘can the machine do the task?’ It asks who is deciding what the task is, from which world, and with what consequences.
Mike’s thread through von Foerster and Pask was excellent. Self-organisation, in this lineage, is not a magical property or a managerial slogan. It depends on interaction, coalition, adaptation, evolving boundaries, and non-zero-sum conditions. The system can’t optimise itself into wisdom. It has to become viable through relationship. Critical for anyone working in hashtag#publicservices, where our biggest failures come from treating living systems as if they were machinery.
The re-braiding question isn’t mainly about AI research, it’s about institutional design.
That’s what’s missing from a lot of the current conversation. The strands for the next symposium are ‘representation’ and ‘process’. Fair enough. But the questions that really bite in public life are purpose, power, boundaries, legitimacy, worlds, and agency – as substance, not optional.
This could be a great project, not just for history of ideas, but to help us ask a better practical question.
What would it mean to place AI inside purposeful, accountable, learning systems rather than bolt it onto broken ones? What would it mean to design for judgement and discretion within boundaries, over time, rather than automate transactions and call it progress? What would it mean to build public systems that can see themselves, and change themselves, instead of becoming more efficient at doing the wrong thing righter?
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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