antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:41 am on August 6, 2022

The Visual Cliff: Eleanor Gibson & the Origins of Affordance

David Ing surface this, saying:

The cybernetics tradition has been described as outmoded by the “perceptual ecology” of J.J. Gibson with affordances, says Erica Robles Anderson (NYU) and Scott Ferguson (U. South Florida).

Cybernetics has long been narrated as the paradigm that shaped human-computer interactions. Perceptual ecology reveals another path, equally foundational but ontologically distinct. Perceptual ecology is not concerned with signals, feedback loops, or uncertainty. It theorizes a sensory-rich, ever-changing world inhabited by animate perceivers. The terrain is a substance. The ground is a surface primordially differentiated from the sky at the horizon. The atmosphere is an immersive, boundless medium. Animate perceivers do not receive bits of information through discrete channels. Instead, they register the constant flux of light on surface as an “ambient optical array.” Persistent sensory information is called “invariance” and it corresponds to the “solid angles” in a shifting world.

“The Visual Cliff: Eleanor Gibson and the Origins of Affordance” | Erica Robles Anderson & Scott Ferguson | April 2022 at https://moneyontheleft.org/2022/04/19/the-visual-cliff-eleanor-gibson-the-origins-of-affordance/

Money on the Left

By Erica Robles Anderson & Scott Ferguson

Originally presented at Hidden Histories: Gender in Design, Design History Society Seminar, April 14, 2022.

Part I: TED Talks and Teapots

In a 2003 TED Talk titled “Three Ways Design Makes You Happy,” Donald Norman announced that “The new me is beauty.” Norman – a professor, design firm principal, and the first Vice President of User Experience at Apple – ranks among the most influential figures in the field of user experience design. Yet above all, he is associated with the concept of “affordance,” an invented term now widely employed to refer to the forms and features of any useful thing.

Norman brokered the term from psychology to design in his 1988 book The Psychology of Everyday Things. Citing J.J. Gibson’s 1979 book The Ecological Theory of Perception as his source, he offered this definition: “The affordances of the environment are…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:58 am on August 4, 2022

Hypotheses Concerning Living Systems | James Grier Miller – Coevolving Innovations (David Ing)

Hypotheses Concerning Living Systems | James Grier Miller August 3, 2022 daviding
Hypotheses Concerning Living Systems | James Grier Miller – Coevolving Innovations

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:25 am on August 3, 2022

Two-sided form, differentiation and second-order observation in Escher’s artworks and Calvino’s stories | Appignanesi (2018)

Two-sided form, differentiation and second-order observation in Escher’s artworks and Calvino’s stories Article informationLaura Appignanesi
(99+) Kybernetes Two-sided form, differentiation and second-order observation in Escher’s artworks and Calvino’s stories Article information | Laura Appignanesi – Academia.edu

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:23 am on August 3, 2022

A General Theory of Living Systems | James Grier Miller – Coevolving Innovations

A General Theory of Living Systems | James Grier Miller August 2, 2022 daviding
A General Theory of Living Systems | James Grier Miller – Coevolving Innovations

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:39 am on August 3, 2022

Cybernetic Leadership – Exploring skills for leading change in a disrupted, tech-enabled world (white paper)| ANU School of Cybernetics

Cybernetic LeadershipExploring skills for leading change in a disrupted, tech-enabled world
Cybernetic Leadership | ANU School of Cybernetics

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:57 am on August 2, 2022

Controlling Complexity: From Nonlinear Systems To Complex Networks And Beyond. Ischia, Italy. September 9 – 10, 2022

Complexity Digest

The International Workshop Controlling Complexity aims at bringing together researchers from the fields of nonlinear systems and control, optimization, and complex networks to celebrate the 70th birthday of Franco Garofalo who started the research group on nonlinear systems and complex networks at the University of Naples Federico II with a group of students and colleagues who are now established researchers in Italy and abroad. The workshop will gather scholars from the Control Community to share their views and perspectives on the emerging challenges in the analysis, design and control of complex systems. We welcome the participation of young researchers and PhD students.

Read the full article at: www.sicc-it.org

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:56 am on August 2, 2022

The Art of Systems Change: Eight Guiding Principles for a Green and Fair Future | Publications | WWF

The Art of Systems Change: Eight Guiding Principles for a Green and Fair FutureDATE:November 01, 2019The Fuller Systems Transformation Collaborative
The Art of Systems Change: Eight Guiding Principles for a Green and Fair Future | Publications | WWF

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:29 pm on August 1, 2022

Systems Thinking: A Foxy Approach – Venkatesh Rao (2013)

Systems Thinking: A Foxy Approach
Systems Thinking: A Foxy Approach

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:41 am on July 30, 2022

BBC – Radio 4 – The Reith Lectures Transcripts 1948-1959 – 1950 – John Zachary Young: Doubt and Certainty in Science

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-reith-lectures/transcripts/1948/#y1950

Reith 1950 – John Zachary Young: Doubt and Certainty in Science

On LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6958549227190857729/), Dennis Sandow says:

In the 1950’s Humberto Maturana became a student of JZ Young.

In this first Reith lecture JZ discusses the scientific process of muddling through as opposed to the philosophic process found in logic.

https://lnkd.in/gejihrEG

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:24 am on July 30, 2022

From Cybernetics to Second-Order Cybernetics: A Comparative Analysis of Their Central Ideas | Froese (2010)

From Cybernetics to Second-Order Cybernetics: A Comparative Analysis of Their Central Ideas
(99+) From Cybernetics to Second-Order Cybernetics: A Comparative Analysis of Their Central Ideas | Tom Froese – Academia.edu

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:14 am on July 30, 2022

CONSTRUCTING A REALITY

LEBBEUS WOODS

Following on Neil Spiller’s reference to radical Constructivism, I thought it important to re-post (ZEROES AND ONES, November, 2008, in a more readable form) one of its seminal texts by Heinz von Foerster, the founder of second-order cybernetics and a leading radical Constructivist.

A personal note. I had the great good fortune to meet Heinz when I was twenty-one years old and a student of architecture at the University of Illinois, where he headed the Biological Computer Laboratory, a major cybernetics think-tank. In the 60s we had a working relationship, as he asked me to make illustrations for several of his scientific papers, which meant that he had to explain to me his ideas, which he did with remarkable simplicity and clarity. I learned a lot in our conversations, and it has echoed down through the years in my work. Heinz always called me an “epistemologist,’ a high…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:44 am on July 29, 2022

SFI Community Lecture: The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World – Andrea Wulf, 2 August 2022, 7:30pm Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA – in person, live stream but no recording

SFI Community Lecture
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World
Andrea Wulf Santa Fe Institute Miller Scholar
Tuesday, August 2, 2022 Book Signing: 6:30 pm Lecture: 7:30 pm
The Lensic Performing Arts Center211 W. San Francisco StreetSanta Fe, New Mexico
link

Also streaming live – but, sadly, ‘on request of the speaker’ the recording will not be available.

https://santafe.edu/events/invention-nature-alexander-von-humboldts-new-world

SFI Community LectureThe Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World
Andrea Wulf
Santa Fe Institute Miller Scholar

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 Book Signing: 6:30 pm
Lecture: 7:30 pmThe Lensic Performing Arts Center
211 W. San Francisco Street
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Image credit: © Andrea Wulf and Lillian Melcher

Award winning and bestselling author Andrea Wulf tells the story of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the great scientist and intrepid explorer who has more things named after him than anyone else. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether exploring deep into the rainforest or climbing the world’s highest volcanoes. He turned scientific observation into poetic narrative, and his writings inspired naturalists and poets such as Darwin and Goethe but also politicians such as Jefferson and Bolivar.

Humboldt explained nature as a complex web of life and interconnected global force – a concept that still shapes our thinking today. He described earth as a living organism that could easily be destroyed by humankind and predicted harmful human–induced climate change already in 1800. Using many dozens of Humboldt’s own drawings, engravings, maps and manuscripts as well as the lush and colourful pages from her illustrated book, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, Wulf brings this forgotten father of environmentalism (and complexity science?) back to life.

Andrea is a Santa Fe Institute Miller Scholar twice over.

Andrea will be signing copies of her books in the Lensic lobby prior to the lecture.

Reserve your free tickets through The Lensic Box Office online or call (505) 988.1234. Santa Fe residents are encouraged to attend in person. Please refer to the Lensic’s current COVID safety protocols before attending. For those unable to attend, we will be streaming this lecture live from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and our YouTube page.

This lecture is presented at no cost to the public thanks to the generous sponsorship from the McKinnon Family Foundation, with additional support provided by The Lensic Performing Arts Center and the Santa Fe Reporter.Click here for more information about SFI’s Community Lecture Series.

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:49 am on July 29, 2022

Metaverse as cybernetic system | Projects – ANU School of Cybernetics

Metaverse as cybernetic systemLearning from prior socio-technical systems to better inform design
Metaverse as cybernetic system | ANU School of Cybernetics

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:47 am on July 28, 2022

Essentially contested concept – Wikipedia

Essentially contested concept
Essentially contested concept – Wikipedia

[This was an important ‘threshold concept’ to me (see https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/12/03/the-threshold-concept-an-introduction-and-overview-to-the-concept/ and https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_thinking-change-transformation-activity-6788358013733371904-tza5/) and is a very important idea for systems | complexity | cybernetics as a science, theory, and practice (or sets of same)]

Essentially contested concept

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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In a paper delivered to the Aristotelian Society on 12 March 1956,^[1] Walter Bryce Gallie (1912–1998) introduced the term essentially contested concept to facilitate an understanding of the different applications or interpretations of the sorts of abstract, qualitative, and evaluative notions^[2]—such as “art“, “philanthropy“,^[3] “power”^[4] and “social justice“—used in the domains of aesthetics, sustainable development, political philosophy, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion.

Garver (1978) describes their use as follows:

The term essentially contested concepts gives a name to a problematic situation that many people recognize: that in certain kinds of talk there is a variety of meanings employed for key terms in an argument, and there is a feeling that dogmatism (“My answer is right and all others are wrong”), skepticism (“All answers are equally true (or false); everyone has a right to his own truth”), and eclecticism (“Each meaning gives a partial view so the more meanings the better”) are none of them the appropriate attitude towards that variety of meanings.^[5]

Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., “fairness”), but not on the best realization thereof.^[6] They are “concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users”,^[7] and these disputes “cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone”.^[8]

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:23 am on July 28, 2022

When Unfreeze-Move-Refreeze Isn’t Working: Doing, Thinking and Making via Systems Changes Learning | SCiO 2022-07-11 – Coevolving Innovations

When Unfreeze-Move-Refreeze Isn’t Working: Doing, Thinking and Making via Systems Changes Learning | SCiO 2022-07-11
When Unfreeze-Move-Refreeze Isn’t Working: Doing, Thinking and Making via Systems Changes Learning | SCiO 2022-07-11 – Coevolving Innovations