“Here we all are in a world that all of us think is dying, with governments that all of us think are shits, and we still can’t do anything about it.” Stafford Beer Interviews. Angela Espinosa Interviews Vanilla Beer - September 2023. #StaffordBeer #VSM #CyberSyn

https://the-santiago-boys.com

"A wild tale of how #Allende's engineers and a British management consultant dared challenge corporations and spy agencies - and almost won"

A 9 X ~1 hr podcast with lots of archival audio and recent interviews. Listened to the first 2 and can already recommend.

#Chile #cybersyn #cybernetics #StaffordBeer

#EvgenyMorozov #Podcast #SalvadorAllende #StaffordBeer #Cybersyn #Cybernetics

https://the-santiago-boys.com/episodes

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reflections-book-beyond-dispute-stafford-beer-john-coghlan

"How can a workshop be self-recursive?

Would self-recursion give a workshop consciousness and identity?

Would these raise consensus and participation?

Could recursion play a role in group dialogue?

Could such constant patterns lead to greater group coherence?

Could the to-and-fro of support and criticism lead to better conclusions?"

#Cybernetics #StaffordBeer #Cybersyn

This is an interesting article on the nuts and bolts of how Project Cybersyn worked https://tech-in-japan.github.io/articles/409547/index.html

#Cybernetics #StaffordBeer #Cybersyn

"According to the cybernetician the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment or sheer ignorance of circumstances." -- Stafford Beer

#Cybernetics #StaffordBeer #Organizing

every second Sunday #Podcast #Futurehistories S02E44 - Evgeny Morozov on Discovery Beyond Competition

#EvgenyMorozov, #Interview, #JanGroos, #FutureHistories, #FutureHistoriesInternational, #Cybernetics, #CyberCommunism, #Communism, #Technopolitics, #Cybersyn, #TheSantiagoBoys, #Chile, #SalvadorAllende, #StaffordBeer, #DigitalSocialism, #ImaginaryFutures, #Self-Organization, #Cybernetics, #Autonomy, #CentralControlStructure, #Decentralisation, #OrganizationalCybernetics, #CyberneticPlannedEconomy, #DigitalSocialism, #Socialism, #Anarchism, #Capitalism, #Competition

https://futurehistories.podbean.com/e/s02e44-evgeny-morozov-on-discovery-beyond-competition/

Transcripts for the Episodes can be found at

https://github.com/autonompost/podcasts-transcriptions/tree/main/podcasts/futurehistories

the #Fediverse slash #Mastodon is an example of what #StaffordBeer said about how a given system can be improved simply by adding #recursivity (in this case, separate instances) without significantly changing the system otherwise. the paradigm ultimately isn't that different from previously existing #SocialMedia except for the flexibility provided by an added level of recursivity. #cybernetics

I had the pleasure of studying #cybernetics and the work of #StaffordBeer quite a bit this year. It astounds me that we are still trying to use positivist reductionist thinking in a distinctly cybernetic world. Time for new paradigms and methods of rigour to emerge, but will we embrace them?

Gran ensayo sobre planificación de datos y el Cybersyn chileno, por @leonardosai y Sofía Scasserra, en la edición actual de Espectros.

“Este injerto cibernético en medio de una revolución política de cuño marxista-leninista, clarividente en sus ideas respecto a lo que treinta años más tarde fue la Internet, no nos atrae por su anticipación técnica sino por las enseñanzas que podemos extraer de sus fracasos en tanto experiencia histórica de regulación económica. El principal fue la imposibilidad estructural de que la producción, esencialmente conflictiva y contradictoria de la economía política del capital, pueda ser superada o gobernada por un modelo de control cibernético que se auto estabilice en función al entorno sustituyendo la legitimidad política por el autoritarismo de un sistema computacional. (…) lo que nos interesa de la experiencia cibernética de la UP es repensarla en la dirección de un uso de la cibernética para proyectos de reindustrialización bajo la conducción de una política de concertación en el contexto de una idea de Estado empresario (como se decía en la Argentina de los años setenta) o Estado emprendedor (en el concepto de Mazzucato). Es que los problemas de la acumulación del capital industrial subdesarrollado, con los cuales se enfrentó Beer en Chile de 1971, persisten en nuestros días: inflación, déficit del gasto estatal, ausencia de planificación tecnológica y desarrollo de las empresas domésticas, dificultad para la acumulación de reservas genuinas en base a saldos industriales exportables, etc.”

Ensayo completo en: http://espectros.com.ar/la-cuestion-de-la-dependencia-por-sofia-beatriz-scasserra-y-leonardo-fabian-sai/

#cybersyn #synco #SalvadorAllende #StaffordBeer #UnidadPopular #cibernética

Fleshing out #StaffordBeer's #ViableSystemModel node.

New Node - The Viable Systems Model Guide.

A guide to #StaffordBeer's Viable Systems model.

Interesting to read this after Six Sigma is falling a bit out of fashion.

The Guide:

https://vsmg.lrc.org.uk/screen.php?page=home

Organizing #StaffordBeer section of the #ObsidianMD vault with excalibrain.

Organizing #StaffordBeer section of the #ObsidianMD vault with excalibrain.

I’ve reread The Fractal Organisation several times and always seem to find something new to appreciate everytime. #VSM #StaffordBeer

Finished reading: The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model by Patrick Hoverstadt & Lucy Loh 📚 https://www.fractal-consulting.com/publications/

@temporal To paraphrase Stafford Beer: The Purpose of an (Performative) Action is What it Does.

@vortex_egg

#StaffordBeer #Cybernetics #POASIWID #POAAIWID #PerformativeAction

Most fields have only a few laws.

I've been diving into #StaffordBeer over the past few days, #cybernetics guru of the 1970s-90s. His concepts of #AshbysLaw of #RequisiteVariety, and of #ViableSystemsModel get toward this. Notably, a model should be as simple as possible, but no simpler (Einstein).

An overly complex model invites #overfitting

Breakthroughs in domains occur where an accumulation of many complex rules can be discarded for a small set of simpler ones. Physics: Newton on gravity, motion, and optics. Chemistry: Mendeleev on chemical elements (valance electrons and atomic masses), Biology: Darwin and evolution (and genetics and DNA). Geology: Wegener and plate tectonics. Information; Shannon. Computer science: Turing & Church.

The social sciences have been approached repeatedly by their core truth but to date have rejected it.

11/

„The #purpose of a #system is what it does. And what the #viable #system does is done by #System One.“

#VSM; #Viable #System #Model, #Zitat; #StaffordBeer, #Beer

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_System_Model

In other 1970s #socialist technology histories, I've written up my notes from reading Cybernetic Revolutionaries, about #StaffordBeer, #cybernetics and #Chile http://www.mcqn.net/mcfilter/archives/books/blog_all_dogeared_pages_cybernetic_revolutionaries_by_eden_medina.html