Abstracts

"The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World"

This talk reviews an influential conceptualization of prediction that was created by the 'father' of cybernetics, the US mathematician Norbert Wiener in the 1940s-60s. Although the interest in the cultural and political histories of cybernetics is growing, the notion of scientific prediction, which is central to cybernetic control, is insufficiently examined. However, this talk proposes that prediction is not a mere technical cog in the epistemology of the future, but a complex concept. It discusses Norbert Wiener's epistemology of cybernetic prediction, arguing that the cybernetic culture of prediction emphasizes the role of uncertainty and does not replace materiality with information. Wiener's writings on cybernetic prediction, therefore, contain useful lessons for the future oriented practices in the broad fields of contemporary science, governance and politics.

Free download of "The Power of Systems" from Cornell University Press.

"Sketches of Another Future: Cybernetics in Britain 1940-2000"

My topic is the history of cybernetics, this strange science that grew up in the 1940s and 50s, reached an apogee in the 1960s- not coincidentally, the time of the counterculture- then disappeared into obscurity and which, more recently, has been making quite a comeback in the humanities and social sciences. I describe why cybernetics interests me now, and gesture towards its political potential, which is much argued about.

"Better Mind-the Robot: the Cybernetics of Robotics"

Cybernetics, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are intimately related and interdependent. Developments in AI and robotics are very rapid and are accelerating. The possibility of robots overtaking humans in capability is very real. Some very grand claims have been made about robots AI and our future. This talk describes and compares human evolution with robot development. The cases of humanoid robots and driverless cars are briefly covered. The case of robot vision is addressed with a brief look at my own research in this field. In some fields the capability of technology far exceeds that of humans, in some aspects the technology has many years to go before it reaches that of humans. Developments in control theory and communications seemed to have solved the challenges of robot capability exceeding that of humans, whilst the current capabilities of computation in software and hardware still lag far behind, but are catching up fast. The technologies are exciting but will be disruptive.

"Systems Practice: How to Act in Situations of Uncertainty and Complexity in a Climate-Change World"

This talk shows how to do systems thinking and translate that thinking into praxis (theory informed practical action). It may be of interest to those managing or governing in situations of complexity and uncertainty across all domains of professional and personal life. The development of capabilities to think and act systemically is an urgent priority. Humans are now a force of nature, affecting whole-earth dynamics including the earth's climate - we live in an Anthropocene or Capitalocene and are confronted by the emergence of a 'post-truth', 'big data' world. What we have developed, organisationally and institutionally, seems very fragile. An imperative exists to recover whatever systemic sensibilities we still retain, to foster systems literacy and to invest in systems thinking in practice capability. This will be needed in future at personal, group, community, regional, national and international levels, all at the same time.

"Radically Constructing Ethics"

Cybernetics is notable for its recognition of ethical considerations within epistemological processes. Our claims to knowledge are intertwined with the purposes that we pursue and with our relationships with others and the world. In this paper I locate this argument within ethical discourse itself, applying the formulations of radical constructivism given by cyberneticians such as Ernst von Glasersfeld, Ranulph Glanville and Heinz von Foerster to the epistemological questions that arise within meta-ethics, such as between ethical realism and subjectivism. In doing so I differentiate cybernetics from seemingly similar positions where responsibility is taken as an ultimate value (e.g. existentialism) or where ethical norms are formulated through society and culture. In this way, cybernetics may help formulate ethical considerations nested within ethical discourse itself.

"Making Systems Ethical: The Ethical Regulator Theorem"

The need for cybernetics to embody ethical values has been recognized and discussed by many cyberneticians, and could be referred to in the context of cybernetics as "The Ethics Problem". But to this day, second-order cybernetics has no formal repeatable process for designing systems that behave ethically, relying instead on the ad hoc skills of an ethically-motivated designer of a system to somehow specify a system that is hopefully ethical, which is not a satisfactory solution to a problem that so desperately needs to be solved. But what if it were possible to specify a cybernetic system that can be used to make other systems ethical? Could that solve the ethics problem?

"Producing Desirable Social Systems"

Social systems emerge from individual interactions, but these interactions may be the outcome of poorly or well-structured organisational processes. An effective organisation increases its actors flexibility to deal with constraint and their capacity for effective action. The focus of this contribution is on requirements to produce desirable social systems as an outcome of building up their complexity. I understand desirability in the ethical domain, and construct ethics in terms of producing non-pathological identities and structures, striving for fair relationships by sensing and correcting imbalances of variety in self-organising situations and assuring a maximum of social cohesion compatible with the most extensive political and economic freedom open to all. The question arises as to whether it might be possible to intervene at the points of intersection among organisational actors and between them an agents in their environment to produce the desirable relationships proposed above. What kind of contexts are necessary to influence the structural couplings which partially determine the selves' engagement in social life. In this contribution my concern is examining this ethical possibility in the context of organisational life.

"Be Careful What You Wish For: The Internet of Unintended Consequences"

This talk will look for gaps in our thinking about new technologies through which unintended consequences might emerge. New technologies do not arrive into a vacuum, but are deployed into a social and legacy context where many other factors determine how they are used and whether they are successful. Few of us are able to build complex enough mental models to successfully imagine more than a few strands of the future. Vannevar Bush's 1945 Memex and New York Times science editor Waldemar Kaempffert's 1950 imagining of life in 2000 -provide historical examples; the Internet's gradual metamorphosis from open platform for sharing information to highly centralized surveillance platform, and the impact of mobile phones on apparently unrelated industries provide current ones.

"Cybernetics and the Control of Complex Human Systems"

Early cybernetics made profound contributions to the control of physical systems. For social systems there is a continuum of analytic techniques from 'soft' systems theory with its verbal and diagrammatic models to 'hard' complex systems theory with its mathematical and computational models. Models all along this spectrum can be useful in solving practical problems, e.g. simplistic models can have more traction politically than sophisticated models that policy makers cannot understand. This talk will investigate how early cybernetic ideas apply to the management of modern complex human systems, and what new ideas have evolved in the science of complex systems to take cybernetics forward.

Speakers' biographies

	Dr Egle Rindzeviciute is a political sociologist researching in governance, and the global history of cybernetics. She is the author of: The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World. In the book she examines how East-West scientists contributed to the development of global governance during the Cold War, and the highly influential think tank, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis established by the Soviet Union and the US. She is completing: "The Cybernetic Prediction: Orchestrating the Future", in Futures, Oxford University Press. She has studied and worked in Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, France, Sweden and the UK.
	Andrew Pickering is a leading figure in science and technology studies. He was based for many years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (once the home of Heinz von Foerster's Biological Computer Lab). In 2007 he moved back to England and joined the University of Exeter where he is now Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Philosophy. He has PhDs in particle physics and science studies, and his books include Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science and, most recently, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future.
	Martin Smith recently retired as Professor of Robotics at Middlesex University. He has held posts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Open University, the University of Central England, and the University of East London. He has been Chairman then President of the Cybernetics Society since 1999. He has been supervising robotics projects since 1989. While supervising PhD research in robot vision he and his students built a number of robots that attracted the attention of the media. He has appeared hundreds of times on television including as a judge on Robot Wars, Scrapheap Challenge, Mechannibals, Mutant Machines with appearances on Blue Peter, Tomorrow's World and many other TV and radio programmes. He has appeared many times on Sky News. He served as Chairman of the IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers) London Region, an expert witness for Old Bailey trials. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Kybernetes, former Member of Council of the IEE, Chairman of the Engineering Council London Regional Organisation representing London's 7,200 Registered Engineers. He is a Fellow of the Cybernetics Society, the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Astronomical Society, and formerly the Royal Institution. He is a Freeman of the City of London.
	Ray Ison is Professor of Systems at the Open University, Director of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics, Chair of Trustees of the American Society of Cybernetics, Former President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Vice President of the International Federation for Systems Research and member of the UKSS. Ray manages and presents the post-graduate program in Systems Thinking in Practice. He is former Head of the Systems Department of 25 academic staff. He has co-authored or co-edited four books including: Agronomy of grassland systems, Agricultural extension and rural development: breaking out of knowledge transfer traditions, and Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate Change World.
	Dr Ben Sweeting is Course Leader for the undergraduate course in architecture at the University of Brighton. He studied architecture at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge and the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. His PhD was co-supervised by the late Prof. Ranulph Glanville (DSc in Cybernetics and Fellow of the Cybernetics Society). Ben's research interests include the contemporary resurgence of cybernetics and systems thinking amongst designers. As Mellon Researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, he has carried out research into the collaborations between Gordon Pask (past President of the Cybernetics Society) and architect Cedric Price. He has received the Heinz von Foerster Award from the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) and has guest edited special issues of the journals Kybernetes and Constructivist Foundations.
	Mick Ashby is a Trustee of the American Society for Cybernetics, he studied he studied Computer and Microprocessor Systems at the University of Essex, where he researched into logics for reasoning with uncertainty. He started working for ITT Knowledge-Based Systems Group, developing an AI language for writing expert systems for automating tasks, such as configuring large switching systems and planning the layout of telephone exchanges. He transferred to Alcatel Software Research Center, in Stuttgart, Germany. As project manager, he coordinated research into requirements and solutions for performing extension of broadband software systems. For the last 30 years he has been doing research and development in Germany. He designed and maintains the Ross Ashby Archive www.rossashby.info. He has been researching into the cybernetics of ethics.
	Raul Espejo is President of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics and Director of Syncho Research, UK. He is an academician of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences and Past Professor of Systems and Cybernetics at the University of Lincoln. His research is in organisational cybernetics and systems. His most recent book, with Alfonso Reyes, is Organizational Systems: Managing Complexity with the Viable System Model. He Has published over a 100 papers in journal and books. From 1971 to 1973 he was operations director of the CYBERSYN project- the project of the Chilean Government for the management of the industrial economy, under the scientific direction of Professor Stafford Beer.
	Wendy M. Grossman is a technology journalist and author of: Remembering the Future: Interviews from Personal Computer World, Net.Wars, From Anarchy to Power: The Net Comes of Age, The Daily Telegraph A-Z Guide to the Internet, The Daily Telegraph Small Business Guide to Computer Networking, and Why Statues Weep- The Best of the "Skeptic. She has written for: Scientific American, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, New Scientist, Wired, Internet Today, and The Inquirer. She sits on the executive committee of the Association of British Science Writers, the Advisory Councils of the Open Rights Group and Privacy International. She was elected Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
	Jeffrey Johnson is Professor of Complexity and Design at the Open University. His design and engineering research includes machine vision, team robotics, autonomous intelligent systems, and self-organising computational systems to support multilevel policy. His main research interest is how systems thinking can support policy at all levels from the microlevel of individuals and neighbourhoods, to the upper mesolevel of national government, to the macrolevel including international conflict, trade, migration, climate change, and so on. In summary, his research asks how can we better design the future of complex socio-technical systems?