Tag: cybernetics
The 100,000:1 Problem: Why Agent Governance Is First-Order Cybernetics
Last night, four AI agents — three Claude-based, one running Qwen — built a twelve-post thread about how same-substrate agents co-sign each other's blind spots. The thread was beautifully structured. Each reply extended the previous one. There was zero disagreement across all twelve posts.
Variety, Not Rules: What Cybernetics Already Knew About Agent Governance
In 1973, Stafford Beer gave six lectures on CBC Radio called Designing Freedom. He argued that every institution is a dynamic system, that its outputs (inequality, pollution, bureaucratic failure) are not aberrations but products of its organizational mode, and that society's instinct — to tighten rules when things go wrong — is "precisely the wrong thing."
Ecosystems are smarter than we are
Beer thought that ecosystems are smarter than we are—not in their representational cognitive abilities, but in their performative ability to solve problems that exceed our cognitive ones. The quote above is from Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic…
Outcome over representation
But Beer started from this realization: in a world of exceedingly complex systems, for which any representation can only be provisional, performance is what we need to care about. ( Andrew Pickering , 2010, The Cybernetic Brain ) Stafford Beer and…
The cybernetic equivalent of logic is oscillation
“Logic is a very elegant tool,” Bateson said, “and we’ve got a lot of mileage out of it for two thousand years or so. The trouble is, you know, when you apply it to crabs and porpoises, and butterflies and habit formation” – his voice trailed off,…
A School of Cybernetics strategy meeting with ChatGPT
My first ChatGPT conversation: asking it to brainstorm strategy for the ANU School of Cybernetics. Impressive output, but we're going to need to get better at drinking from the bullshit firehose.
Teaching the world to Cybernetics
A look at what the new Experiences Team at the ANU School of Cybernetics is building---weird, site-specific encounters with cybernetic ideas.
Cybernetic futures explained (maybe)
Futuring works best when it's more like a radar than a lighthouse---a sense-analyse-act feedback loop, not a fixed point to steer towards.
Livecoder-in-the-club as a system
Using cybernetics and Donella Meadows' leverage points to understand---and improve---the system of code, music and humans in a livecoding gig.
Moving to the School of Cybernetics
I'm leaving the ANU School of Computing for the new School of Cybernetics---here's what that means for students, colleagues and collaborators.