The Rest of the Map
The rest of my cybernetics reading list has its primers now, from Beer to Boyd: a companion, an audio primer and a printed sheet for every work, shared while I am still learning it.
I have listened my way through the first stretch of primers now, every one of them, companions first. Something moved. The words have places to sit. When Ashby says variety I see the goalkeeper with three dives, and when Conant and Ashby say model I see the loaded choice leaning until the spread gives. I would not say I understand the papers yet. I would say I can open them, which is what the map was for.
So the rest of the reading order has its staircase too, built the same way and under the same rules as the first stretch. That post has the how and the why: what a companion is, what a primer is, why the guess goes first and the answers come after a silence. All of it still holds, and I will not repeat it here.
This half of the list is where the field turns around and looks at whoever is doing the looking. Beer draws the anatomy every viable thing shares. Von Foerster and Mead put the observer inside the system being observed. Bateson asks what actually crosses from the world into a mind. Varela, Maturana and Uribe ask what makes a thing alive at all. The conversation papers ask what it takes for two participants to build something neither had before. Morin asks what complexity means, and Boyd ends it with a method for taking your own concepts apart and building better ones.
Sharing it while I learn it
These are going up as I learn, not after. That was the point of the series from the reading list on: guesses on record, then the reading, then what changed. The first stretch I have now listened to end to end. This stretch is next, and then the original papers themselves. Until I have read a paper its primer is a draft, and it says so in its recording.
It is working for me. I feel a lot more at home in this literature than I did the night I bounced off the first page, and that is reason enough to put the map where someone else can use it.
The second stretch, in reading order
Beer, The Viable System Model, 1984
The management paper of the canon, toured by its author. Five jobs every viable thing does, from a cell to a country, the same anatomy at every size, and the named ways an organization falls ill when one of them goes missing.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
von Foerster, On Constructing a Reality, 1973
We do not receive a world, we compute one. Because it is ours we answer for it, and it becomes shared only through other people.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
von Foerster, Cybernetics of Cybernetics, 1979
There is no description without someone describing. Count the describer in, and that is just how it is stops being an answer.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
von Foerster, Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, 1991
Freedom and responsibility arrive together. The questions that shape a life cannot be settled by any framework, so settling them is yours.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Mead, Cybernetics of Cybernetics, 1968
The anthropologist, speaking to the American Society for Cybernetics, turns the field's own tools on the field: a society that studies self-correcting systems owes itself the same look, down to a question about when it should end.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Bateson, Form, Substance and Difference, 1970
What crosses from the world into a mind is difference, the difference that makes a difference. Follow the circuit far enough and the unit that survives is never the organism alone, it is the organism with its world.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Varela, Maturana and Uribe, Autopoiesis, 1974
What makes a thing alive: a network that makes the parts that make the network, and draws its own edge while it does. Reproduction is secondary to it.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Pask, Developments in Conversation Theory, 1980
Conversation as the place knowledge is made: two self-maintaining systems learning each other's procedures. The participants need not be people, and agreements are the firmest thing an observer can see.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Dubberly and Pangaro, What Is Conversation?, 2009
Communication picks among messages both sides already have. Conversation builds new ones and checks that it was understood, and nearly all software, they argue, stops at the first.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Morin, Restricted Complexity, General Complexity, 2006
Complexity can mean a class of systems you model, or a change in how you know. Morin credits the first and argues it needs the second, which takes it in.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
Boyd, Destruction and Creation, 1976
Ideas wear out from the inside. The skill that matters is taking your own apart and building a broader one from the pieces, in time to keep acting on your own terms.
The companion, if the words are new: listen · the print pack
The primer:
If you find a mistake
These primers are mine. I chose the works, wrote the brief for every one, picked the pictures, and I answer for what they say, the same way von Foerster says a describer answers for the description. A generated voice can stumble on a name. A step can claim more than its paper does. A picture can mislead where it meant to help. I will be listening for those, and I will fix what I find.
Before this stretch went up I had every primer and companion read back against its paper, looking for exactly those mistakes, and that pass found more than I would like: a date, a credit given to the wrong person, a joke that did not belong, a sentence that said more than its author did. They are fixed. There will be others.
I am learning this as I go, and I apologize in advance to anyone who knows this field and catches me getting it wrong. I fix things the way I build software: small corrections, made soon, and the work gets better each time around. If you find one first, or you know these papers better than I do, which is likely, write to me at hello@joshuaayson.com. I will be more than happy to fix it, and the fix goes into the primer, the sheet and the recording, not just this page.
The shape of the set
| Primer | Minutes | Words | Steps | Questions | Quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beer 1984 | 17 | 11 | 12 | 5 | 4 |
| von Foerster 1973 | 11 | 10 | 13 | 5 | 3 |
| von Foerster 1979 | 11 | 13 | 10 | 5 | 3 |
| von Foerster 1991 | 16 | 13 | 13 | 5 | 5 |
| Mead 1968 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| Bateson 1970 | 15 | 11 | 12 | 5 | 5 |
| Varela, Maturana and Uribe 1974 | 15 | 10 | 11 | 5 | 4 |
| Pask 1980 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 5 | 4 |
| Dubberly and Pangaro 2009 | 14 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 4 |
| Morin 2006 | 17 | 13 | 13 | 5 | 5 |
| Boyd 1976 | 14 | 10 | 11 | 5 | 4 |
Every quotation, sourced
Each quotation spoken in a primer was verified word for word against the source copy before recording, by a program, with the page recorded. The tables:
Beer 1984, The Viable System Model: Its Provenance, Development, Methodology and Pathology
Source: Beer, S. (1984). The Viable System Model: its provenance, development, methodology and pathology. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 35(1). The copy used is the Cwarel Isaf Institute text, a 2002 issue of the 1989 reprint, with one page missing and no figures.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "The trouble with such “simple” controls is that they have insufficient variety to cope with variety in the environment. Thus, so far from not going wrong they cannot go right." | his 1959 statement of the law, quoted by himself | 7 |
| "In a recursive organizational structure, any viable system contains, and is contained in, a viable system" | the recursive system theorem | 10 |
| "who knows an organization that is a decerebrate cat?" | on the collapsed metasystem | 13 |
| "the model does not create the problems that it makes explicit" | his defense of the model | 11 |
von Foerster 1973, On Constructing a Reality
Source: von Foerster, H. (1973). On Constructing a Reality. In Preiser, W. F. E. (ed.), Environmental Design Research, Vol. 2. Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Stroudsburg. The copy used is the Principia Cybernetica text.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "the environment as we perceive it is our invention" | the postulate | 1 |
| "Act always so as to increase the number of choices." | the close | 13 |
| "If you desire to see, learn how to act." | the close | 13 |
von Foerster 1979, Cybernetics of Cybernetics
Source: von Foerster, H. (1979). Cybernetics of Cybernetics. In Krippendorff, K. (ed.), Communication and Control in Society. Gordon and Breach, New York. The copy used is a course-hosted text.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "Anything said is said by an observer." | Maturana's Theorem Number One | 1 |
| "Anything said is said to an observer." | von Foerster's Corollary Number One | 1 |
| "the cybernetics of observed systems we may consider to be first-order cybernetics; while second-order cybernetics is the cybernetics of observing systems" | the definition | 2 |
von Foerster 1991, Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics
Source: von Foerster, H. (1991). Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics. Opening address of a congress on ethics and family therapy, Paris, with an interview by Yveline Rey. The copy used is a seminar-hosted text.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "It is clear that ethics cannot be articulated." | his translation of Tractatus 6.421 | 3 |
| "Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide." | the metaphysical postulate | 5 |
| "The compliment to necessity is not chance, it is choice!" | after the postulate | 5 |
| "In its function, my language reaches out for the other. This is the root of conscience." | the close of the address | 7 |
| "If you want to be yourself, change!" | the interview, the therapeutic imperative | 12 |
Mead 1968, Cybernetics of Cybernetics
Source: Mead, M. (1968). Cybernetics of Cybernetics. In von Foerster, H., White, J., Peterson, L., and Russell, J. (eds), Purposive Systems. Spartan Books, New York. The copy used is the excerpt hosted by the American Society for Cybernetics.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "I was slapped down without mercy." | the Atlanta story | web text, no pages |
| "what in thunder we are founding" | the demand | web text, no pages |
| "When are we likely to need either death or transformation?" | the questions | web text, no pages |
Bateson 1970, Form, Substance and Difference
Source: Bateson, G. (1970). Form, Substance and Difference. The nineteenth Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, New York, January 1970; reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. The copy used is the Institute of General Semantics archive text.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment" | correcting the unit of survival | 2 |
| "a difference which makes a difference" | the definition of information | 3 |
| "news of a difference" | on what travels in a nerve | 3 |
| "you are always dealing with total circuits, completed circuits" | the circuit test | 6 |
| "The ideas which seemed to be me can also become immanent in you" | the close | 9 |
Varela, Maturana and Uribe 1974, Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems, its Characterization and a Model
Source: Varela, F. G., Maturana, H. R., and Uribe, R. (1974). Autopoiesis: the organization of living systems, its characterization and a model. BioSystems, 5(4), 187-196. The copy used is an archive scan, OCRed for this shelf.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "reproduction and evolution are not constitutive features of the living organization" | the opening assertion | 1 |
| "realized under permanent turnover of matter" | the cell as worked case | 2 |
| "The phenomenology of an autopoietic system is the phenomenology of autonomy" | the summary, point B | 6 |
| "the product of their operation as systems thus defined is necessarily always the system itself" | the summary, point A | 6 |
Pask 1980, Developments in Conversation Theory: Actual and Potential Applications
Source: Pask, G. (1980). Developments in Conversation Theory: Actual and Potential Applications. Paper for the International Congress on Applied Systems Research and Cybernetics, Acapulco, December 1980. The copy used is the author-archive scan hosted at pangaro.com.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "This paper is either completely mistaken, or else it is a sensibly fundamental essay on the Cybernetics of life." | the first sentence of the introduction | 2 |
| "the boundary need not be inside one brain" | defining participants | 5 |
| "the entire cycle of analogy construction is a depersonalised prototype for creativity" | on condensation and expansion | 11 |
| "if there were no conversation, there would be no CT observables" | the general solution | 13 |
Dubberly and Pangaro 2009, What Is Conversation? How Can We Design for Effective Conversation?
Source: Dubberly, H., and Pangaro, P. (2009). What is conversation? How can we design for effective conversation? Written for Interactions magazine. The copy used is the authors' own page at dubberly.com, with its comment thread.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "a system that changes internally as a consequence of experience" | the opening definition | web text, no pages |
| "If our software application does anything novel, we file a bug report!" | on the limit of interfaces | web text, no pages |
| "Conversation is the primary mechanism for complex human social coordination. It is a highly effective form of bio-cost reduction and therefore an engine of society." | on coordination | web text, no pages |
| "Imagine a search engine designed for effective conversation, with all the knowledge on the Web participating." | the close | web text, no pages |
Morin 2006, Restricted Complexity, General Complexity
Source: Morin, E. (2006). Restricted Complexity, General Complexity. Presented at the Colloquium Intelligence de la complexite, Cerisy-La-Salle, June 2005; translated by Carlos Gershenson. The copy used is the arXiv text.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "To some extent, one recognizes complexity, but by decomplexifying it" | on restricted complexity | 6 |
| "any system, whatever it might be, is complex by its own nature" | the epistemological cut | 6 |
| "a certain number of qualities and properties present in the parts can be inhibited by the organization of the whole" | on subtractivity | 7 |
| "it escapes from the will and intention of that which created it" | the ecology of action | 21 |
| "help yourself and the complexity will help you" | the close | 24 |
Boyd 1976, Destruction and Creation
Source: Boyd, J. R. (1976). Destruction and Creation. Unpublished paper, dated 3 September 1976, widely circulated. The copy used is the canon scan; its rights status is unverified.
| The authors' words | Where | Page of the copy used |
|---|---|---|
| "is to improve our capacity for independent action" | the goal | 1 |
| "Without this unstructuring the creation of a new structure cannot proceed" | on creative induction | 3 |
| "diminished by the direct artifice of creating a higher and broader more general concept to represent reality" | the way out | 6 |
| "a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality" | the close | 1 |
Where this goes next
The papers come next, in this order, with my guess written down before each one. When a primer turns out wrong about its paper I will say so and fix it, and when I have read a paper its primer stops being a draft. The whole path, with every primer in one table and the essays that put the ideas to work, lives at Cybernetics, a reading path. For a gentler way in than any of this, there is a shelf of on-ramps.