Cybernetics: a watching path
Some of the people on the map can still be heard: lectures, interviews, conversations filmed decades apart. These are the talks I am finding as I go, the well known ones and the overlooked ones, laid out in the order I would walk them.
It is the same path as the reading, in another medium. It began as a reading list; the papers were steep, so I drew a map under them, then primers under the map. The talks are people saying it out loud. Second-order cybernetics puts the observer back into what is observed, and this page is a small version of that: me learning it, in the open, leaving the map behind me as I go. Where I have watched a talk I say so. The rest are on the shelf, not behind me yet.
Every talk links to the creator’s own video, so their channel gets the view. The playlists are on The Steersman's Shelf (@kyvernetes). How they were found and chosen is open too: every search, everything found, and my marks.
How it started: apart from the talks I have watched, the first ones on each shelf were seeded at random from what the searches turned up. That is just how I decided to begin. As I go I will leave notes on the talks and add more about why each one is here.
Walk it with me
Tick a talk when you have watched it. The ticks stay in this browser, on this device, and go nowhere else. Printed, this page is a sheet with empty boxes.
- Founders 2 talks
- Second order 2 talks
- Management and the VSM 3 talks
- Today 2 talks
- Systems thinking and dynamics 5 talks
- Around it · Learning across fields one talk
Founders
On the map: Wiener, Cybernetics · Ashby, requisite variety
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Norbert Wiener - Men, Machines, and the World About Them (1950)
Norbert Wiener · Biophily2 · 58 min
Opens onto Cybernetics, the introduction, Norbert Wiener 1948
On the map: Wiener, Cybernetics
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Cybernetics, Metalanguage, & Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (Stafford Beer)
Stafford Beer · the past 33 yrs · 2 h 14
Opens onto Requisite Variety, W. Ross Ashby 1956
On the map: Ashby, requisite variety
Second order
On the map: Von Foerster, the observer inside · Autopoiesis · Pask's conversation theory
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Truth and Trust: Maturana and Von Foerster
Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster · American Society for Cybernetics - ASC · 25 min
Opens onto On Constructing a Reality, Heinz von Foerster 1973
On the map: Von Foerster, the observer inside, Autopoiesis
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01 Gordon Pask Cybernetics Georgetown 1982 tape1 sideA
Gordon Pask · Dave Douglass · 47 min
Opens onto Developments in Conversation Theory, Gordon Pask 1980
On the map: Pask's conversation theory
Management and the VSM
On the map: Management cybernetics, the VSM · Project Cybersyn
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What is Cybernetics? Conference by Stafford Beer
Stafford Beer · Javier Livas Cantu U7 · 1 h 14
Opens onto The Viable System Model, Stafford Beer 1984
On the map: Management cybernetics, the VSM
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Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup of Allende in Chile (Full Documentary by Plastic Pills)
PlasticPills · 1 h 04
On the map: Project Cybersyn
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Ep. 240: Dan Davies - On "The Unaccountability Machine"
Dan Davies · The Decision-Making Studio · 1 h 14
On the map: Management cybernetics, the VSM
Today
On the map: Ratio Club, Grey Walter's tortoises
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The Future of Cybernetics | Paul Pangaro
Paul Pangaro · Worlds Fair Nano · 21 min
Opens onto Questions for Conversation Theory, Paul Pangaro 2017
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Andrew Pickering - Cybernetics in Britain
Andrew Pickering · Research Network for Philosophy and Technology · 56 min
On the map: Ratio Club, Grey Walter's tortoises
Systems thinking and dynamics
On the map: Systems thinking · The Limits to Growth
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In A World of Systems start here
Donella Meadows · 9 min
On the map: Systems thinking
I’ve watched it, and I go back to it. “I thought it was simple at first, a thermostat and a room. Then it quietly opened up into how much of everyday life is systems. I'm watching it a second time. I love how it starts small and takes you from one system to the next to another. It is the Russian nested dolls exactly, showing universe processes.”
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Dana (Donella) Meadows Lecture: Sustainable Systems (Part 1 of 4)
Donella Meadows · Jennifer Lynn · 30 min
On the map: The Limits to Growth
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Dana (Donella) Meadows Lecture: Sustainable Systems (Part 2 of 4)
Jennifer Lynn · 30 min
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Dana (Donella) Meadows Lecture: Sustainable Systems (Part 3 of 4)
Jennifer Lynn · 30 min
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Dana (Donella) Meadows Lecture: Sustainable Systems (Part 4 of 4)
Jennifer Lynn · 9 min
Around it · Learning across fields
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Psychology of Polymaths: Why Having Multiple Interests Is an Unfair Advantage
PsychToons · 14 min
I’ve watched it. “I can identify with this”
Pass it on
If you walk some of it, or know a talk that belongs on it, write to me: hello@joshuaayson.com. The path grows from what I find and what people send. If you want to check my choices, or make a path of your own, here is how this one was made.
The other ways in: the reading path and the primers · how the path was made · the family tree · the reading shelf