ASC Cybernetics in the Future (7 and 8 August)

Following our recent practice holding conversational conferences we will design material, together, for a web site exploring relationships between cybernetics and education at all levels from kindergarten via school and all levels of university and college, to the university of the third age (for retired people). Workgroups will be built around different aspects of these relationships, which include the more obvious such as material for a curriculum and possible courses, to how cybernetic insights may be used in education. The resulting web site, which will be made over the following months, will form a legacy of the ASC’s first 50 years, a rich resource for educators, cyberneticians and indeed anyone interested to explore and to mine, using the material they produce both as material and for its insights.

As our honorary fellow and Wiener Medalist Mary Catherine Bateson has pointed out, if we want to bring cybernetic ways of thinking to the world, we need to start with the young children, and we need it to become an integral part of their lives. This project creates a potential future for cybernetic thinking, without forcing it on anyone, by creating a resource that anyone can use out of their own interest.

Dr. Bateson delivered the following introduction to the Cybernetics in the Future workshop:

 

This project creates a potential future for cybernetic thinking, without forcing it on anyone, by creating a resource that anyone can use out of their own interest. It is this sense of the future, the future of cybernetics as a field that is deeply relevant to humanity’s and the ecosystem’s future, that we concentrate on by bringing its insights, as our gift to the field of education.

Here, you will find an expanded text which includes eight themes to be considered at the conference.

We ask all participants to reflect on these and decide which two you would be most interested in working in. We will ask for your responses nearer the time, including a short paragraph on each of your chosen areas of concern, to facilitate the forming of different work groups at the conference. We will post the results on the conference web site, and will invite comments from all conferees. A detailed timetable for this part of the main conference will be published later on.