Paper Proposals

1) BCEScott (Bernard Scott)
Email: bernces1@gmail.com
Website: http://www.sociocybernetics.eu/people_scott.html

Learning About Learning: A Cybernetic Model of Skill Acquisition

Co-authors:
Abhinav Bansal

Second order cybernetics is concerned with explaining the observer to herself (von Foerster).
In this respect, studies of how humans learn are second order pursuits. Not only do such studies add to the body of scientific knowledge in psychology, reflexively, they inform the investigator (and the reader who studies her findings) about his or her own cognitive processes. This reflexion can be used in powerful ways to improve on one’s ability (i) to learn (ii) to teach (iii) to teach other’s how to learn (iv) to teach other’s how to teach.

In the 1970s, the first author implemented a computer program model of the cognitive processes involved in learning and skill acquisition based on a series of empirical investigations (Scott, 1976). Recently, with assistance from the second author, the model has been reviewed, updated and re-implemented (Bansal, 2010).

The model is an explanatory model designed to provide understanding of the processes and empirically observed phenomena that are involved in learning and skill acquisition.

Key features of the model are:
1. The learner is modelled as a complex adaptive system that is dynamically self-organising.
2. Achievement of goals set is subject to a free energy economy simulated as available processing time.
3. Learning is conceived of as an evolutionary process in which problem-solving ‘operators’ are selected from a population of possible responses.
4. Complex operators may be composed from simple operators. The driver for doing so is simulated by the rule that a complex operator consumes less processing time than the equivalent set of simple operators.

The paper discusses the relevance of the model for understanding and improving learning and teaching practices.

The model is available online with an interface that (i) permits the setting of relevant parameters and (ii) provides a visual display of the model’s workings as it learns. If thought appropriate, the model can be demonstrated at the conference.

Bansal, A. (2010). A Cognitive Architecture for Learning and Skill Acquisition. Intern report, Department of Engineering Systems and Mathematics, Cranfield University, Defence Academy – College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham, Wilts., SN6 8LA, UK.
Scott, B. (1976). Cognitive Representations and Their Transformations in the Acquisition of Keyboard Skills, PhD thesis, Department of Cybernetics, Brunel University.

2) bednar (Peter Bednar)
Email: peter.bednar@ics.lu.se

Contextual Inquiry and Socio-Technical Practice

Co-authors:
Christine Welch

When Change Magicians (or business analysts) engage a business organization they enter a environment where professionals are already acting in the context of their business and work. The problem spaces engaged in are often seen as both complex and uncertain. When those same professionals are not only continuing to work as knowledgeworkers in their ordinary jobs but also engage in a pursuit of purposeful and desireable change activity they are making an effort to create and sustain an ongoing double helix of action and reflection. A change magician involved has a role of facilitator who is supporting the organizational actors in their efforts to create and sustain this double helix process so it becomes a natural part of their ongoing practices. For many organizations big as well as small, the use of a Socio-Technical Toolbox can come in handy as it both can be easily understood from a pragmatic perspective as well as it supports reflection in ways which are not normally discussed or questioned.

3) bill.seaman@duke.edu (Bill Seaman)
Email: bill.seaman@duke.edu
Website: http://billseaman.com

Insight Engine

Abstract:

This research seeks to work toward the digital authorship of a tool to empower insight production, distributed interdisciplinary team-based research, and to potentially enable bisociational processes as discussed by Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation. The goal of the 1st year of research is to create an interactive system to enable intelligent juxtaposition of relevant media elements via focused interaction, dynamic computational functionality, and intellectual “seeding” of the system.

The system seeks to reverse engineer some of the processes that we use as researchers. It then works toward a human / machine symbiosis where the machine presents an interface to many different researchers work. It does so in a way that enables the human user to playfully explore many different areas of research that may or may not be relevant to their current work in a novel interactive manner. The system presents a “word swirl” in 3D for each different researcher. These can be called up and displayed in the interface or put away. These word swirls have buzz words or titles (that you will supply for your own papers/ or I will add if need be) at the top of the hierarchy (one can also look deeper in the hierarchy with multiple finger touches) and even read an entire paper if it is of interest.

Often new knowledge arises in the space between fields —in interstitial zones of knowledge. If one chooses one “buzz word” or Paper Title from “your” word swirl and one from another researcher that looks to be of interest, the system will seek to find the most relevant examples in the database [by making both a statistical and semantic comparison] (and eventually searching the internet, in the next iteration of the system) and provide those papers for you as a new word swirl of the most relevant juxtapositions.

This puts your research in proximity to someone who otherwise might not find it or know of it. Alternately, if you play with the system it may provide a juxtaposition that is relevant to you and your research in a new way… in an emergent manner… thus the system might provide a historical instance, or newly published paper, etc. that suggests a moment of insight for your research.

The system seeks to be a learning system, where as you use it, you generate new word swirls of papers or media, that we hope to be relevant to you, in a playful iterative manner, or you can throw things away that are not relevant. The goal is in generating “intelligent research juxtapositions” that may arise through the use of the system – either for you or for a person who might learn from your work. This seems to me to be a situation of mutual intellectual gain between differing researchers…

4) cabralfilho (Jose dos Santos Cabral Filho)
Email: cabralfilho@gmail.com
Website: http://www.arq.ufmg/lagear

Shifting from teaching to learning – understanding as a collective experience.

Co-authors:
Ana Paula Baltazar dos Santos

This paper discusses the research-based teaching experience of an introductory design course in architecture and urbanism supported by Lagear (Graphics Laboratory for Architectural Experience) at the School of Architecture at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. The experience is radically centred on a peer-to-peer learning and draws on the idea of ‘the ignorant teacher’, the one who can lead the students to learn a subject the teacher doesn’t know. It is also based on the concept of ‘cultural cannibalism’ developed by the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, which in a way corresponds to the cybernetic’s propositions of circularity, feedback and conversation.

The paper describes the modular organization of the course, its principles and its evolution over the last 17 years. Currently, the main course project is an urban interactive intervention that is the culmination of four modules: perception, creation, execution and representation. Despite the incremental aspect of the modules sequence, each of which has in itself a recurrence of the fourfold structure, nesting similar discussions and increasing in complexity as the students refine their critical and instrumental abilities.

The course is based on the development of students’ abilities to self-develop further abilities. For example, instead of being taught how to use instruments, students are required to develop a design task and for that they are encouraged to find out by themselves how to use the instruments (software or hardware) needed to complete the task. This process is done in a collective way, with each student investigating a specific tool or process and then sharing the acquired knowledge with the whole group. The analysis and critic of the resulting works is also done amongst classmates. In this way they develop their own process of learning without being taught.

Thus, the development of abilities, or instrumentalization, happens by means of the critique of instruments as they are used to create content, improving not only the use of instruments but as well as the creativity. As students develop their critical ability they also improve their use of instruments. In other words, acting and understanding leads to learning and back again, in a truly entangled process. However, we face a problem that is the constraints imposed by the school curriculum. So, even if we intend to open the development of abilities in a completely critical manner, it is limited by the specificity of the training proposed in the curriculum.

5) Claudia (Claudia Dutson)
Email: claudia.dutson@network.rca.ac.uk

Actioning Architecture; A performance for human and non-human actors

Increasing implementation of smart technology in buildings to improve the environmental performance of architecture draws in questions about the notion of performance and acting. Specifically – who is doing what to whom? With the stakes so high in environmental performance, technology is increasingly tasked with changing the behaviour of the occupants.

Set against the context of the performativity of architecture, which is primarily an environmental concern that depends on the technical performance of the environmental systems; the productivity, mood and wellbeing (performance) of the human occupants; and the cooperation between the humans and machines within the building.
In order to achieve optimum performance, it requires a commitment of all occupants (human and non-human) to perform – or play their part.
As smart technologies are programmed to act with increasing autonomy, learning and even attempting to change the behaviour of their human counterparts, this paper seeks to question the status of things that do and act – in other words what they do has consequences and thus includes the potential to do things to others.
Replaying these interactions through theatrical techniques, this paper investigates the theme of performative action through interrogating Stanislavsky’s acting theories of Actioning and Objectives, Judith Butler’s reading of J.L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory and power relations, in order to critique the high-performance paradigm present in this context.
Stanislavsky’s work on actions and performative speech, published over two decades before Austin’s How To Do Things With Words, couples tightly the action to the objective of the performer, rather than its effect. In Stanislavsky’s terms one cannot act emotion. One can see a similarity in cybernetic projects such as Valentino Braitenberg’s Vehicles, where the behaviour or emotion is the observable effect of action. Action, therefore, comes first.
These actions are used generatively – rather than just observed – by this I mean that the theatrical theory of actioning is practised, tested, rehearsed, reviewed – it is ‘in action’ – whereas the Speech Act theory discourse is more analytical and given to situations where the power relations are already set. There are also strong resonances with cybernetic theories of feedback, and artificial intelligence discourse on heuristics that allow me to proprose a rescripting of interactions between human and machine so that they participate fully in an environmental performance.
The paper is a development of a workshop I devised in the Spring which brought together students from London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Imperial College, Birkbeck and the Royal College of Art. Working through Stanislavski’s techniques of Actioning and Objectives, the participants scripted their own narrative performances between machines, humans, other machines, and in some cases, animals.

6) daigriffiths (Dai Griffiths)
Email: dai.griffiths.1@gmail.com

Informal learning recognition – From theory to practice

Co-authors:
Francisco J. García-Peñalvo, Dai Griffiths

Knowledge management is a key factor to improve organizations. It implies the exchange of information between the individuals that participate in the organizations and the people in charge of them. An important knowledge to exchange is the information about individuals’ skills and capabilities and how they have been acquired. When these capabilities are achieved in formal contexts (organizations, universities, etc.) it is easy to communicate them to the organization. However, individuals can also learn to do something outside of the organizational context and sometimes unconsciously, in which is known as informal learning.
Reflecting about the importance of the recognition and acknowledgement of this informal competences and skills, the dialogue between the stakeholders involved in the organizations, managers and decision-makers on one hand and employees on the other side, and finally the last analysis of this discovered hidden knowledge to make decisions and evolve the knowledge management processes inside the organization.
This task should be easy taking into account that the technological and organizational innovations, and the affordances of the Internet, are facilitating increased access to knowledge and training for individuals that range from formal courses to informal ad hoc learning. However, the greater part of the informal learning that takes place, both within and outside institutional and organizational contexts, remains unacknowledged.
Technological basis for the informal learning competences recognition and tagging and the methodological workflows to create a dialogue layer between organization and employees has been studied inside TRAILER project. It aims to articulate the activity flow involved in the integration of informal learning as part of an individual’s development. The project involves partners from six different countries in which has been studied how informal learning was considered by organizations and individuals. After this first exploration a methodology was defined and a technological platform to support it. From this experience and several pilots it is possible conclude that informal learning recognition and acknowledge it is not, in practice, an easy task, mainly because there are several barriers:
•Organizational. Informal learning is not always appreciated by the organizations; they do not understand what it is and how this knowledge can be exploited.
•Technical. It is very complex to facilitate a simple, transparent and friendly system to make possible the recognition, management and publication of informal learning.
•Personal. The individuals understand different things about what they learn, the capabilities they achieve, what to communicate to the institution and what do not, etc.

7) Eliana Herrera-Vega (Eliana Herrera)
Email: eherrera@uottawa.ca

Consequences of complex socio-technical systems for the level of human agency

Technological advancement has dramatically changed the praxis. Nowadays human agents share the phenomenological ground with a variety of social systems, gadgets, cyborgs and human extensions, which modify the conditions of freedom and ethical responsibility. Classical ethical approaches are besieged by the material development of society, as the place of subjectivity is no longer restricted to the human individual. This paper addresses the following: What is the remaining space for humans within a technologically made society? How should theory proceed in the objective of properly retracing technological advancements that have been left unobserved? How is it possible to address current problems caused by the encounter of ecological boundaries with both human action and expert social systems? The description of a society without men, as N. Luhmann posits, can be useful to preserve the human space, in the midst of a radically different notion of alterity.

8) Faisal (Faisal Kadri)
Email: faisal@artificialpsychology.com
Website: http://artificialpsychology.com

Understanding and Learning to Reconcile Differences between Disciplines through Constructing an Artificial Personality

Constructing a model of reality is the essence of understanding, and learning is the recursive process of validation and updating of a conceptual model. Our individual and unique models of reality are what make our outlooks so different and sometimes incompatible. Constructing an artificial model of personality offers an opportunity to reconcile different outlooks of disciplines that may seem irreconcilable at first sight. An example is the difference between the cognitive linguistics of Noam Chomsky and B. F. Skinner’s approach to behaviourism.

Chomsky is a linguist who believes that the medium of thought is natural language, he asserted that the structure of sentences is overwhelmingly similar to the structure of thought and that language is the mirror of the mind. So, inherited human disposition to learn language separates (cognitive) humans from (motivational) animals, and the structure of language follows formal logic rules, while animals and their behaviour have “nothing to teach us about our thought processes and languages.” This understanding set the stage for a collision course with the leading animal behaviourist B.F. Skinner in a well publicized critique of the latter’s work.

Chomsky argued that laboratory concepts, such as stimulus, response, and response strength, are inadequate when applied to human behaviour. Skinner argued that there is no reason to assume that animals under laboratory conditions will behave differently from being outside and suggested that animal behaviour extends to humans. Chomsky suggested that language structure leads to “near infinite” number of combinations and it would be impossible to learn them through rote memorization. The near infinite linguistic variety contrasts sharply with a small number of categories of animal motivations. To a cyberneticist this is revealing; while the jump in variety from near infinite to a single thread of behaviour seems impossible, the existence of intermediate non-linguistic stages of reduction is a realistic assumption, and the different varieties point to the likelihood that the arguments of linguists and behaviourists are not mutually exclusive. The artificial personality is constructed on a structure that limits the diversity of motivational contexts, thus reflecting a B.F. skinner scale of diversity and providing a transitional diversity for a Chomsky near infinite scale of linguistic diversity.

Another example is the difference between the higher diversity of the emotions with other motivations. The emotions are displays of feelings; feelings are the subjective representations of the emotions, yet both are separate subjects of academic research and have their own varieties enumerated by scholars, mostly without reference to a structure that can limit their growth. One noted exception is the Plutchik model, where different emotions and feelings are located on two dimensional coordinates over a wheel with 8 spokes, representing 8 primitive emotions which are common with animals and form the basis for higher diversity of emotions. Plutchik placed the primitive emotions in the centre of the wheel and the higher diversity radiating outwards. The location on the wheel describes how the emotions are related uniquely to each other and can be understood as projections from the dimensions of the artificial personality.

In both cases we have a situation of higher diversity that is bound by structure and a lower diversity with no apparent structure, the artificial personality reconcile the diversities by adding structure to the lower diversity.

Observing the differences and similarities between diversities is a process of recursive learning and construction of a structured model of reality.

9) JasonJixuanHu (Jason Hu)
Email: jjh@wintopgroup.com

Multi-level Self-Organizations in Human Interactions

Multi-level Self-Organizations in Human Interactions
For ASC 2013 Conference in Bolton, UK

Jason Jixuan Hu, Ph.D.
Managing Director
WINTOP GROUP
jjh@wintopgroup.com

Abstract

First a general formula is proposed to represent self-organization processes as identified by Ashby, von Foerster, Prigogine etc., i.e. R=Ǒ[M], or Results=Ǒ[Mechanism], in which Latin capital O with Caron is used to represent the general self-organization process. The letter “O” visually symbolizes a closed loop of causality in focus. The bud-looking “Caron” visually symbolizes something grows from that circular causality and sustained by this causality loop, i.e. emergence. The formula offers a convenient way to identify, discuss and compare different types of self-organization processes in various fields of study and disciplines.

Second, an attempt is made to identify a multi-layer of self-organization processes in reaction chains of human behaviors from very local to very global – from the cognitive process of individual brain, to the interactions among brains that form families and societies, all the way to the interactions of different societies leading to a global organizational eigen-result for the whole planet. A grand perspective is offered following footsteps of Ashby and HVF. This multi-layer frame need to be refined and expanded through the discussions with colleagues during this conference. A clear understanding of the relationships of these specific self-organizing processes, going on at levels of individual, family, state, and global, might improve our understanding of these processes as well as provide guidance in personal development, organizational development, and international relations.

10) Jennifer Kanary (Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a))
Email: jenniferkanary@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.labyrinthpsychotica.org

Labyrinth Psychotica, Simulating Psychotic Phenomena

In medical literature, psychosis is often described as a severe mental illness during which thoughts and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality. In a state of psychosis one might hear voices that others do not hear, see things that others do not see and have beliefs that others do not share, often causing someone to act in unfathomable ways. In order to understand and empathize with psychotic phenomena we need help. Like a flight simulator helps aspiring pilots in their journey of learning how to fly, we might develop technological tools that act as a prosthesis to our imagination, to better understand and communicate what it is like to be in psychosis and aid in the activation of processes of empathy. In the past, doctors took LSD to better understand their patients. As such actions are now considered taboo, one might consider possibilities of simulating psychotic experiences with the aid of technical innovations as a form of digital LSD. In recent years, several multi-media psychosis simulators have been developed as teaching and awareness environments for mental health workers, police and students to increase their knowledge and understanding of the subjective experience of psychosis. They aim at helping professionals to become more empathic towards their patients as well as towards their patients’ friends and families to what their loved ones are going through. During the conference I will introduce three of these simulation projects: Paved with Fear (2001), Mindstorm (2007) and Virtual Hallucinations (2005). With each simulation I will focus on how they simulate a particular experience that is frequently described, and is considered a classic psychotic phenomenon, namely the experience of media directly communicating with a person. I will explain why these simulation projects are important, but also why it is important to be critical and create a discourse surrounding their design. I will illustrate this by taking a closer look at how they simulate this particular phenomenon by analysing them against descriptions of psychotic experience in literature and discussing the implications of different design approaches. I do this in order to see where they might be improved and how installation art might contribute to discourse on psychoses simulation design by giving examples in which I refer to my own work Intruder 2.0 (2008) and The Wearable (2012).

11) Jerome Carson (Jerome Carson)
Email: j_carson@o2.co.uk

Stress in mental health professionals: from researcher to sufferer.

For over 20 years I have been studying occupational stress in mental health professionals, mainly nursing staff. Along with other colleagues I have conducted a number of large surveys. The Claybury CPN Stress Study, showed it was more stressful to work in the community than in a hospital setting, but that community work was more satisfying. The bulk of the extant occupational stress research has however been problem focussed. Researchers have looked at how burned out staff have been or what percentage could be identified as “psychiatric cases.” “Caseness” has been operationally defined as scoring over a threshold score on the Goldberg General Health Questionnaire. Like some other psychology questionnaires, this is a misnomer, as it is is not assessing general health, but rather psychological distress. In another paper we suggested that “Burnout was much ado about nothing.” From combining data from several large surveys, we were able to show that only 5% of mental health nurses met strict criteria for burnout, whereas 10% had no symptoms of burnout at all. While there have been scores of studies looking at the assessment of stress in mental health nurses, there has been much less emphasis on intervention. As part of my doctoral research, I conducted two small randomised controlled studies, first of a social support based programme and second, a self-esteem based programme. The former intervention proved unsuccessful, but the self-esteem programme proved more beneficial. This was very much the acting period of my work as a stress researcher. In 2006, I was asked to move from a clinical academic post to a full-time clinical position, as I was not publishing enough prestigious publications. I threw myself into my new clinical role and over the next few years was involved in developing a number of pioneering developments around the new recovery approach. Amongst these were the development of a film about recovery, made by a woman with a mental illness and featuring four people with psychosis. The pressures of all this new work, on top of existing clinical commitments took its toll and the stress researcher became burned out himself. This was part of the reason I took early retirement from the Health Service. Now in an academic job, I begin to understand these issues much more. The focus of occupational stress research needs towards a more positive perspective, drawing from new developments in positive psychology and wellbeing.

12) julianstadon (Julian Stadon)
Email: julianstadon@gmail.com

Data Body Banks: Networked Identity Politics and Pervasive data embodiment

The evolution of rhizomatic deterritorialisation into syncretic nodal identity vs. actor network theory vs. speculative realism—- are we more together or more apart?
The idea is to establish the issue of dispersion and identity in this chapter, ie difference and how repetition creates connections that are quite arbitrary and incapable of answering the bigger questions of identity and existence. First I establish the shift that occurred in the academy model, then discuss dispersion as deterritorialisation, then repetition and reterritorialisation and how this, if seen as a molecular process (conceptually) creates a strong debate between the esoteric syncretic model of connectedness ; the grounded actor network theory model and the recent speculative realist model of dislocation and unconnected affect in such systems.

A Historicisation of identity politics within techno-systems, particularly digital arts

I will use Heidegger and Virilio to discuss it in terms of politics and power and Simondon to break it into basic paradigms of classification. I will use Lacan and the mirror stage to discuss our awareness of body/identity politics and the transition into data bodies through the archiving of identities via social networks. This will be related to the notion of post biological digital identity, with a focus on the real time aspects to interaction in these platforms and how this creates a paradigm of mixed reality data body transfer

I will use boyd, harraway, hayles, Jenkins & Turkle to discuss online identity in virtual social systems and networks, particularly, I will try to progress traditional dualistic arguments regarding identity and bodies as a theoretical relationship, particularly in relation to technologies but not so specifically on the new form of the ‘dual cyborg’ (I mean here, that most of the work on identity and bodies is about either a) the disembodied self – the consciousness in the machine or b) the cyborgic self – the fused meat/machine entity

Disparate Theoretical Convergence in Regards to Data Bodies

This will then relate to look at these topics comparatively:

*Ascott’s Syncretism and post biology
*Deleuze/Guattari’s Rhizome/Deterritorialisation/Reterritorialisation of the body. An investigation of ambiguous telematics agency. This will dissect telematics in regards to both autonomous and non-autonomous interaction (agency vrs non agency based) and how this related to data bodies.
*Latour’s Actor Network theory and the body- the role of visceral bodies in relation to data bodies.
*Speculative Realism and unconnectedness, or object orientated ontology- referencing primarily Graham harman’s test The Speculative Turn.
Positive Panopticism: Tracking Biological Identity and Interaction in a Socially Available System of Exchange.
Here I will talk about the notion of surveillance, ownership of biological informatiom and virtual content. I will discuss the idea of tracking in a realtime architectural context, meaning I will discuss the importance of data collection through surveillance and tracking in hypersurfaced systems. I will relate Foucault’s notion of “The Ambigous Panopticon” To Levy’s articulation of Collective Intelligence, introducing the idea of an open source arts practice based on a model of panoptic transparency. I will Introduce the idea of situational cartography as the process of mapping, where a concept/ idea/ ‘thing’ is archived through the various outcomes it produces and how this has become the method by which value is assigned to the products of creative practice. I will then relate this to postbiological representation, particularly deterritorialised and reterritorialised notions of the body. I will conclude by articulating the ambiguous nature of this system and it’s tendency to be mediated/rearticulated and reinterpreted.

13) kesienaokooboh (Mercy Kesiena Clement Okooboh)
Email: kesienaokooboh@gmail.com

Abstract
The cybernetic model of viable systems is employed in this study as a diagnostic tool to investigate viability through an illustrative case study of a service industry. This paper illustrates the similarities of a viable system model (VSM) to a learning organisation model; the viable system model (VSM) developed by Stafford Beer are important steps to improve current operations, prepare for new operations and adapt to change inside and outside the environment. The technique of integrating what is happening (observed state) and desired state is the basic comparator in this simple cybernetic model. The emphasis of this study is on continuous enhancement of the effectiveness of learning and development practices within Veolia Energy (Dalkia) Ireland. The effectiveness question and the basis of this study is ‘How can Veolia Energy (Ireland) improve its learning and development initiatives and practices to enhance performance improvement?’

The need to have an evaluation framework in place in the organization was vital. The purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of the organizations learning and developments practices and measure the improvement process. This linkage is aligned to System 1, 2 and 3 of the VSM model. The pre-course questionnaire is the current state of what is happening in the organization and team, while the level 1 and 2 evaluation is the reaction and learning that actually took place comparing it with the desired state set out in the pre-course questionnaire, level 3 and 4 of the Kirkpatrick evaluation model compares the observed state and desired state of the delegates that attended training. Levels 3 and 4 evaluation emphasizes the Impact on the organization, the first impact is the operational benefit, here the relationship built and developed with clients increases business scope with the client, bridges the communication gap and builds on trust to foster good relationship between employees and clients.

Finally, I have carried out evaluation of the training and learning programs; the next level of the cybernetic loop will be evaluating the improvement that I have been making, that is improvement of the process and interventions. The next step will be to give the feedback of the findings of the evaluations to the managers, highlighting the improvements. I am introducing the multiple levels of evaluation, I am evaluating and getting people to evaluate the improvement process, and I am putting in a feedback program so that the training can be continuously improved.

14) laudrich (Larry Richards)
Email: laudrich@iue.edu

From Doing to Knowing and Back: The Cybernetics of Wisdom

In The Tree of Knowledge, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela coined the aphorism: “All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing.” Russell Ackoff, in a variety of references, distinguishes data, information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom from each other, and then applies those distinctions to the design of an educational system that preserves human individuality and creativity. This paper brings these ideas together to formulate a way of thinking about learning, competence, education and our society at large. It culminates in a discussion of the concept of wisdom, drawing on Varela’s notion, particularly as presented in Ethical Know-How, that there can be no wisdom without love. Implications for the design of a desirable educational system, and hence for the transformation of society, are postulated.

Section Headings–
1. Introduction: Knowing, Doing and Understanding
2. A Way of Thinking about Learning and Competence
3. The Cybernetics of Wisdom
4. A Radical Proposal for an Alternative Educational System
5. Conclusion: The Transformation of Society

15) leydesdorff (Loet Leydesdorff)
Email: loet@leydesdorff.net
Website: http://www.leydesdorff.net

Mutual Redundancies in Inter-human Communication Systems: Steps Towards a Calculus of Processing Meaning

Co-authors:
Inga A. Ivanova

The study of inter-human communication requires a more complex framework than Shannon’s (1948) mathematical theory of communication because “information” is defined in the latter case as meaningless uncertainty. The conference theme of “acting, learning, understanding” adds a reflexive layer of meaning processing to Shannon’s linear scheme of “sending, channel, receiving.” This reflexive layer operates non-linearly; meaning can be provided to the information from the perspective of hindsight, and with reference to other possible meanings. “A difference that makes a difference” to a system of reference presumes the systems of reference to be differently positioned in addition to being related in the Shannon-type communication. Providing information with meaning may also reduce the uncertainty that prevails.

Assuming that meaning cannot be communicated, we extend Shannon’s theory by defining mutual redundancy as a positional counterpart of the relational communication of information. Mutual redundancy indicates the surplus of meanings that can be provided to the exchanges in reflexive communications. The information is redundant because based on “pure sets,” that is, without subtraction of mutual information in the overlaps. We show that in the three-dimensional case (e.g., of a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations), mutual redundancy is equal to mutual information (Rxyz = Txyz); but when the dimensionality is even, the sign is different. We generalize to the measurement in N dimensions and proceed to the interpretation.

Using Luhmann’s social-systems theory and/or Giddens’ structuration theory, mutual redundancy can be provided with an interpretation in the sociological case: different meaning-processing structures code and decode with other algorithms. A surplus of (“absent”) options can then be generated that add to the redundancy. Luhmann’s “functional (sub)systems” of expectations or Giddens’ “rule-resource sets” are positioned mutually, but coupled operationally in events or “instantiated” in actions. Shannon-type information is generated by the mediation, but the “structures” are (re-)positioned towards one another as sets of (potentially counterfactual) expectations. The positional differences among the coding and decoding algorithms provide a source of additional options in reflexive and anticipatory communications.

16) LINGQL (Ling Tan)
Email: qinglingtan@gmail.com

Mediated Reality In Bearable Prosthesis

Mediated Reality refers to the artificial modification of human perception by way of devices used to deliberately enhance and more generally, or otherwise, alter our senses. While there is some crossover between the terms Augmented and Mediated Reality, which are often used to describe the effect of technological devices found carried with or attached to the body of users. Mediated Reality provides a more immersive experience for the user, employing a wider range of user’s sensory input and forms of feedback. Hence it can be argued to supersede Augmented Reality that emphasises primarily on the visual aspect of sensory enhancement.
This paper interrogates Mediated Reality through experimental prosthesis. The notion of bearable design as opposed to wearable is introduced as a framework to question the relevance of the built environment in relation to Mediated Reality. It investigates the limit to which human behaviour can be altered with such type of implantable or body-borne devices during interaction with, and inhabition of the environment. In the case when technology become pervasive, questions of control between user and prosthesis are raised. The paper argues that in the circularity of information sharing between human and machine, each with their own teleological mechanisms, there will be instances where machine dominance and human subservience can occur.
The design project is used as a speculative platform for exploration on this topic. It focuses on Bearable Prosthesis as a category of technological devices through which surveillance and intervention is facilitated by Mediated Reality. Fitted with sensors and actuators embedded within or affixed to the the body, the effect of Mediated Reality enables a localised effect. To better understand the impact of Mediated Reality on users and and its relevance to the current built environment, this is tested with a series of devices designed to be used in experiments and films. This leads on to a speculative investigation of the future of the human body with the integration of such invasive technology. In addition, questions are raised by the merging of our virtual and physical spaces. The dichotomy between transparency of information sharing and human privacy is collapsing to create a new form of design language, merging the user and the built environment as a result.

17) ludmila.malinova (Ludmila Malinova)
Email: lida.malinova@gmail.com

The Application of Social Cybernetics in Organizational Analysis

Co-authors:
Antonin Rosicky

The article is addressing the issue of social cybernetics in organizations and issues related directly to the acting-learning-understanding circular process. According to my research, which was carried out in connection with my thesis in 2012, I came to interesting conclusions. The research was conducted in a consulting firm, where impacts of various socio-cybernetic aspects on employees were examined.
The employees were asked in the survey questions in the following areas: information and knowledge in the organization and their use, employee training, relations of business and personal values, fulfillment of needs according to the Maslow’s pyramid, feedback, company unity and integrity, satisfaction in the organization, corporate culture, and more. Based on the evaluation of questionnaires and a series of interviews with the managers of the organization there was found out a different approach and understanding of reality in the organization. Due these two different perspectives there resulted a number of issues in the organization (e.g., a high staff fluctuation, dissatisfaction, low productivity, overtime, etc.)
The idea of this article is that if the management understands how the organization works and how problems arise among employees and when the management can respond appropriately, then the employees would work (act) better (work will be carried out more efficiently) and at the same time this will lead to understanding of various relationships in the workplace. This creates a positive circularity, when the more satisfied employees help managers better understand what is happening in the organization and regulate their behavior that will lead to effective problem solving and satisfaction of employees, who will, once again, know better what to do and how.
The question is whether the social cybernetics can become a tool for understanding the systemic relations and show managers how to work better and more effectively with subordinates in an organization, so that there are well used potentials of individuals and also possibilities of modern information technology.
The main issue is to understand the importance of individual observers (employees) within the system, their education so that they understand the values and content of their work, so that they are satisfied, and the subsequent actions, which should be appropriately guided by the authority (management) that fully understands the principles of social cybernetics, learning organization and systemic approach.
The article should clarify what affects the behavior within the organization. E.g. availability of information and documents, the right knowledge, both formal and informal communication, satisfaction, trust, other employees, etc. Is there a way to encourage the behavior of employees in the organization? The second stage is an influence on learning in the organization. This can be supported by quality of available information, the leaders in the organization, formal and informal relationships, feedback, etc. But, how can we motivate the employees to such learning? The last stage is understanding. When employees had done a good job somehow and for example undertaken some training, it does not mean yet that they have understood the issue. Understanding is tied to knowledge, especially with tacit knowledge of each employee. How to support understanding of the issues and challenges in a best way? It is said that everyone is replaceable but the organization could suffer greatly from the departure of some key employees. This is mainly due to their contribution in the field of knowledge, experience, and other relationships with other employees. What are the options for discovering such employees and is it possible to pass their knowledge and experience further?
The social cybernetics should be considered as an opportunity for organizations to better understand the circular process of learning, acting and understanding within the complex environment of organization.

18) macondeg (Miguel Conde)
Email: macondeg@gmail.com
Website: http://grial.usal.es/grial/mconde

Informal learning recognition – From theory to practice

Co-authors:
Francisco J. García-Peñalvo, Dai Griffiths

19) magnusramage (Magnus Ramage)
Email: magnus.ramage@open.ac.uk

The rise of the infoborgs: post-humanism and materiality in the age of ubiquitous information

It is now more than fifty years since the coinage of the term ‘cyborg’ (for cybernetic organism), and more than twenty years since Donna Haraway’s use of the term which made it so prominent in the social sciences and cultural studies. Naturally, the use of the term is of great interest to cybernetics, and its use draws upon many different areas within cybernetics. However, it is one which the field could usefully re-engage with at the present time.

We live in an age which is often described as the information age, and information is all-pervasive in our society. Very many objects and phenomena which were previously considered as material are now considered in terms of information: just a few examples include money, music and friendship.

We also live in an age where ubiquitous computing has shifted from being an aspiration of computer scientists to being the lived experience of very many people in society (at least in developed countries). Smartphones, tablet computers and small laptops, combined with widespread networking, have brought computing power to the pockets of most of us. This is likely to be extended considerably further with the rise of wearable computers, such as Google Glass.

It might be argued that ubiquitous computing is turning us into cyborgs, blended beings so dependent on our computers that we have become a single organism. I will argue in this talk that this is the wrong focus – that we should look not at the devices but at what they convey: ubiquitous information. In this sense we are turning not into cyborgs but into ‘infoborgs’. Massive amounts of information is being created by and about us, stored in networks of large data-servers (the cloud).

This shift of our lives to being information-driven, enabled by connected devices, is exciting to some but deeply threatening to others. It raises many questions (some of which have been asked in different ways previously by figures such as Katherine Hayles) about what it means to be human, and what is the nature of materiality.
There are parallels here to the conference theme which relates acting and understanding in a circular relationship, linked by learning. In the same way, the technological and the human are conjoined in a circular relationship (as the cyborg/infoborg), linked by information. Examining the processes of the technological-human relationship will help us to see the links between acting and understanding.

20) mdr66 (Martin Reynolds)
Email: martin.reynolds@open.ac.uk
Website: http://sites.google.com/site/jjntest1/Home/people/martin-reynolds-1

Triple loop learning and the politics of systems practice

Triple-loop learning derives from cybernetic ideas of three levels of learning introduced by Gregory Bateson in his 1972 Steps to an Ecology of Mind. The first two levels – translated in terms of single and double loops of learning respectively – have acquired significant resonance in fields of practice including cognitive sciences, action research, reflective practice, and organisational learning, particularly with the pioneering work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. Double-loop learning has also acquired significance in the lexicon of systems thinking and practice, possibly the most prominent exponent being Russell Ackoff. The usefulness of what Bateson refers to as learning level III and its transcription to triple-loop learning appears less evident. Bateson views level III as involving a deeper more profound learning experience. One way of distinguishing this level is that it occupies a change in Being as against a change in Doing. It invites aspects of virtue – particularly Wisdom – in being aware rather than aspects of training in doing stuff better as with acquiring Competence. ‘Operationalising’ level III in systems practice is understandably more challenging.

From a systems perspective, the essential difference between the single and double loop is that the former accepts goals as given whereas the latter involves questioning and possibly changing goals or aspirations. Such ideas resonate with purposive and purposeful systems thinking respectively. Single-loop learning is associated with what Ackoff and Emery (1972) would call goal-seeking purposive systems, whilst double-loop learning is associated with goal-searching purposeful systems. The two can be summarised by questions raised through each loop: (i) Are we doing things right? (single loop) and (ii) Are we doing the right things? (double loop).

Flood and Romm (1996) in a book entitled Diversity Management: Triple Loop Learning introduce their third loop in terms of addressing the political dimension behind learning. The question they raise is what relations of power might circumscribe particular purposes being privileged or valued, whilst other purposes are not so valued. This third dimension goes beyond looking at ‘what is the right thing’ (an essentially ethical question) towards appreciating that the right thing might appear ‘right’ because of the power invested in who espouses it (a political question). The third loop asks:

(iii) Is rightness buttressed by mightiness and/or mightiness by rightness?

This third loop of learning suggests coercive relations of power associated with either domination of (a) ‘decision makers’ – those in authority with control over resources associated with a situation – expressing ‘mightiness’; for example, through corporatism or capitalism, or conversely (b) ‘experts’ – those with particular expert judgements associated with a situation – expressing notions of ‘rightness’; for example, though economism or fundamentalisms. These expressions of coercion can sometimes be referred to in terms of (a) decisionism (power over resources such as money – plutocracy) and (b) technocentrism (power with specialist professional knowledge – expertocracy) respectively.

The relative failure of triple-loop learning to gain traction in systems practice triggers questions regarding potential loss of deeper understanding of Learning III provided by Bateson. This paper explores the potential of a wider cyber-systemic space embracing three core systems concepts – interrelationships, perspectives, and boundaries – for making explicit the value base and political dimensions of systemic learning. Using a case-study of pedagogic innovation at the Open University, triple-loop learning is explored as part of a more politically informed teaching of systems thinking in practise; retrieving in turn the virtue of wisdom.

21) Mehr.rtp (Mehrnoush Rostampour)
Email: mehr.rtp@gmail.com

Continuous Assessment and its Application in Isfahan’s Highschools

This study tries to point out the importance of continuous assessment in high schools. This study was carried out in a four-month time span. This study is a survey conducted through applying questionnaire. Two groups of participants were used as the data population: (i) 46 English teachers from girl high school from twenty girl high schools which were selected randomly among Isfahan five educational districts, (ii) Students from three-year high school. In the end this study answers the question of whether high school teachers in Isfahan- Iran have the same impression about continuous assessment as the one introduced by the Ministry of Education’s Educational Rule Book of High School and if there is any relationship between continuous assessment and the students’ final scores at Isfahan high schools.

22) mgpln (Narayana Mandaleeka)
Email: mgpl.narayana@tcs.com

Achieving organizational excellence by adopting “Values to Value™” framework.

Organizations pursue ‘Quality’ in their offerings while demonstrating ‘Excellence’ in what they do. Quality is to win the client confidence by delivering value and Excellence is for surviving the competitiveness. Excellence is a journey and it is about promise and hope. It is not about any quick fix solutions for the complex problems currently plaguing the firms or nations, but actually showing light at the end of the tunnel. By embracing simple principles, we can start moving towards that light maintaining a healthy balance between continuity and innovation.

The key challenges faced by today’s manager are coping with the rapid change and complexity and uncertainty. The managers need to be enabled to act themselves into a “new way of thinking” rather than think themselves into a “new way of acting”. Most visionary leaders agree that Systems Thinking is critical to solving complex problems. Managers also need to find a balance between the opposing interests of the firm’s different stakeholders. The Multidimensionality character plays a very important role in understanding this tension and brings about the balance.

Business is about creating and delivering Value to all its stakeholders. More importantly, the value created is to be captured too, through its business models and complementary assets. How is the value created in the first place? It is the Processes that the firm adheres to embedding the required Qualities into its offerings.

When one understands things holistically, the future of humanity depends on the sustainability of a complex system involving three interdependent, highly fragile sub-systems: the natural environment, the social/political system and the global economy. With the melting down of the financial sector, social unrest, global warming and natural calamities showing up more often, we are beginning to feel the ‘system is acting as a whole’ to reach certain (?) equilibrium. Instead can we Design to steer our own destiny? The important stakeholders connected with these sub systems act on different time scale than the stakeholders in the vicinity with which a firm explicitly deals with. Any “Responsible Business” should be equipped to think into these aspects and work towards Sustainability. On this aspect the very survival of a business organization hinges. This way of thinking will bring about right amount of efficiencies and effectiveness to firm’s operations. This is easier said than done. The bed rock for all these actions are Values that the firm internalizes and shapes its attitude, behavior and thinking into its daily routines. Thus Values to Value play a very important part in excellence journey.

By adopting “Values to Value™” as a working framework and philosophy to design the offerings that interest the clients, organizations stand to gain in excellence. The second term in the above working philosophy, “Value” refers to the stakeholder value that should come out holistically. A key component in problem solving is to understand the problem from different perspectives. Learning takes place by designing the solution with this understanding and performing as per the design. In reality, achieving the goal may not be as simple as it is thought out to be. In the complex and uncertain situations the goals may be evasive till the point a good enough understanding of a situation is arrived. With each successive action cycles the learning deepens the understanding and prepares one for the next cycle of action bringing close to targeted outcomes. Thus achieving goal is a journey involving reflection on the results, conceptualization of the reality followed by experimentation (innovation). The goal itself may be changing with changing environment (in the contexts of businesses or otherwise)

23) mhohl (Michael Hohl)
Email: michaelhohl@gmail.com
Website: http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/index.html

Designing, acting, understanding: Reflections on the relationship between practice and theory in the design process

“Knowledge seems to fit so perfectly into books. But to marvel at how well Knowledge fits into books is to marvel at how well each rock fits into its hole in the ground. Knowledge fits books because we’ve shaped knowledge around books and paper.” David Weinberger

In this text I set out to reflect on the role of theory and practice and how they inform each other in the design research process. In design research it is possible to distinguish between two distinct approaches: The first applies theory, often abstract ideas, in a top-down manner to frame practical works and in order to develop a particular theoretical understanding that can inform a design. Some knowledge of this kind may be applied to inform future actions. The second approach emerges out of designing and allows knowledge to emerge out of reflections upon practical design activity in a bottom-up manner. (Is it possible to clearly distinguish how differently these approaches may inform acting? (Villa Savoye vs. iPod, Krippendorff quote on design semantics.))
In this paper i will argue that the practice-led approach is currently in need of being developed further (without implying that the more abstract theory-based approach was to the detriment of the users and the profession?).

Michael Polanyi wrote that ‘we know more then we can tell’. This is also true in the design process. Here we could speak of a third kind of design knowledge, the tacit, knowledge gained through experience that we might not consciously be aware of. In my view an important role of academic design research is to make such tacit knowledge explicit (often in the form of a written text) and thus being able to communicate this new knowledge, open it up to debate and scrutiny and also to allow others to benefit from new insights.

Another goal of design research might be to develop novel approaches to share and communicate knowledge (beyond written texts [sic]), additionally to the development of innate methods and methodologies that allow practitioners to better understand the design process and thus design better things and services. How are these types of knowing different? How does their understanding inform acting? How might they be balanced? Are they relevant in different phases of the design process? If an expert demonstrates his or her skill, tacit knowledge is more likely to become visible then in a written text, as the text is confined to that which the expert consciously knows. How may we find a balance between theoretical positions and this tacit dimension? And how can we teach this?

A subtext to the paper is the concern that written texts, while well established in traditional scientific research, might not be the best medium to solely communicate design knowledge. What alternatives are there and how might they inform acting? When an expert demonstrates a design activity he or she may also communicate knowledge that he/she is not consciously aware of. Does, from this perspective, a written text imply that it can only communicate what is consciously known?

Preliminary sources:
John Dewey: How we think
Richard Sennett: Together
Sherry Turkle: Alone Together
Neil Postman: Teaching as a subversive activity
Donald Schon, The reflective practitioner
Nigel Cross: Design Thinking
Weinberger, David, 2013, Knowledge in its natural state (Blog post)
Polanyi, Michael (), The Tacit Dimension,

24) michael.lissack (Michael Lissack)
Email: michael.lissack@gmail.com
Website: http://lissack.com

A Cybernetics View of Explanation

A summary of the takeaways from the Modes of Explanation Conference in Paris considered from the point of view of cybernetics.

25) morrison (Ann Morrison)
Email: morrison@create.aau.dk
Website: http://anmore.com.au

Learning as Outcomes: Addressing Discarded Ideas in the User Centered Design Cycle

Co-authors:
Hendrik Knoche

User Centred Design processes standardly employ a circular approach that entail stages of early sketching and prototyping of a design object to understand the complexity and context of the design problem, followed by building a higher-fidelity prototype to test in realistic settings. During these stages, feedback from test users lead to reflections that iteratively reshape the design object, within a use/test-reflect-redesign cycle process. Outcomes from sketching and low-fidelity designs foster engaging more concretely with many alternative solutions to the larger design problem.
However, those ideas that did shape and develop the process but do not fit the final-decided-upon direction are often ignored or forgotten in the haste to find a solution and produce an outcome.
In the finished design there is often little or no evidence of these intermediate ideas and the understanding and learning that took place on the way are no longer self-evident and not readily accessible. This can lead to an increasingly superficial understanding amongst the designers and viewers of the work of what that particular design problem began to engage with. Subsequently, the potential inherent in the larger idea is barely realised, with important elements skimmed over or lost, As a result potentially ‘great’ ideas (or ideas with larger potential) and the work involved in developing them are too easily wasted/discarded.
In this paper, we seek to address how to highlight the learning process, as a concrete part of the whole cycle—as important as sketching, as prototyping and building— which are after all outcomes and manifestations from the learning-acting-understanding loop. If the design process promoted demonstration of learning as an outcome in and of itself (in the same way a physical prototype is seen and evaluated) in each design phase, we ask if and how this could impact the final design outcome. In this revised approach each phase in the design, use/test, reflect cycle provides learning opportunities to further the understanding of the design problem at hand as well as the limitations and strengths of the employed methods in the current context.
We developed two new courses that we ran side-by-side February-May, 2013 with several joint sessions for 33 Media Technology students in their final Bachelor semester. One course concentrated on learning techniques and methods for sketching and design, while the other focused on learning and applying evaluation tools and methods. The students were required to iteratively apply the course material to their main semester technology design projects. While the students came from a Problem Based Learning background, it became obvious they were not used to applying and implementing the lecture material in their own projects. For each design phase we required them to apply the taught methods on their project and share their intermediate outcomes and insights in presentations and peer-critiquing exercises. We encouraged them to leverage the gained understanding in the subsequent design phase, which included a new loop of applying methods to the design object. In each design phase we therefore promoted understanding through acting (applying of and reflecting on methods) and to inform this acting from the evolving understanding of the design problem.
Often learning is mistaken for reflection and all the elements of learning that are not implemented in the final product in a design cycle process are somehow discarded or minimalised. By promoting better understanding of the design object and the methods and their application in each phase of the cycle, we aim to improve the process, the end product and the design experience both for the designer and for the end-user.

26) Philipb (Philip Baron)
Email: pbaron@uj.ac.za
Website: http://www.ecosystemic-psychology.org.za/

A Second-Order Cybernetic Approach to Social Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

When reviewing the prospectus of mainstream universities that offer psychology majors, one would be hard-pressed to find any cybernetic approaches included in their course material. Most psychological problems arise in a relational context. Thus, the role of cybernetics in psychotherapy is invaluable. Family therapy, which is closer to cybernetic thinking, has had several facelifts since its boom back in the late 1960’s. The evolution of family therapy from the time of Bowen, Satir, Minuchin, Whitaker and the Milan Research Institute, laid the foundation for an exciting future in this paradigm. With second-order cybernetics the natural progression in this field, it is inconsistent that universities did not take advantage of this approach and offer it is an equal footing paradigm. One possible explanation rests on the premise that systems thinking and cybernetics underpins the connectedness of relationships, patterns of interaction and recursion. Western thought, however, idolises the individual and their empowerment in the controlling and manipulating of their environment. The explanation of causality and its reliance on the linear model is central in the Western mind. This attitude is common in many psychology theories and is put forward by many universities. Further, traditional positivistic research methodologies are also challenged when attempting to perform studies on the success of family/systemic therapies, which advocate a different approach to research. This makes it difficult to compare these different approaches.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has one of the best long-term success rates in dealing with psychological problems (Barlow & Durand, 2005; Lambert & Garfield, 2004), including success in treating depression that has a better prognosis than antidepressants (Butler et.al, 2005). Within the CBTs there is much diversity. However, there is unity in the core premise of CBT, including the belief that psychological distress is largely a function of disturbances in cognitive processes; that by changing cognitions to produce desired changes, preferred behaviour can be affected for the solution of problems in a time-constrained manner (Corey, 2005). The marrying of second-order cybernetics including the principles of wholeness, self-reference, autopoiesis, structural determinism, coupling, and non-purposeful drift into CBT poses several challenges. Further, the therapeutic posture commonly used in CBT would also need adjustment to embrace second-order cybernetics. Incorporating cybernetic principles to the leading therapy is an important step in the further adoption of second-order thinking into the psychologies. This paper presents a practical method of applying second-order cybernetics to CBT, while incorporating lessons learnt from family therapy.

27) So11krates (Karl H. Müller)
Email: khm@chello.at
Website: http://www.wisdom.at

Understanding Understanding. Exploring Second-Order Science Fields

Second-order cybernetics, above all, is a way of doing things differently. Operating with the tools and instruments of second-order cybernetics in a particular science field, thus, should produce new and surprising results and insights.
The presentation wants to demonstrate the transformation capacity of second-order cybernetics in a particular area, namely in the field of social research. The lecture will focus on a series of recent investigations in which second-order cybernetics is used to create a new second-order field of analysis. For this purpose ordinary social science concepts like standard of living, social inequality or quality of life are transformed into second-order concepts.
The main part of the presentation is focused on the new and deeper insights which can be gained through this shift to the second-order level and through empirical investigations at a second-order level.
Finally, the presentation will conclude with a series of general conditions that apply to other fields outside the social sciences as well in which such a shift to second-order concepts should produce significant and innovative effects and results.

28) sparenti (Susan Parenti)
Email: sparenti@illinois.edu

“What Have You Got to Listen?”

Society-as-it-is emphasizes the power of the act of speaking; society-as-it-could-be emphasizes the power of the act of listening. “What have you got to say?” we ask—-not, “what have you got to listen?” Eloquent speaker, yes, but, could there be an eloquent listener?

Media, mass or otherwise, is the amplification of this inherited emphasis on speaking. Media is ‘what have you got to say’. The listener is considered part of the booty of what have you got to say—a captive, hostage to the saying— not a force in her own right. A listener who is named a ‘good listener’ is considered nice and kind and considerate–but not powerful. In the 20th and 21st centuries we try to wrestle media away from corporate control, because—we’re told– it’s the control of what have you’ve got to say where we’re told power we’re told lies. But no one is trying to wrestle away ‘what have you got to listen?’

The paper ‘What have you got to listen?’ places listening in the context of music. It addresses the dilemma of a listener racheted between two contradictory imperatives: imperative one, consequence of our objectivity-conditioned language, posits the listener as passive object of music’s active subject (“the music made chills go down my spine”); imperative two, consequence of belief in desirability of freedom, posits the listener as an autonomous subject free to make of the music what she likes (“music is whatever the listener makes of it”).
What constitutes the doing of listening, in each case, is left undescribed.
In this paper I address these contradictory imperatives by making a counterproposal to answer the question ‘what have you got to listen?’ This counterproposal positions the doing of listening as being recursive and complex, rather than linear and complicated. Linearity in listening assumes an acoustic uni-directionality; recursive listening requires fictive bi-directionality. Complicated listening assumes a variety of activities that can be executed within one set of emotions; complex listening asserts a variety of actitivites that cannot be executed within one set of emotions, but rather require different sets, and, at times, even contradictory sets of emotions.

The paper also describes probes into listening where listeners are invited to play with listening as an activity that can be designed, and thus, aligned with ones’s desires and intentions. These probes are called ‘Designing Listening’, and could be offered at the ASC conference.

29) tfischer (Thomas Fischer)
Email: Thomas.Fischer@xjtlu.edu.cn
Website: http://www.tfischer.de

Learning: Variety-Amplification in Autonomous Systems

The premise of this conference, and of this proposed paper is that understanding is a basis for action, that action is a basis for understanding, and that these two relationships together form a circular relationship. Through development of this paper I aim to investigate the following:

a) I imagine this cyclical relationship assuming that understanding is internal to the learning system/organism in question, while action is external to the learning system/organism in question. Is this an oversimplification? Is this a valid assumption? Is this a crude but helpful (simplifying) way of thinking about these things?

b) If the assumption stated under a) is agreeable (if only for the sake of being able to think in simple terms), then it can be stated that the move from understanding to action and the move from action to understanding are both boundary-crossing, the first one in the form of output from, the second one in the form of input to the system/organism in question. In both these boundary-crossing moves, learning hinges on variety amplification.

c) If this is the case, then how does the system/organism in question learn (amplify variety) where action is a basis for new understanding? How can a system, autonomously, amplify its variety (move from “seeing less” to “seeing more”)?

30) Tirumala (Tirumala Vinnakota)
Email: tirumala.vinnakota@tcs.com

A cybernetics framework to analyse the relationships between ‘actions/activities and understandings’ and vice-versa for holistic learning considering risks

In today’s complex world with rapid growth of information mainly due to internet, approaches to learning have once again taken center stage. Acting leads to a rich understanding due to unique and enormous possibilities that exist in the environment. This is one of the learning. The other learning is that we get from applying the understanding to be used for acting. According to Ranulph Glanville, these two learning’s can be described as linear causalities and when these two learning’s are conjoined in a circular fashion it can be described as circular causality where acting is dependent on understanding and understanding is dependent on acting and there is a learning when moved from one to the other. However, there is risk to one’s learning. We believe that not having holistic learning is a risk. So what can be described as holistic learning is explored.
Is holistic learning equal to map of learning’s? Learning’s that we get from reaching a goal and those we get from not reaching a goal. Is it holistic learning, when the variety of all learning’s of the object world matches the variety of learning’s in the mind world. Is holistic learning more than the sum of the parts: parts’ being learning’s from variety of acting and variety of understanding? Is holistic learning, the circular conjoining of learning’s from acting to understanding and understanding to acting? Is holistic learning a journey and not an end by itself?
Correct understanding is necessary but not sufficient to complete the goal. We need correct acting as well. Wrong actions/misunderstandings may lead to loss of time, money or other undesirable outcome. Occurrence of positive feedback loop resulting from incorrect understanding and incorrect acting reinforcing each other in a circular way may be a bigger risk in reaching a goal. There is learning when the goal is reached and there is also learning in not reaching a goal.
Also explored on how the relationships between acting and understanding can be explained using commute principle, cybernetics circular causality and foreground-background approach.
In this paper, We propose a cybernetic framework that can describe linear causalities in terms of “Actions/Activities to Learning’s/Understandings(A2LU)”, “Learning’s/Understandings to Activities/Actions(LU2A)”, “Activities/Actions to Understanding/Learning’s(A2UL)” and “Understanding/Learning’s to Actions/Activities(UL2A)” with them forming spiral conjoining to gain holistic learning when actions performed and understandings applied taking risks also into account. The framework basing on X-matrix is implemented using Microsoft Excel. The four quadrants of X-matrix based framework are Actions/Activities, Learning’s/Understandings, Activities/ Actions and Understanding/Learning’s in a clockwise direction labeling them as first, second, third and fourth quadrants respectively. The framework will be useful for explorations, testing of the previous understanding’s/Learning’s, analyze the relationships between ‘actions/activities and understandings’ and vice-versa and it can customized to suit various explorations with an emphasis on iteration, reflection and change.

31) umpleby@gmail.com (Stuart Umpleby)
Email: umpleby@gmail.com
Website: http://www.gwu.edu/~umpleby

First and Second-Order Cybernetics & Science I and Science II

Co-authors:
Karl H. Mueller

Revolutions in the political sphere are usually immediately recognized as such and are perceived as revolutions as they unfold. Revolutions in the science system, however, become manifest only long after their occurrence. For example, Nicolaus Copernicus did not think of himself as the originator of the Copernican Revolution when he published finally ”De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” in 1543. More than fifty years after the publication very few scholars reacted either positively or negatively to Copernicus’ work and no one perceived the Copernican theory as one of the major revolutions in science. Within this context of silent revolutions in science the tutorial will be focused on two broad issues.
The first one is the question whether we are experiencing another silent revolution in science and the emergence of a new cognitive architecture of science in general. Here, the concepts of Science I and Science II will be introduced and discussed as a possible difference which makes a significant difference.
The second general problem to be addressed in this tutorial is the role and function of cybernetics within this silent revolution in science. First-order cybernetics was an inter- or transdisciplinary field with a clear focus on controlling and regulating technical, biological or social systems. The tutorial will explore possible roles and functions for second-order cybernetics or, as Heinz von Foerster called it, “the cybernetics of observing systems”. But who is observing what? What does it mean to include an observer into cybernetic investigations? Are we confronted with logical paradoxes and with insurmountable barriers by bringing an observer back in? And what could be the goals of cybernetics as a “theory of the observer”?

32) westermann (Claudia Westermann)
Email: Claudia.Westermann@xjtlu.edu.cn
Website: http://www.litra-design.com

Poaching in Circles

“Your life has a limit but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! ” (Zhuangzi)

Behind the window a girl enjoys a perfect view by looking through the clear circles that she has drawn into the transparent moisture aspirated onto the glass’ surface. ”Myth is close to the sacred source of language in gesture”, she whispers. I live, thus I am consistent. (All Truth is Other)

Is it ever clear (when) how (many) warnings are (good) enough, before one can begin to tell one of these stories that deal in one or another way with Magic Theaters? We know that sometimes it helps to equip the story already in the title with such a warning – a kind of ‘for madmen only’. Some additional citation at the beginning might be helpful for issuing just another confirmation of the same warning. And yet, can one ever be sure that the reader is finally well prepared to accept another reflective layer – this strange dimensional shift that seems to be at the beginning of cybernetic understanding?

The story goes as follows:

A box with children toys that originate in future’s time and place is sent to Earth. A young boy finds it and carries it home. He plays with some of the toys and can make sense of them, but he cannot fully understand them. They present riddles to him. While he is at the borderline of understanding the toys, to his parents – ‘conditioned by Euclid’ – they remain absolutely obscure. It is the boy’s younger sister – still unconditioned by language – who seems to understand best the toys’ spatial configuration. And thus, from this understanding of a different order, she draws an exit, and both the children escape the world of prediction.

Perhaps it is not very surprising that the short story “Mimse go the Borogoves”– which is very roughly summarized above – was included by editor (and cybernetician) Gotthard Guenther in a volume translating for the first time for the Geman speaking audience a series of American Science Fiction short stories – in 1952.

Reading is like ‘poaching’ suggests De Certeau. ‘Poaching’ is a form of creation whose principle is appropriation (1984, p. 174).

Paper Proposals

Learning About Learning: A Cybernetic Model of Skill Acquisition

Contextual Inquiry and Socio-Technical Practice

Insight Engine

Shifting from teaching to learning – understanding as a collective experience.

Actioning Architecture; A performance for human and non-human actors

Informal learning recognition – From theory to practice

Consequences of complex socio-technical systems for the level of human agency

Understanding and Learning to Reconcile Differences between Disciplines through Constructing an Artificial Personality

Multi-level Self-Organizations in Human Interactions

Labyrinth Psychotica, Simulating Psychotic Phenomena

Stress in mental health professionals: from researcher to sufferer.

Data Body Banks: Networked Identity Politics and Pervasive data embodiment

From Doing to Knowing and Back: The Cybernetics of Wisdom

Mutual Redundancies in Inter-human Communication Systems: Steps Towards a Calculus of Processing Meaning

Mediated Reality In Bearable Prosthesis

The Application of Social Cybernetics in Organizational Analysis

Informal learning recognition – From theory to practice

The rise of the infoborgs: post-humanism and materiality in the age of ubiquitous information

Triple loop learning and the politics of systems practice

Continuous Assessment and its Application in Isfahan’s Highschools

Achieving organizational excellence by adopting “Values to Value™” framework.

Designing, acting, understanding: Reflections on the relationship between practice and theory in the design process

A Cybernetics View of Explanation

Learning as Outcomes: Addressing Discarded Ideas in the User Centered Design Cycle

A Second-Order Cybernetic Approach to Social Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Understanding Understanding. Exploring Second-Order Science Fields

“What Have You Got to Listen?”

Learning: Variety-Amplification in Autonomous Systems

A cybernetics framework to analyse the relationships between ‘actions/activities and understandings’ and vice-versa for holistic learning considering risks

First and Second-Order Cybernetics & Science I and Science II

Poaching in Circles

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