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Events

  1. RSDX–ASC Conversational Confluences Online Series
  2. ASC 2026 Conference: Conversational Confluences
  3. Speaker Series: Emergent Territories
  4. New Macy Meetings
  5. Cybernetics and systems organizations calendar
  6. Past events
  7. ASC initiatives (activities vary according to the group’s dynamic)

RSDX–ASC Conversational Confluences Online Series

August 24–27, 2026 Online Event

The RSDX–ASC Online Series brings the ASC 2026 conference of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), with its overarching theme of Conversational Confluences, into the context of RSD15’s Designing within a Plural World. The two meet on shared ground as both view diversity as a source of collective learning and creativity. Drawing on the concept of confluence articulated by the Brazilian thinker and activist Nego Bispo, which grounds the ASC 2026 theme, the series explores how distinct worldviews, epistemologies, and practices can enter into meaningful dialogue while maintaining their differences and integrity. In this context, difference becomes a source of mutual appreciation rather than assimilation. Conversational Confluences thus extends RSD15’s engagement with pluralism, epistemic justice, and intercultural collaboration, asking how multiple approaches can coexist, challenge one another, and contribute to addressing complex social and ecological challenges.

The program will feature invited talks, research presentations, and workshops, including both independent contributions and continuations of conversations initiated at the ASC conference in Brazil, drawing on the thematic tracks of the ASC 2026 conference in Ouro Preto, Brazil (August 3–7, 2026), continuing and extending the conversations they open.

Registration is open at RSD15 Website

ASC 2026 Conference: Conversational Confluences

August 3–7, 2026

Join us in Ouro Preto, Brazil for the American Society for Cybernetics conference, Conversational Confluences.

Confluence, as articulated by Brazilian thinker and activist Nego Bispo, provides a framework for reflecting on how diverse worldviews, practices, and epistemologies can coexist without losing their distinct identities. Rather than assimilation or homogenization, confluence is about mutual amplification, where differences are not obstacles but sources of strength. Like rivers merging to become stronger, this coming together creates new, more resilient possibilities of coexistence. Rooted in decolonial and counter-hegemonic struggles, the concept invites us to imagine collaborations that foster plurality and the emergence of new systems of living and knowing. Building on this understanding, the ASC 2026 meeting seeks to explore how cybernetics can participate in such confluences — through encounters and experiments that bring it into dialogue with art, design, technology, ecology, and situated knowledge.

More information

ASC Speakers Series Season #6: Emergent Territories

Virtual conversations on cybernetic topics from a diverse group of theorists and practitioners.

Formats alternates between interviews, presentations, conversations, and more. They are typically held on the third Sunday of each month at 9:00 PT, 12:00 ET, 18:00 CET.

Speaker Series page and previous recordings

#NewMacyMeetings

A revival of the original Macy Meetings, the trans-disciplinary conversations at the founding of Cybernetics in the 1940s and 1950s, redefined for the 21st century to include trans-global and trans-generational participation.

List of events #NewMacy Meetings

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