Kybernetes: Volume 29 Issue 5/6

Ten pints of Beer: The rationale of Stafford Beer’s cybernetic books (1959‐94)

Details a discussion with Stafford Beer about the rationale of his cybernetic books published in the twentieth century (1959‐94). Includes a dialogue concerning his contributed…

About cybernetics, its roots and future

Norbert Wiener and Warren S. McCulloch are presented as the main contemporary initiators of cybernetics. Wiener chose Leibniz as “patron saint” of cybernetics because of his works…

The problem of technological barriers

Gives an insight into the thinking of the 1960s and written at a time when subsequent advances and developments could not have been predicted with any degree of certainty…

Cybernetics and systems in the 1980s

Considers the material impact of computers and cybernetics in the 1980s. Summarizes some of the then current principal applications. Looks at the contribution made by cybernetics…

Simplifying complexity: The greatest present challenge to management and government

Complexity in various contexts in the current global scene is studied in terms of its feedbacks and feedforwards, revealing how our understanding of it and our implementation of…

Self‐organisation in artificial neural nets

The usefulness of artificial neural nets stems from their ability to self‐adjust, or in some sense “learn”. In modern studies, the emphasis on powerful self‐organisation is less…

Pansystems thinking and investigations: Difference, identity, clustering

The framework, panorama, related applications and development of pansystems thinking are introduced and some problems concerning generalized systems, derivatives, symmetry and…

Sen’s endowment‐entitlement mapping in development economics: Cybernetic interpretation

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen developed the concept of endowment‐entitlement mapping in his studies on famine, poverty and deprivation in various regions of the world. Such a map can…

The ternary analysis of work and working organisations

The author’s ternality theory provides a ternary, or three‐domain, concept of mechanism, that forms the basis of a new paradigm for purpose and directiveness. A summary is given…

Dynamic expert systems

Introduces the notion of a dynamic expert system. Shows that by restarting a static expert system periodically it is possible to cope with dynamic environments. This quasi‐static…

The viable system model and knowledge management

Knowledge management will only realize its full potential if it addresses the organization as a whole. Beer’s viable system model provides an excellent structure for this.

Intelligent systems for optimisation and control

By considering a number of practical case study examples, the paper highlights some of the design methods of intelligent systems for use in optimisation and control. The paper…

Parallel controllers for decentralized robots: towards nano design

With the advent of new discoveries in material sciences, it may be possible, in the future, to construct extremely small robots. Explores the idea of employing an excitable medium…

Optimization by space‐densifying curves as a natural generalization of the Alienor method

The Alienor method offers a powerful approximation technique for the optimization of continuous multivariable functions defined on a compact set H of Rⁿ. Its computational…

General structure of Acalugaritei networks

Acalugaritei networks (ANs) are multidimensional evolutionary hierarchical networks. They are called hierarchical because the sets and subsets of components correspond to…

Observer or self‐observer in second‐order cybernetics?

The distinction between “observed” and “observing” systems that legitimizes the rise of second‐order cybernetics also raises a number of methodological and epistemological issues…

A planar flexible robotic manipulator

Presents the dynamic modelling of a flexible robotic manipulator with two flexible links and two revolute joints, which rotates in the horizontal plane. The dynamic equations are…

Czech evolution scenarios in cybernetics for the next millennium

The history of the position of cybernetics in the former Czechoslovakia from the 1950s is briefly described. At first it had been condemned as bourgeois quasi‐science, but in the…

Neurocybernetics: contents and problems

Defines neurocybernetics as a science concerned with the processes of control and communication in the nervous system. It is then possible to identify three components of this…

World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics

Cybernetics and systems in the new millennium – I