The concept of information is central to several fields of research and professional practice. So many definitions have been put forward that complete inventory is unachievable…
Abstract
Purpose
The concept of information is central to several fields of research and professional practice. So many definitions have been put forward that complete inventory is unachievable while authors have failed to reach a consensus. In the face of the present impasse, innovative proposals could rouse information theorists to action, but literature surveys tend to emphasize the common traits of definitions. Reviewers are inclined to iron out originality in information models; thus the purpose of this paper is to discover the creativity of authors attempting to define the concept of information and to stimulate the progress of studies in this field.
Design/methodology/approach
Because the present inquiry could be influenced and distorted by personal criteria and opinions, the authors have adopted precise criteria and guidelines. It could be said the present approach approximates a statistical methodology.
Findings
The findings of this paper include (1) The authors found 32 original definitions of information which sometimes current surveys have overlooked. (2) The authors found a relation between information theories and advances in information technology. (3) Overall, the authors found that researchers take account of a wide variety of perspectives yet overlook the notion of information as used by computing practitioners such as electronic engineers and software developers.
Research limitations/implications
The authors comment on some limitations of the procedure that was followed. Results 1 and 3 open up new possibilities for theoretical research in the information domain.
Originality/value
This is an attempt to conduct a bibliographical inquiry driven by objective and scientific criteria; its value lies in the fact that final report has not been influenced by personal choice or arbitrary viewpoints.
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Attention is drawn to an announcement of two publications relating to the work of Humberto Maturana, and to a new online encyclopedia of systems and cybernetics. The latter uses…
Abstract
Purpose
Attention is drawn to an announcement of two publications relating to the work of Humberto Maturana, and to a new online encyclopedia of systems and cybernetics. The latter uses Wikimedia technology for free interaction, and this is discussed. Advice on combating spyware and other forms of malware is reviewed, as well as surveys of how to make computers quieter in operation, and of the worrying question of when to switch off between periods of use.
Design/methodology/approach
The aim is to review developments on the internet, especially those of general cybernetic interest.
Findings
Some of the developments reported have research value, while others bear on practical aspects of computer use and internet access.
Practical implications
The comments on security may prompt urgent action by readers. Otherwise the implications are for access to information and for computer quietness and economy.
Originality/value
It is hoped this is a valuable periodic review.
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Herbert Brün was a composer of many things including electronic and computer music. His compositions were, by design, nested in his passions for designing a new society – without…
Abstract
Purpose
Herbert Brün was a composer of many things including electronic and computer music. His compositions were, by design, nested in his passions for designing a new society – without violence. In this article, the author attempts to address several of Brün’s concepts relevant to his desire for social change. This paper was stimulated by a panel discussion about Brün at the 2018 American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) conference “Framing a Reality and How It Matters in a Shared World.”
Design/methodology/approach
Herbert Brün nested his communication in what he labeled “anticommunication,” which requires a listener to generate new ways of listening. As a video ethnographer, the author had many opportunities to videotape Brün, beginning with our first encounter at the 1992 ASC Conference in Washington State. During the past several decades, the author has composed a variety of movies in which the video footage of Brün and others that the author associates with cybernetics is used. Excerpts from many of these movies are embedded in the links located in the references section of this paper.
Findings
Brün’s cybernetic formulations for designing social transformations explored in this paper include his ideas on floating hierarchies, anticommunication, his notions on a circularity of needs, peace as a need, articulating desires, composing as an element of daily life, and the retardation of decay.
Originality/value
It is the author’s desire that this paper encourages the reader to explore some of Herbert Brün’s formulations for designing social change and transformations.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the heuristics course co‐taught by Heinz von Foerster, Herbert Brün, and Humberto Maturana (1968‐1969) influenced cybernetic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the heuristics course co‐taught by Heinz von Foerster, Herbert Brün, and Humberto Maturana (1968‐1969) influenced cybernetic research in the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
The author accessed the archived material from three sources: the Herbert Brün Library, the University of Illinois Library, and the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) and interpreted these materials in light of the cybernetics literature, and the publications of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC).
Findings
The heuristics course had major consequences in von Foerster's evolving critique of education, and in Brün's work towards founding a School for Designing a Society. von Foerster radically reoriented the BCL toward unconventional course proposals. He also began to critique objectivity and positivism, shifting the foundations of cybernetics and proposing a meta‐cybernetics. The year that von Foerster retired, the BCL and the ASC ceased to function. When the ASC returned in the 1980s it took on new emphases, including education and design. It appears von Foerster was pivotal in the shift of emphasis.
Originality/value
The findings add new dimensions to the story of the decline of the BCL in the 1970s, and the re‐emergence of the ASC in the 1980s with new emphases (such as design) that are not traditionally found in scientific research.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of recursive processes in the evolution of learning in both individuals and organisations, beginning with a clarification…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of recursive processes in the evolution of learning in both individuals and organisations, beginning with a clarification of the distinction between recursion and other types of feedback, drawing on insights from Humberto Maturana and George Richardson.
Design/methodology/approach
Further work informing this inquiry includes Gregory Bateson on learning levels, Chris Argyris and Donald Schon on double loop learning, Peter Senge on organizational learning, and James G. Miller on the processing of matter/energy and information in living systems, at different levels of organization.
Findings
The paper provides an original synthesis of insights from Miller's living systems theory, in exploring the implications of Bateson's learning levels, as well as further insights from the work of Argyris, Schon and Senge, at cellular, individual, organisational, and global levels, to reinforce the need for a higher order, global level of learning.
Originality/value
Value in findings outlined above.
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This article is a contribution to the development of a comprehensive interdisciplinary theory of LIS in the hope of giving a more precise evaluation of its current problems. The…
Abstract
This article is a contribution to the development of a comprehensive interdisciplinary theory of LIS in the hope of giving a more precise evaluation of its current problems. The article describes an interdisciplinary framework for lis, especially information retrieval (IR), in a way that goes beyond the cognitivist ‘information processing paradigm’. The main problem of this paradigm is that its concept of information and language does not deal in a systematic way with how social and cultural dynamics set the contexts that determine the meaning of those signs and words that are the basic tools for the organisation and retrieving of documents in LIS. The paradigm does not distinguish clearly enough between how the computer manipulates signs and how librarians work with meaning in practice when they design and run document mediating systems. The ‘cognitive viewpoint’ of Ingwersen and Belkin makes clear that information is not objective, but rather only potential, until it is interpreted by an individual mind with its own internal mental world view and purposes. It facilitates further study of the social pragmatic conditions for the interpretation of concepts. This approach is not yet fully developed. The domain analytic paradigm of Hjørland and Albrechtsen is a conceptual realisation of an important aspect of this area. In the present paper we make a further development of a non‐reductionistic and interdisciplinary view of information and human social communication by texts in the light of second‐order cybernetics, where information is seen as ‘a difference which makes a difference’ for a living autopoietic (self‐organised, self‐creating) system. Other key ideas are from the semiotics of Peirce and also Warner. This is the understanding of signs as a triadic relation between an object, a representation and an interpretant. Information is the interpretation of signs by living, feeling, self‐organising, biological, psychological and social systems. Signification is created and con‐trolled in a cybernetic way within social systems and is communicated through what Luhmann calls generalised media, such as science and art. The modern socio‐linguistic concept ‘discourse communities’ and Wittgenstein's ‘language game’ concept give a further pragmatic description of the self‐organising system's dynamic that determines the meaning of words in a social context. As Blair and Liebenau and Backhouse point out in their work it is these semantic fields of signification that are the true pragmatic tools of knowledge organ‐isation and document retrieval. Methodologically they are the first systems to be analysed when designing document mediating systems as they set the context for the meaning of concepts. Several practical and analytical methods from linguistics and the sociology of knowledge can be used in combination with standard methodology to reveal the significant language games behind document mediation.
In 1974, Heinz von Foerster articulated the distinction between a first‐ and second‐order cybernetics, as, respectively, the cybernetics of observed systems and the cybernetics of…
Abstract
In 1974, Heinz von Foerster articulated the distinction between a first‐ and second‐order cybernetics, as, respectively, the cybernetics of observed systems and the cybernetics of observing systems. Von Foerster's distinction, together with his own work on the epistemology of the observer, has been enormously influential on the work of a later generation of cyberneticians. It has provided an architecture for the discipline of cybernetics, one that, in true cybernetic spirit, provides order where previously there was variety and disorder. It has provided a foundation for the research programme that is second‐order cybernetics. However, as von Foerster himself makes clear, the distinction he articulated was imminent right from the outset in the thinking of the early cyberneticians, before, even, the name of their discipline had been coined. In this paper, the author gives a brief account of the developments in cybernetics that lead to von Foerster's making his distinction. As is the way of such narratives, it is but one perspective on a complex series of events. Not only is this account a personal perspective, it also includes some recollections of events that were observed and participated in at first hand.
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The purpose of this paper to discuss ethical principles that are implicit in second-order cybernetics, with the aim of arriving at a better understanding of how second-order…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper to discuss ethical principles that are implicit in second-order cybernetics, with the aim of arriving at a better understanding of how second-order cybernetics frames living in a world with others. It further investigates implications for second-order cybernetics approaches to architectural design, i.e. the activity of designing frameworks for living.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper investigates terminology in the second-order cybernetics literature with specific attention to terms that suggest that there are ethical principles at work. It further relates second-order cybernetics to selected notions in phenomenology, pragmatism and transcendental idealism. The comparison allows for conclusions about the specificity of a second-order inquiry. In line with the thematic focus of this journal issue on the framing of shared worlds, the paper further elaborates on questions relating to the activity of designing “worlds” in which people live with others.
Findings
The paper highlights that a radical openness toward the future and toward the agency of others is inscribed in the conception of second-order cybernetics. It creates a frame of reference for conceiving social systems of all kinds, including environments that are designed to be inhabited.
Originality/value
The paper identifies an aesthetics grounded in the process of living-with-others as an ethical principle implicit in second-order cybernetics thought. It is an aesthetics that is radically open for the agency of others. Linking aesthetics and ethics, the paper’s contributions will be of specific value for practitioners and theoreticians of design. Considering second-order cybernetics as a practice generally dealing with designing, it also contributes to the wider second-order cybernetics discourse.
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This paper takes as a datum that autopoiesis theory broadly conceived as a scientific doctrine can legitimately be viewed as a modern day rediscovery of Aristotle. This is argued…
Abstract
This paper takes as a datum that autopoiesis theory broadly conceived as a scientific doctrine can legitimately be viewed as a modern day rediscovery of Aristotle. This is argued for elsewhere. What is argued is that Maturanian organisation as it is currently conceived has serious deficiencies which threaten to compromise and undermine the role Maturana assigns it. The specific thesis it advances is that Maturanian organisation can be rescued from this dilemma if it is rethought as Aristotelian form.