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The outstanding event of the 8th International Congress of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics was the presentation of the Norbert Wiener Memorial Gold Medal to Professor Robert Vallée, Professor of the Université Paris‐Nord, France, by Dr Margaret Wiener‐Kennedy, the daughter of the President in Memoriam of WOSC, Dr Norbert Wiener.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce important new web sites, one of them providing data on the WOSC President and the other on the Queen of the UK and her family. Also discussed is a video demonstrating human neural plasticity and two sites having relevance to ecology. The demonstration of neural plasticity is contrasted with a quite different demonstration of its operation in the adult rat.

The aim is to review developments on the internet, especially those of general cybernetic interest.

Both of the major web sites reviewed are valuable sources of information, the second being also of special technical and aesthetic interest. Both demonstrations of plasticity may be useful in guiding speculation about underlying mechanisms. The first of the two sites dealing with ecology allows quantitative appreciation of the seriousness of the world situation, and the second describes a research facility in which partial remedies are sought.

Data on Robert Vallée is valuable both as a source of reference to his publications as such and in revealing the personality behind them. The “royal” web site also reveals personality and has the special technical and aesthetic interest already mentioned. It is also valuable in showing the working of a constitutional monarchy in a parliamentary democracy. The attempt to understand neural plasticity has long been a major challenge in neuroscience. The seriousness of the world ecological situation is powerfully demonstrated and the research facility described offers some amelioration.

It is hoped that this paper is a valuable periodic review.