The role of experience in the ASC’s commitment to engage those outside the cybernetics community in learning cybernetics

Abstract

Purpose

The key ideas of cybernetics have remained unknown or misunderstood by contemporary technological societies. The purpose of this paper is to consider how best to assist individuals outside the cybernetics and systems communities in learning key concepts of cybernetics.

Design/methodology/approach

The main approach used to make this case is consideration of how individuals can come to understand circular systems and circular causality. The paper makes a case that if we want to assist interested others in learning cybernetics, we can best do so either by identifying where interested others already have experiences that they can reinterpret in terms of causality through investigation, analysis, and conversation or by designing experiences such as interactive models and simulations that become the basis of each user’s inventing an understanding of circular causality, and then, through analysis and conversation, refining that understanding. It provides examples, in particular, the example of how learning to sail a small boat involves the sailor in creating an intuitive (and possibly formal) understanding of wind, water, and boat as elements of a circular system. The paper considers the ethics of assisting others in learning cybernetic concepts such as circular causality.

Findings

The paper provides an approach to understanding cybernetic concepts that can be used with students and adults of all ages.

Research limitations/implications

This paper ties together theoretical and practical considerations from a constructivist viewpoint.

Practical implications

Through the development of the example of the Greek helmsman, the kybernetes, the paper provides a point of departure for those in the cybernetics and systems communities involved in designing teacher-based or web-based materials for cybernetics.

Originality/value

The paper has value as a guide to practice.

Citation

Martin, R.J. (2015), "The role of experience in the ASC’s commitment to engage those outside the cybernetics community in learning cybernetics", Kybernetes, Vol. 44 No. 8/9, pp. 1331-1340. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-11-2014-0230