THE SOCIOCYBERNETIC PARADOX: A SHORT INTRODUCTION

Abstract

The rapidly increasing complexity of modern society has given rise to a host of societal crises and problems. Efforts to solve such problems have, more often than not, demonstrated the non‐governability of the social processes concerned: Inflation, the arms race, etc. Cybernetics and GST have recently claimed that they can contribute to the analysis and solution of large‐scale social problems—as demonstrated by the often ambitious themes of conferences in these fields. In the following, “social cybernetics” is the general term that will be used for applications of general systems theory and cybernetics to the analysis of social processes, problems and structures. One should, however, realize that these applications have, over the past decade, had a feedback effect on GST and cybernetics themselves, and have caused the emergence of what is now often called the new cybernetics. “Sociocybernetics” is the term that will be specifically reserved for the applications of this new cybernetics to the above mentioned analysis.

Citation

VAN DER ZOUWEN, J. and GEYER, F. (1984), "THE SOCIOCYBERNETIC PARADOX: A SHORT INTRODUCTION", Kybernetes, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 129-131. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb005682