Citation
(1998), "The American Society for Cybernetics", Kybernetes, Vol. 27 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1998.06727dab.006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited
The American Society for Cybernetics
The American Society for Cybernetics
The 1998 International Workshop was scheduled for April 1998. The theme this year was: Design, Planning and Human Understanding, and the venue was the Baskin Visual Arts Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.
The American Society for Cybernetics International Workshop looked into issues of pattern, organization, and structure in the context of communication (and anti-communication) between and among observers. It addressed the operational features of language and languaging, and of conversation in human enterprises that involve understanding, imagining, explaining, planning, and deciding. Participants in this workshop included seminal figures in the field of second-order cybernetics, including Heinz Von Foerster, Ernst von Glasersfeld and Humberto Maturana.
Interdisciplinary in nature, this workshop was of interest to participants in disciplines as divergent as biology, anthropology, sociology, architecture, philosophy, engineering, art, design, music, linguistics, education, management and psychotherapy.
The American Society for Cybernetics, founded in 1964, is dedicated to Second-Order Cybernetics, the cybernetics of observers and of observing (rather than observed) systems. The society is composed of scientists, philosophers and artists interested in the art and science of human understanding.
It was interesting to note that the abstracts and presentations at the workshop were to reflect the participants' interpretation of concepts such as: observing, designing, planning, communicating, anti-communicating, understanding, and human relations. It is hoped that a full report of the workshop will be available for readers in a coming issue of this journal.
Information about the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) and updates on its activities are on the ASC Website: http://www.altogether.com/cybernetics