Cybernetics — Why Feedback is so important?
Let’s start this conversation about cybernetics in a very light, low-weight, and hopefully enjoyable way.
This is an attempt for me to make sense of these ideas and create values for the ones who would like to jump into this world of systems in a structured but not (far from) finalized way. This is an exploration for both of us so we might as well do it together and help each other out. I will be using the “2021 Map of the Complexity Sciences” by Brian Castellani & Lasse Gerrits as the basis of this journey. Read the previous blogs in this series here.
I will write here what I have been learning along the way and you are more than invited to criticize, give your opinion, and point out ideas that are not clear. Collaboration is the goal and the journey at the same time.
What is cybernetics?
The first time I heard this word, the first thing that came to my mind was:
I thought “This must have something to do with cyborgs”. In a way, that was a great way to start and I am going to explain why.
My first step to trying to make sense of something I don’t know yet is to break words down and/or look at the etymology of the word- my guilty pleasure. In this case, the word originated from the Greek, ‘kybernetes’, (Wiener, 1948) meaning ‘steersman’, or the one who steers and controls something (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2023). So, in a sense, Cybernetics can be defined as the “field of control and communication in machines and in living organisms”. (Wiener, 1948). A powerful paragraph from Wiener (1948) that expresses the potential and the usefulness of this field of study is the following:
“The study of cybernetics is likely to have fruitful applications in many fields. from the design of control mechanisms for artificial limbs to the almost complete mechanization of industry. But in our view it encompasses much wider horizons. If the 17th and early 18th centuries were the age of clocks, and the latter 18th and 19th centuries the age of steam engines, the present time is the age of communication and control.” (p. 15)
In summary, cybernetics is concerned about the information that is communicated within a system.
Great, that’s awesome. So now, why did I think of cyborgs in the first place? While breaking words down and/or looking for the etymology of words, I realized that “cyborg” was created in the 1960s by merging both “cybernetics” and “organism” giving rise to this concept that alludes to a human being whose “physiological functions are aided or enhanced by artificial means” (Britannica, 2023). So fields such as artificial intelligence, technology, and communications have their roots in cybernetics and their implications are so great in our everyday world that it is important to take a closer look into the main features of this groundbreaking field of science.
Introduction
According to Bernard Scott, (Poe, n.d.), cybernetics is a transdiscipline, in the sense that it serves a function to identify differences and similarities between other disciplines, and a meta-discipline, which helps to make sense of the individual disciplines and discuss them in their context (Poe, n.d.). This is useful because it creates unity in how we look into other disciplines and how we can see how they work together to enable a desirable outcome or to understand how a phenomenon comes about. Essentially, cybernetics can be seen to be a perspective one can use to understand how something operates and how to make it work better.
For example, if we are trying to make sense of something as ‘simple’ as “writing a good blog” (there is definitely nothing simple in writing a blog, by the way…), it can be useful to, firstly, understand how “writing a blog” works, how this phenomena “blog” comes to life. So it is important to understand how, for example, the software used for writing operates and by understanding our own style of writing and the diverse options of apps out there, one can decide the best way forward. This interaction between what we want to write, our personal style, and the tools available for that matter creates a very unique ‘system’ that enables several outcomes and possibilities.
If we aim to create a good blog, several features are important to consider. First of all, conceptualize “what is a good blog” and then with this definition, see how it is possible to control some features in the world of all the different possibilities to achieve that desired outcome. An example could be controlling when the blog comes out so people can read it consistently and regularly. Another example could be controlling the words one uses in order to speak to a specific audience. This is what the controlling part of the definition means: guiding, establishing, and restricting some behaviors in order to get closer to that desirable goal or “to order, limit, or rule something, or someone’s actions or behavior” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.) That is the same with machines and tools because, if you want the car to function, it is important to control the amount of oil inside the tank and the tire pressure, for example.
However, writing the right amount of words and using good software doesn’t necessarily guarantee the quality of the blog. Even if writers use the best app, with all the necessary and unnecessary features to it and a consistent broadcast calendar, it may not guarantee achieving that “good” quality one aims toward. And that’s when the information part of the definition comes into place: to achieve something, it is important to get “feedback”, the details from the system’s working itself so improvements can take place and, slowly, guide us to a better, more desirable outcome. According to Heylighen & Joslyn (2003), cybernetics is very much concerned about how the systems function rather than how it is constituted. In the case of the blog, people’s comments and reactions can be a very insightful way to understand how this system is working, how the parts interact to give rise to a specific result and this information can be extremely important for the betterment of the writing. Without that, even with the best tools it won’t be enough to achieve greater results.
That’s what Wiener found out when he was trying to address the problems of steering that “The basic problem of control was ‘centered not around the technique of electrical engineering but around the much more fundamental notion of the message’ — and thus of information to be transmitted.” (C. François, 1999, p. 208). Here, an important concept is the one of “feedback”, or “information about the result of a transformation or an action is sent back to the input of the system in the form of input data” **(**With this concept in mind, we can see how important “feedback” is (most importantly, honest and accurate ones) when dealing with any type of systems, be they mechanical or living ones.
Words in the field of cybernetics such as ‘control’, ‘regulation’, ‘feedback’, ‘messages’, and ‘efficient channels’, for example, were so important and impactful in many other realms of science and everyday life that it became an inherent feature in systematics (C. François, 1999).
1st & 2nd Order Cybernetics
Bernard Scott shares that 1st Order Cybernetics is the study of observed systems (Poe, n.d.) or, in other words, the functions and workings of the systems we have at hand. Essentially, everything that has been said so far is relative to the 1st wave of Cybernetics. However, the 2nd order cybernetics is more concerned with studying the observing systems, which are reflexive and self-referential (Poe, n.d.). This second wave of the movement on cybernetics emphasizes concepts such as ‘autonomy’, ‘self-organization’, and ‘cognition’ and how the observer plays a part in modeling the system (Heylighen & Joslyn, 2003).
This extract from Heylighen & Joslyn (2003) expresses well this difference between the 2 orders of cybernetics.
[…] “first-order” cyberneticist, will study a system as if it were a passive, objectively given “thing”, that can be freely observed, manipulated, and taken apart. A second-order cyberneticist working with an organism or social system, on the other hand, recognizes that system as an agent in its own right, interacting with another agent, the observer. (p. 3)
It is always important to mention that both moments in cybernetics are not in conflict with each other but are rather complementary and very much welcome by authors and researchers from both waves. Because cybernetics is a lifestyle, a worldview, and not simply a research topic, both perspectives, the observed and the observer, as essential to make sense of the world and how it works (Heylighen & Joslyn (2003, Poe, n.d.).
Automation and Cybernetics
A possible question that can be asked is “OK, so how is this cybernetics thing relevant in today’s world?” well… look around you. It may or may not be winter when you are reading this blog where you are but, regardless of the weather, think about the heather in your house. If you are from a hot country like me and you have no idea what the word “heater” means (I didn’t really know this gorgeous object until a couple of years back), think about your washing machine. If none of these are out of your interest, I’m sure your phone or any digital technology is. What is there is common between all these different examples? They all work with some type of automation. The heater warms the room until a certain temperature and after that, through feedback loops, it adjusts its operations to maintain the temperature more or less stable. The same happens with the washing machine: you click one button and the machine adjusts itself to rinse, wash, spin the clothes, and sometimes even dry them. Lastly, your phone works with thousands of automation such as ‘play a ringtone when someone calls’, ‘ring a bell to notify when someone sends a message’ or ‘change the brightness accordingly to the lighting in the room’. All of these examples are congruent with the idea of feedback and they are in everything we do.
I’m sure you can complexify these ideas and understand, for example, how they can be powerful in the context of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and robotics.
If you didn’t find any of these examples especially convincing, please let me know in the comments how you could potentially apply the concepts of cybernetics in your own life! I always love to know the different ways people are exploring and living these topics every day (because we are bumping against these ideas every single day!)
Main Names in the Field
This very impressive field of research and science has several great and influential names that are important to be highlighted here in order. I think it is very important to understand the main authors and thinkers in the field because looking at the history and, consequentially, the ones who initiated the movement gives us a better understanding of how it came to be what it is today.
Norbert Wiener
Several authors regard Wiener to be the main founder of cybernetics due to his famous book entitled “Cybernetics”, where he revives the concept once used by Plato and Ampère as well as provides practical examples of how this idea can be used in the modern world to understand the most diverse phenomena (François, 1999; Wiener, 1948).
W. Ross Ashby
Ashby was a prominent thinker in the application of the concept of cybernetics and the mind. His work appeared around 1951 and 1960 and had important implications such as the homeostat model, the importance of the notion of constraints in systems and self-organizing systems (François, 1999; Heylighen & Joslyn, 2003)
Gregory Bateson
Alongside Ashby, Bateson was also a very important author when it comes to the usage of cybernetics and the mind however his contributions range from topics such as communication, family therapy and ecology, for example (Montuori, 2005).
Claude Shannon
His contributions started in the eco-evolutionary theory — even though he wasn’t an ecologist or evolutionary theorist himself — and identified the close theoretical connection between ecology, physics, and information theory. Entropy is one word that was extremely important in the work of Shannon and it is extensively used nowadays in diverse fields of work. (Rodríguez et al., 2016)
John von Neumann
John von Neumann is one of the world’s most renowned mathematicians and has contributed to the field of cybernetics by influencing fields such as quantum theory, automata theory, economics, and defense planning. One of his most important contributions was pioneering the field of game theory and being one of the inventors of the modern digital computer (Poundstone, n.d.)
Arturo Rosenblueth
His contributions were very prominent in the field of medicine and physiology, especially in neurophysiology.
Francis Heylighen
Concerned with better understanding the process of self-organization and applying these insights to boost human development. He has been the editor of the Principia Cybernetica Project, an international organization for the collaborative development of an evolutionary-systemic philosophy (Heylighen, 2018; Linkedin, n.d.)
(*Disclaimer: this and the next blogs will be updated as I acquire more information and knowledge about the ideas presented here. This is going to be an ongoing project and I am more than happy to receive feedback if those ideas are not accurate, if you would like to know more from these blogs, or if you would like to propose a new idea)
Read the other blogs in this series:
Complexity what?! How to make sense of Complexity Science
Systems Theory — The Beginning of a Journey
Bibliography:
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