The Cybernetics Society holds scientific meetings, conferences, and social events, and engages in other activities to encourage public understanding of science and to extend and disseminate knowledge of cybernetics and its associated disciplines. The Society aims to support the Continuing Professional Development of its members. The Cybernetics Society is a member society of the International Federation for Systems Research and is affiliated to the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics. The Cybernetics Society is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

7th IEEE International Conference on Cybernetic Intelligent Systems 2008

The Conference will be held at the University of Middlesex September 9-10, 2008. Deadline for 6 page paper extended to 5th May. Further details.

1st Cwarel Isaf Conference March 25th - 26th, 2008- Short Report

Malik Management Zentrum St Gallen invited the world's leading management cyberneticians to a meeting at their new headquarters in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The Cwarel Isaf Institute was founded by the late Stafford Beer (and named after his cottage in Wales) and Fredmund Malik to make the life’s work of Beer available to society, to steward his intellectual property and to transfer related knowledge into the benefits of practical applications.

Malik MZSG discussed and presented their approach to management based in Cybernetics. The twelve sessions covered the Viable System Model, Syntegration, General Systems Modelling (particularly the approach of Frederick Vester from his "The Art of Interconnected Thinking"), Bionics (supported with a richly illustrated book, by Malik staff, "Bionics: The intelligence of creation" with many contributions including Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Nobelist Gerd Binnig), Strategic Planning, Innovation and Audit.

Participants agreed, including many from the Metaphorum Group, this had been most useful and well presented development. The world is now closer to realizing the wide applicability and benefits of what, today, we can call the risk based evolutionary model of Stafford Beer's Viable System.

University of Gratz seeks Professor of Systems Science

Detailed information. Closing date for application: April 21st, 2008.

Our Cybernetics: American Cybernetics Society Conference 2008

May 11-15, 2008 at University of Illinois in Urbana, IL, USA. A call for proposals of papers, performances, displays, symposia, workshops, panels, hosted conversations relating to the conference as described or to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Biological Computer Laboratory.

More details at ASC website.

Distributed Computing Workshop

To be held on Wednesday 21st May 2008 and organized by UK Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) & the Kite Club.

• Talks from top-level experts in Grid computing adoption & opportunities for Open Source.
• Adoption success stories showcasing the value-add of Grid computing.
• Top tips on how to get started from experts with proven experience.
• Dedicated Tracks on Energy & Finance and on Life Sciences & Healthcare.
• Elevator pitches from several new start-up activities in Grid computing that are being spun out of CERN and related laboratories.
• Q&A session with a panel of experts.
• Networking opportunities.

Agenda and more details. Participation is free and open to all interested parties.

If you feel you are able to contribute to this event or would like further information please contact Alex Efimov.

Pask Present- exhibition at 19th EMSCR Conference

Following "Maverick Machines" at the University of Edinburgh pieces from established artists, architects, designers, academics and students inspired by Gordon Pask's work will be exhibited including his interest in analogue computing and his experiments with elctrochemistry. Further details. The exhibition will be held at Atelier Färbergasse, Färbergasse 6, A-1010 Vienna, from 26th March to 4th April, open daily from 13:00 to 21:00. The opening ceremony will take place on 25th March, 19:00.

Lovelock on Climate change at the Royal Society

Our honorary fellow Professor James Lovelock discusses the response of the earth to global warming and possible interventions from the perspective of his Gaia model. "A feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet". Video of lecture "Climate change on the living Earth" (1:05:29 Real Player or Windows Media Player).

Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind

Marvin Minsky talks on video (1:23:10 Real Player) at MIT about the problems of AI and his latest book. Visit Minsky's website to download the 2006 version along with many other of his publications. The sound is of variable quality but the setting of goals, the detection of difference, the building of analogies and the context dependency of interpretation has a contemporary ring in Pask's work. Minsky's use of critics and selectors on his suggested six level model is redolent of more English cybernetics in Beer's VSM.

Fourteenth WOSC Conference next September

The World Organistion for Systems and Cybernetics was be held in Wroclaw, Poland, September 9-12, 2008. Further details. Brochure.

Professor Klaus Krippendorff "Conversation and Causes of its Degeneration" (.ppt) and "Language (reconstructing its origins) and Accountability reconsidering its Cybernetics" (.ppt) workshop presentation.

Third International Heinz von Foerster Congress 16-19th November 2007 Vienna

Special Sections on Ernst von Glasersfeld who celebrated his 90th birthday this year and Gordon Pask (1928-1996) whose scientific papers are now archived at the Department of Contemporary History, University of Vienna. Participation is free. Further details. Register.

The 19th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR)

The meeting will take place in Vienna during the week after Easter 2008, March 25th to 28th (inclusive). This is, historically, the major biennial meeting in Europe. Full details

There are 15 symposia.

John Rose

Professor John Rose, founder of WOSC and of the journals Kybernetes and Robotica, died on Friday 3rd August 2007. As a refugee from the Nazis he made his home in Britain. He was active in education and consulting to industry. He produced more than 50 books on chemistry, cybernetics, automation, biomedical computing, environmental issues and medical biotechnology. WOSC obituary.

Donald Michie

Professor Donald Michie died in a car accident with his ex-wife Dame Anne McLaren earlier this month. From Rangoon to Rugby School then classics at Balliol he went to cryptography at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing and Jack Good. In 1944 he helped render Tommy Flowers' Colossus II programmable. In 1972 we learned the Colossi were destroyed by Churchill but in fact two were moved to "British secret service headquarters". After a DPhil in mammalian genetics Michie became UK's leading AI researcher founding the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception at Edinburgh University. Obituaries and many more details in the Telegraph, Guardian, Times and Independent where he is described as part of the cybernetics movement. Andrew Murray writes that Donald and Anne had a lifelong commitment to socialism.

Allenna Leonard's keynote speech to WMSCI

Our member Dr Allenna Leonard of the Complementary Set and past president of the American Society for Cybenetics gave a keynote address to the 11th World Multiconfence on Systemics, Cybernetics and Infomatics in Orlando (WMSCI). Full text of her paper "The Viable Systems Model and its Application to Complex Systems".

The Pask Archive

The Institute for Contemporary History of the University of Vienna will host the Pask Archive. Rebecca Hibit tells us the Gordon Pask Archive will be open in time for EMCSR (2008). Pask introduced forces into Cybernetics with Paul Pangaro and later coined the term "new" cybernetics to include the eternal kinetic actor interactions that support the production of the bounded kinematic descriptions and conversations of observer participants. Pask's model of Self Organization "Like concepts repel, unlike concepts attract", where concepts are procedures composed of spins that produce relations in all media, should receive further attention in coming years. "They will come to know", he once said.

Pask's student, Dr Ranulph Glanville, will be chairing Symposium C at EMCSR on Second Order Cybernetics "making Gordon the central theme", Ranulph tell us. The formal announcement of the Pask Archive will be around November 18th when a collection of Pask's papers and essays he has edited will be published in support.He has also arranged a seminar with Dr Karl Mueller. Speakers will include Paul Pangaro and Bernard Scott.

Gordon was the recepient of many awards, including the Wiener Medal, but he had particular affection for the first award of "Ehrenmitglied" (Honorary Member) of the Österreichisches Studiengesellschaft für Kybernetik (the Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies). It is entirely appropriate that the efforts of many including Dr Glanville and Dr. Bernard Scott has resulted in an archive in Vienna alongside his mentor Heinz von Foerster. Heinz called Gordon a genius (Kybernetes 30, 5/6, 2001).

Pangaro Inc's Pask Archive includes new presentations at the related site "http://www.cyberneticians.com" on Pask with Warren McCulloch, Lettvin and Maturana and video clips.

From Vanilla Beer: Maverick Machines - A public exhibition inspired by the maverick work of cybernetician Gordon Pask opened this month at the Matthew Architecture Gallery, Edinburgh. 24th July - 10th August, Open Mon - Fri 10am-4pm. More details

Neurotechnologija real-time image recognition software development kit

Neurotechnologija announce details of their SentiSight real-time moving and still image recognition SDK. Windows demo and SDK trial downloads.

Anatol Rapoport

Anatol Rapoport, a founder of General Systems Theory, died on January 20 2007, aged 95. A Commemoration was held last month in the University of Toronto.

A short appreciation and notes on sources.

Nineteenth European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR 2008))

Call for papers at University of Vienna March 25- 28 2008: organized by the Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies in cooperation with the Institute of Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence, Center for Brain Research, Medical University of Vienna and the International Federation for Systems Research.

World Chinese Forum on Science of General Systems (WCFSGS)

This is a new online journal. WOSC Director for International Affairs, Dr Alex Andrew, tells us the Chinese are leaders in Pansystems and Grey Systems. Some papers are in English.

WOSC 2008 Call for Papers

The next World Oranisation for Systems and Cybenetics (WOSC) will be held in Wroclaw, Poland September 9- 12, 2008. More details. Conference leaflet.

Real Time Reporting advocated by "Big Six" accounting firms

In a report "Global Capital Markets and the Global Economy" to the Global Public Policy Symposium in Paris CEOs and Chairs of PwC, KPMG, Grant Thornton, BDO, Deloitte and Ernst & Young advocated real-time reporting of performance on the web.

This is straight out of the management cybernetics textbook ("Brain of the Firm" Wiley 2nd Edition 1981) of our late honorary fellow Stafford Beer, himself an Ernst consultant.

Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for sector specific accounting and harmonisation of National Standards by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is advocated. Resistance to complex rules is urged which "can produce financial statements that virtually no one understands". Standards need, they say, to be principles-based. This promulgates the criticism made in the society by Karl-Gustav Hanssen at our 2003 conference.

What better principles than those of Beer's Viable System Model? Here (variety) resources are balanced to need with real-time reports of performance and financial audit. These data support alerting for timely management intervention and modelling of future development.

The Home Office is "not fit for purpose" says the incoming minister. The NHS struggles to become patient centred and an Afghani asks, as violence increases, "Where did the Aid money go?". We trust ministers and CEOs will put real-time reporting at the top of their agenda to make world development safer and more open.

"Neural Networks as Cybernetic Systems"

Holk Cruse has produced this open access etext with a supporting simulation tool, tkCybernetics (interpreted in Tcl/Tk, freeware which must be installed first) embodying a neural cybernetic approach to neural and systems modelling. The freeware graphical tool by Thorsten Roggendorf enables rapid select and drop modelling of non-linear and feedback systems using connected filter and function elements with graphical display of inputs and outputs for small circuits. Cruse's free ebook provides a tutorial introduction to the modelling approach and discussion of biological modelling with particular reference to neural nets.

The Department of Biological Cybernetics at Bielefeld University is to be congratulated and our thanks to Francis Heylighen (of Principia Cybernetica) for drawing our attention to the announcement of Soren Lorenz editorial coordinator of the host open access ejournal "Brains, Minds, and Media".

A very welcome development. The software was readily installed, run and tested under XP and is supported with a minimum of ambiguity for all platforms. Recommended for students learning cybernetics.

Fifty years of System Dynamics

"Reaching out with System Dynamics" is the Golden Anniversary celebration by the UK Chapter of the System Dynamics Society on 1st & 2nd February 2007 in Harrogate.

System Dynamics was created by Jay Forrester at MIT. The gathering will be focusing on how System Dynamics can be used by business to engage with potential customers and education for both students and government ministries - reaching out to new practitioners. Further Details.

Speakers include Dr Robert Thurlby on BT Business development, Michael Bean on websims, Dr Khalid Saeed on distance learning and Professor Alfredo Moscardini on recent work in Egypt.

A nanoengineer looks at red blood cells

Subra Suresh, MIT Professor of Biological Engineering in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering of the Biological Engineering Division, gives a video talk on "Nanotechnology and the Study of Human Diseases". The potentially low cost fluidic measurement of nanonewton forces can analyse the mechanical properties of deformation and mass of red blood cells- erythrocytes. Diagnostic aids and new approaches to treatment for diseases such as malaria, hereditary spherocytosis and pancreatic cancer are suggested. The Gobal Enterprise for Micro-Mechanics and Molecular Medicine- GEM⁴ website supports this development.

The 31st Annual Cybernetics Society Conference

The conference was held on Saturday 16th September 2006 at King's College. Program and Abstracts here.

We are pleased to report great interest expressed in the English foundational movement led by Ashby and the members of the Ratio Club, including Turing, Grey Walter, Mackay, Albert Uttley and Jack Good. Zivanovic's work reminded us of the contribution to gallery art by many of our founders. Papers on modelling and systems reminded us of the holistic or concurrent applicability of the cybernetic paradigm of feedback. The question of the nature of Symbol reappeared in probing the mystery of phlogiston and entropy applied to biology and again in the rules to screen aircraft for safety from terrorism. The Society thanks the contributors for a most stimulating event.

We trust many of the papers will appear in Kybernetes

Robot Perception Research Project

An EU funded project is being aimed at giving autonomous machines much greater perception abilities. The BACS (Bayesian Approach to Cognitive Systems) project, is a project under the 6th Framework Program of the European Commission which has been allocated €7.5 million in funding. The BACS project brings together researchers and commercial companies working on artificial perception systems potentially capable of dealing with complex tasks in everyday settings. The scientific work being carried out under BACS makes robots with new capabilities a real prospect: robots capable of handling incomplete information, analyzing their environment, acquiring context-specific knowledge, interpreting the data and, together with humans, taking decisions.

Specific implementations with market potential are planned. A prospective implementation with market potential is a system that can assist drivers of passenger cars and trucks by employing probabilistic control functions and driving strategies. This should make driving safer for both drivers and pedestrians. Another area of interest is 3D modelling and surveillance of safety-critical applications such as monitoring structural changes in buildings or mines and safety-relevant infrastructure elements in power lines.

European industry can use Bayes' alternative calculation models to good advantage; they have applications both in major companies in the automotive industry and mobile telephony, for example, and in small and medium-size companies active in niche markets such as healthcare, inspection, monitoring or even market forecasts. More.

Biologically Plausible Neural Systems and Virtual Robotics

Abstracts requested for a special session at the 5th Chapter Conference on Advances in Cybernetic Systems 2006 which will run on September 7th or 8th Sheffield Hallam University, UK .

There is a range of connectionist systems, but a much smaller set of neural network models corresponding to biological neural networks. Neural models range in biological validity through the traditional biological Hodgkin Huxley models to Leaky Integrate and Fire models that miss much of the biological detail. From a computational perspective, many of the biological details may be unnecessary to accurately simulate psychological and psychophysical behaviour, and these unnecessary details come with a computational cost. One of the challenges is to identify the level of detail necessary or beneficial for simulating behaviour at higher levels.

Virtual robotics as an application domain have several advantages. They enable the system to behave in domains that people use, in the fashion that people act. They do not require full fledged motor and sensing routines, so they present a lower implementation barrier. However, they do enable the system to ground symbols and provide the possibility of learning based on grounded symbols in domains that people use.

One major virtue to biological and psychological validity when simulating neural nets is that direct evidence from behaving biological systems can guide development of simulated systems. The fidelity of the robots virtual world to an assumed reality provides a minimum level of abstraction of the psychological phenomena that can be simulated. Coarse granularity in the virtual world, however, can enormously reduce computational effort and time while still being appropriate and sufficient for investigating more abstractly specified psychological phenomena. Consequently, a neural system for a virtual robot is an excellent domain for exploring core cybernetics problems such as symbol grounding, learning, and interactive behaviour.

This session will explore issues in biologically plausible neural systems, and their relationship to psychological, psychophysical and behavioural phenomena using virtual robotics.

Winning the Oil Endgame- with renewables

Rocky Mountain Institute founder and CEO Amory Lovins makes a brilliantly argued case that carbon fibre substitution of steel enables substitution of oil with renewables for all vehicles and substantial reduction of CO₂ emission. He describes a better cultural, economic and engineering homeostat for producing transport by applying existing technical know-how "to make all modes of transportation lighter and more fuel-efficient, and that big, fast change is possible". Lovins finds less than 1% of the energy used by a car is used to move the driver. This is a non-nuclear plan for "kicking the oil habit". Real format video from MIT.

New Amory Lovins interviewed by Stephen Sakur on BBC Hardtalk.

James Lovelock "The Revenge of Gaia"

In his latest book Professor J. E. Lovelock FRS presents the view that world climate collapse is imminent and nuclear power must be considered as part of the solution. Richard Mabey reviews in the Sunday Times. John Gray reviews in the Independent. Tyler Volk of NYU Department of Biology reviews in Nature. Professor Lovelock is an honorary fellow of the Society.

Royal Society Video Archive

A treasure trove including talks by Sir Tim Berners-Lee om the Future of the World Wide Web, Tim Palmer on Climate Variability and Predictability, Jarad Diamond on How societies choose to fail or survive, Wilson Sibbett on Optical science in the fast lane etc etc.

The Acceleration of Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics (GNR)

Ray Kurzweil is the pioneer inventor of text recognition and speech synthesis, winner of MIT's half million dollar Lemelson Prize and author of "The Singularity is near". He proposes "The Law of Accerating Returns" and gives an MIT video talk on GNR at the 2005 MIT Conference on emerging technologies.

Forthcoming Systems and Cybernetics Conferences

"Towards a Science of Complex Systems"

European Conference on Complex Systems 2006 (ECCS'06)

Oxford 25-29 September 2006. Call for papers (till 7th April) and Workshop proposals (till 5th May) Further details and contacts.

Complexity, Democracy & Sustainability

International Society for the Systems Sciences 50th Annual Conference July 9-14, 2006 Sonoma State University, California Call for participation.

The Emergences of Designs

Washington Evolutionary Systems Society (WESS) at Capital Science 2006 March 25-26, 2006

Contact Jerry Chandler tel.:703-790-1651

ALAS (Asociación Lationamericana de Sistemas)

7th-9th August 2006 Buenos Aires YMCA. In Portugese and Spanish with tutorial workshops in Spanish 3rd-6th August 2006. Themes will include paricipatory governance and interdisciplinary application of cybernetics and the systems approach to Latin America.

The Six Webs, 10 Years On

Bill Joy, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (venture capitalists), former Chief Scientist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, designer and writer of Berkeley UNIX - the first open source operating system with built-in TCP/IP, reflects on the six webs- defined as far, near, here, weird, B2B, and D2D- as an ongoing organizing principle for thinking about the internet.

Video from MIT 51:35 with questions.

Project Cybersyn: multimedia documentation planned

Project Cybersyn (Chile 1970-1973) was the first application of formal cybernetic methods to the government of a country. Stafford Beer developed the Viable System Model he applied in Chile for the management of complex enterprises from his foundational work in management cybernetics. Real- time performance monitoring in actuality, capability and potential, variety analysis, algedonic alerting and participatory development modelling were all new then. The approach came out of Wiener's work on purposeful error correction and the inter-disciplinary focus it produced on self-organisation and autonomy. Now these techniques are becoming mainstream. Cheap high performance multimedia computing supporting email, workflow and data mining on the web can realise this potential. But still company and government accounts, for example, are produced seasonally reflecting agricultural practice rather than the real-time needs of a developing "postcode lottery" society unable or unwilling to regulate waste and allocate resources fairly.

The Chilean multi-media artists Catalina Ossa and Enrique Rivera have announced their intention to document the pioneering innovations in Chile. A website, documentary film and exhibitions are intended. Participants in the project are invited to get in touch. See the Metaphorum website for more details.

"Cybernetics - Linking Human and Machine Brains" by Prof. Kevin Warwick

Date & Time: Wednesday 8th February 2006. Time:17:30 to 18:30 Networking and opportunity to meet the presenter with light refreshments and sandwiches. Lecture to follow in the Theatre 18:30-20:00 thereafter the Kelvin Lounge will be open with cash bar available. Venue:IEE, Savoy Place, London, WC2 0BL. Registration recommended. Further details

Mars exploration, habitat formation, spray-on space suits and the Space Elevator

MIT Enterprise Forum presents a video packed with cybernetics of recently funded studies from the Nasa Institute for Advanced Concepts. 18 minutes in the rhetoric gives way to four presentations of some extraordinary interdisciplinary science and engineering studies including the Interlopter, a wing flapping robot (low Reynolds numbers only); ecological bioremediation, microbial exogeology (28'): lava tube habitats and hopping microbots; biospace suits with application to (40') disabled walking support: electroacting shrink wrap "spiderwoman" suit and the ultimate high road to space from an ocean platform: the Space Elevator (50') climbing on a carbon nanotube (40 times stronger than anything previously made) ribbon. Initial cost estimated at about $10 billion taking 15 years to build and cost per pound to geosynchronous orbit reduced from $5-10,000 to around $200. There are broadband, dial-up and audio only streaming options for this video "The Power of Revolutionary Thinking: What Today's Scientists Can Teach You About Driving Innovation In Your Organization" .

"From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A history of Soviet Cybernetics"

Stuart Umpleby, an ex-President of the American Society for Cybernetics, writes "The interplay between science and politics in the USSR was quite amazing". This book by Slava Gerovitch was published by MIT Press in 2002. From the jacket we learn: "Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and in society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With the new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science.

"Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political "thaw," however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of Stalinist science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as "science in the service of communism," but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into "Cyber-Newspeak."

Slava Gerovitch is a Dibner/Sloan Postdoctoral Researcher at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology and a Research Associate at the Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences."

"An exceptionally lively and interesting book. This is by far the best-informed and most insightful account of cybernetics in the Soviet Union." David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Stanford University.

"Cybernetics was among the most important intellectual movements of the mid-twentieth century. Nowhere was its curious blend of mathematical technique, ideology, information technology, and postmodern scientific universalism more controversial or more interesting, than in the Soviet Union during the early Cold War. Slava Gerovitch is among the first scholars to command the linguistic skills, cultural resources, and historical awareness to offer a definitive account. From "Newspeak to Cyberspeak" not only sheds new light on the byzantine intellectual world of the Soviet Union, but holds up a fascinating mirror to the West as well. This is a groundbreaking achievement that deserves a wide audience." Paul N. Edwards, Director, Science, Technology and Society Program, University of Michigan

Dr Alex Andrew writes to CYBCOM about his experiences of the Russian cybernetics scene.

Cyberneticians might note Leonid Ototsky, our correspondent in Magnitogorsk, is developing a website on Stafford Beer. Beer's celebrated "World in Torment" paper is available for download.

Our attention was recently drawn to some work on Beer in New Zealand "A VSM Analysis of the New Zealand National Innovation System" by Sean Devine.

Negreponte on the $100 Laptop

In his first PowerPoint presentation Nicholas Negroponte talks about Media Lab's work on a wind-up laptop for developing nations. Video from MIT. High volume production is planned for 2007. This is truly fascinating: a non-profit business model is described with all the technical and cultural issues addressed. Excellent questions from a learned audience.

President calls for Government to back Robotics Competition

Should the UK instigate a Grand Challenge along the lines of the USA's competition to build a robotic vehicle to cross the desert unaided?

This was a topic of conversation at a workshop held by The National Advanced Robotics Research Centre NARRC at the University of Salford on December the 1st.

Robotics is widely predicted to be the growth technology of the 21st century in a similar fashion to the way the motor car was the major technology of the 20th. The UK is lagging way behind, Japan, America and Korea. The USA's Defense Advanced Projects Agency DARPA Grand Challenge was to build and race self navigating autonomous ground vehicles over a 132 mile (212km) course in the Mojave Desert, Nevada for a cash prize of 2 million dollars.

One of the NARRC delegates, David Buckley, has suggested a competition for a humanoid (biped) robot to negotiate a short obstacle course, pick up an empty drinks can and return to the start of the course with the can and place it on a table. It is difficult and expensive to make an advanced humanoid biped robot; the word's most advanced humanoid, Honda's ASIMO, is reputed to have cost over $140m to date. However useful robots need to work in our built environment; climb stairs, open doors, work at table top height, etc. The potential market for humanoid robots is huge if the cost can be made low enough. Early applications are likely to be in the areas of the three D's dirty, dangerous or dull. David suggests that there could be four classes of humanoid in various heights up to 2m tall. Radio control would be allowed. But who would fund the prize, the DTI, the MoD, the Department of Education or industry perhaps? It has been a long time since the UK government took such a step.

The last time was when the problem of deducing longitude at sea was solved in 1764 by the engineer John Harrison who created the first accurate seaworthy clock. The problem had been unsolved despite the best efforts of Galileo, Cassini and Newton until the Board of Longitude (the first science funding body in the UK) set up by the King and Parliament paid out the £20,000 prize money. The society's president would be delighted to receive comments.

Forthcoming Talks

Talks to the Society are held in King's College Council Room 6.30 for 7.00pm start. Directions.

More on the talks given this season.

If you would like to talk to the Society please get in contact with one of the meeting organisers.

Paul Pangaro videos and website

Dr Paul Pangaro has collected videos of von Foerster and Pask. Paul's excellent Stanford video lectures and supporting materials on Cybernetics and the entailment structures of Conversation Theory will be most helpful to practitioners and students alike. Thoroughly recommended. The collection includes a rare black and white film transcription of Pask's exhibit "Colloquy of Mobiles" from the famous Institute of Contemporary Arts Exhibition of 1968 "Cybernetic Serendipity".

The site covers much of Paul's activitiy in Cybernetics and hosts the Pask Archive.

New Journal: Constructivist Foundations

Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an independent academic peer-reviewed e-journal without commercial interests. Its aim is to promote scientific foundations and applications of constructivist sciences, to weed out pseudoscientific claims and to base constructivist sciences on sound scientific foundations, which do not equal the scientific method with objectivist claims. The journal is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of all forms of constructivist sciences, especially radical constructivism, cybersemiotics, enactive cognitive science, epistemic structuring of experience, second order cybernetics, the theory of autopoietic systems, etc.

Journal's website

The first issue's table of contents and articles can be found at: Volume 1, Number 1 (free registration required).

Alex Andrew reviews Conway and Siegelman's "Dark Hero of the Information Age: In search of Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics"

Our distinguished member Dr Andrew has the advantage of many reviewers in actually "being there" at the time of the development of cybernetics working with Warren McCulloch. Cyberneticians will find his reminiscence of McCulloch, MacKay and the extraordinary Walter Pitts of particular interest. The importance of McCulloch and Pitts' "A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity'' (1943) can hardly be overestimated and is foundational to Artificial Neural Network (ANN) research. Apart from building threshold logic equipment they established Turing Universality in a potentially concurrent context.

Download in .doc format (Kybernetes Vol.34 No.7/8 2005 pp1284-1289). With thanks to Kybernetes.

30th Annual Conference of Cybernetics Society
Developments in Cybernetics

The 30th Annual Conference was held in the Council Room at King's College in the Strand on Saturday September 10th 2005. Contact. Papers included Dr Susan Blackmore on evolving meme machines, Nick Hampshire on his e-book project, Tony Wilkes on his music recognition software, Jeremy Gordon on his Windows assembler, Tom Campbell on e-money micropayments, Doug Haynes about Stafford Beer on DVD, Prof Raul Espejo on resonsponsible governance and Prof Stephen Gage discussed trivial machines. Further details.

"Cybernetics of Cybernetics" (ed Heinz von Foerster 1974)
or "The control of control and the communication of communication"

Papers by Wiener, Pask, Ashby, McCulloch, Beer, Maturana, Umpleby, Loefgren, von Foerster and many others scattered with explanations of major topics like goal, feedback, homeostasis, entropy and information theory. The "parabook" contains the table of contents and indexed glossary- it is in the middle of the book.

Dr Allenna Leonard, President of American Society for Cybernetics, writes that Steve Carleton has copies of this classic "treasure chest" collection of papers for $49.95 (paperback) and $79.95 (hardback)

Email Diane Johnson who is handling order fulfillment with a cheque or credit card. Fax 1-763-560-2524.

The paperback is now available from Amazon in USA. Search on "Cybernetics of Cybernetics" with quotes.

American Society for Cybernetics
The Many Interpretations and Applications of Cybernetics

Many people have been using ideas, models and tools from the trans-disciplinary science of cybernetics such as: circular causality, feedback, systems and boundaries, constructivism, multiple realities or perspectives, dynamic simulations, and activities that build upon the possibilities and limitations of human and other information processing capabilities

Highlights

Takeshi Utsumi "Creating a Global University System"

Eric Dent "Assumptions Shared and Not Shared by the Various Fields of Systems Science"

Karl Mueller "From Second Order Cybernetics to Second Order Science"

Stuart Umpleby "Two Paradigms of Social Science Research: How Reflexivity Theory is different from Current Theories"

Russell Ackoff "Types of Systems and Models of Them"

Klaus Krippendorff "Language and Second-order Cybernetics: Technology and its Relation to Human Beings"

Catherine Bateson "Relationships between Demographic Changes and Cultural Transmission".

Ranulph Glanville "Knowledge and Design in the Era of Second-Order Cybernetics"

Full programme.

Changing Organisational Change!
International Conference on Sustaining Change Management 2005

This is a workshop format conference to be held in Vienna, Austria December 12-14 2005. Brochure (6 pages- 2.2 Megabytes .pdf)

18^th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research

18th-21st April 2006 in Vienna. The closing date for submitting papers is 11th October 2005

Cybernetics - "the study of communication and control in the animal and the machine" (N.Wiener) - has recently returned to the forefront, not only in cyberspace and cyberpunk, but, even more important, contributing to the corroboration of various scientific theories. Additionally, an ever increasing number of research areas, including social and economic theories, theoretical biology, ecology, computer science, and robotics draw on ideas from second order cybernetics. Artificial intelligence, evolved directly from cybernetics, has not only technological and economic, but also important social impacts. With a marked trend towards interdisciplinary cooperation and global perspectives, this important role of cybernetics is expected to be further strengthened over the next years.

Sixteen sessions are planned.

Ranulph Glanville writes: "EMCSR is one of the longest established and highest prestige conferences in the field of cybernetics/systems research. It has been associated closely with several major figures and the development of a number of important concepts in cybernetics/systems research." There is a briefing session on the next EU Reseach Framework. Ranulph will be chairing a session on "The Cybernetics of Cybernetics: Cybernetics, Interaction and Conversation"

Freeman Dyson reviews Conway and Siegelman's Wiener Biography

Freeman Dyson once remarked to a couple of members of our society "There are no such things as singularities". He compares the earlier Heims and Masani biographies. Masani edited "Norbert Wiener:Collected Works" in four volumes covering everything from time series, Fourier analysis, information, control, quantum theory, relativity and, of course, cybernetics. When a great man talks about another great man expect great things. "A Tale of Tragic Genius" NY Review of Books.

Intelligent Cybernetic Systems

This is a new Journal launched with a call for papers.

The Journal Intelligent Cybernetic Systems (ICS) publishes research papers containing contributions in experimental, theoretical and applied aspects of intelligent systems and cybernetics, including, but not limited to following topics:

Intelligent Systems, Robotic Systems, System Modelling and Control, Adaptive Control Systems, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Safety Reliability and Quality Assurance, Decision Support Systems, Manufacturing Systems, Data Mining, Large Scale Systems, Human Machine Systems, Soft Computing, Fuzzy Logic Systems, Neural Systems, Computational Intelligence, Knowledge Based Systems, Agent-based Systems, Swarm Engineering, Emerging and Evolutionary Methods, Biological Cybernetics.

Submitted articles may be of three basic types:

• Regular papers: Detailed discussion involving new research, applications or developments.
• Brief papers: Brief presentations of new technical concepts and developments.
• Correspondence: Letters to the Editor about the journal or to authors commenting on previously published papers.

Contact for submissions

"Forty Years of Cybernetics"

Professor Stafford Beer Hon. FCybS

From the Society archive we are pleased to present the audio file of Stafford Beer giving the Gordon Hyde Memorial Lecture in January 1990 (1hr 27mins).

He describes his student days and his use of OR in India as a Gurkha Captain in Intelligence. He makes a plea for an epistemological approach in science and attacks causality and correlation statistics in large systems. He recommends Eastern philosophy as a route to understanding holism.

Thence he moves to the Steel industry and a two mile long process plant producing cold rolled strip and wire. He read Wiener's Cybernetics in 1950 and wrote to him about feedback control and production. Wiener sent a telegram "Come to MIT at once". The imperatives of steel production prevented this but Purposeful Systems (bounded by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, ed.), Ashby, Gray Walter, Pask, production control charts, the cogging mill that breaks once in 130 years and the meagre pay rise for workers who increased their productivity 30% through his innovation make up for it. The Cybor House team, the 17th Pegasus 1k word machine, dicemen and runes, the brain, Ashby and variety, SIGMA and the Gas Board. He talks of SIGMA in Chile and Flores, pioneering work in newsprint- six times overmanned, and the International Consultancy scene. He introduces Wizard Prang. Remarks "Make Machines to investigate what you are thinking about!" and announces Geodesic Tensegrity (to become Syntegrity) at Manchester ending with "Coincidence in your life is the inability to see what really matters". Reviews invited.

More audio: Stafford responds to the Chilean Coup (6 mins) and contributes to a memoir of Buckminster Fuller (27 mins). Fuller's syntegrity led to Stafford's icosahedral syntegrity model and Pask's concurrent proof of the 60 degree architecture of a minimal space filling form.

Click the icon to download a free copy of Windows media player to play the Windows Media Audio (.wma) file.

The Fourth British Computer Society Machine Intelligence Competition

Tuesday December 13th 2005 at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, UK, during the annual SGAI conference AI-2005 Closing Date for Entries: October 1st 2005.

This is one in an annual series of competitions for live demonstrations of 'Progress Towards Machine Intelligence' organized by the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (SGAI) in association with AKRI. The competition is sponsored by Electrolux Group.

The demonstration can be of either software (e.g. a question- answering system or a speech recognition system) or hardware (e.g. a mobile robot).

This competition will put on show real systems demonstrated live. It is hoped that the competition and the competitors, over several years, will provide a new interest and visible improvements in the development of machine intelligence.

Entry Fee: none, conference registration not required. Prize: A permanent trophy awarded for one year plus a £1,000 cash prize, sponsored by Electrolux.

Format: The prize will be awarded on the basis of a 10-15 minute live demonstration (not a paper or a technical description). The prize will be awarded to the demonstration that in the opinion of the judges best demonstrates 'progress towards an intelligent machine'.

Judges: All registered delegates at the conference will be eligible to vote in a secret ballot.

Eligibility: The competition is open to all. A maximum of 5 entries will be presented. To control numbers, these will be selected by the organizers on the basis of information provided by the entrants.

Further information the organizers Prof. Max Bramer (Chairman, SGAI) and Dr. John Gordon (Director, AKRI).

The Cybernetics of Managerial Cybernetics Practice
Special Guest: Allenna Leonard

7th Workshop in Sharing Practice: a One Day Workshop from 10am April 15th 2005, John Foster Building, John Moores University, 98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool

Denis Adams describes the intentions with a commentary on the profession of Management Cybernetics and some background.

Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics

International Herald Tribune review by Corneila Dean of the New York Times.

The publisher writes:

In the middle of the last century, Norbert Wiener-ex-child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician -founded the science of cybernetics, igniting the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. Wiener was the first to articulate the modern notion of "feedback," and his ideas informed the work of computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, and anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. His best-selling book, Cybernetics, catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism. So what happened? Why is his work virtually unknown today? And what, in fact, is Wiener's legacy? In this remarkable book, award-winning journalists Conway and Siegelman set out to rescue Wiener's genius from obscurity and to explore the many ways in which his groundbreaking ideas continue to shape our lives. Based on a wealth of primary sources (including some newly declassified WW II and Cold War-era documents) and exclusive interviews with Wiener's family and closest colleagues, the book reveals an extraordinarily complex figure, whose high-pressure childhood, manic depression, and troubled relationships had a profound effect on his scientific work. No one interested in the intersection of technology and culture will want to miss this epic story of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and colorful figures.

Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman's new book is published by Basic Books ISBN 0738203688. Available now in US.

Recent Reviews

What does a new generation think? Tim Kelley studying for his Comp Sci Masters reviews Wiener's classic "Cybernetics". Cybernetics, he observes, "a field crushed by its own weight".

Science, complexity and the nature of existence

Professor George Ellis lectures on the central doctrine of classical multi-level cybernetics. This video feed is from the Royal Society Templeton Lecture. Newcomers to cybernetics will find this a useful introduction. A tour-de force indeed. Enjoy but...

Controversially he claims that the "goals" and "information" of cybernetics cannot be applied to objects smaller than supramolecules. This denies that force equilibria and the second law of thermodynamics apply below this level and smuggles a ghost into his machine. Professor Lewis Wolpert exorcises the ghost at question time. If physics improves the precision of descriptions it is not clear that Ellis' position on consciousness, that no experiment is possible to predict a new experiment, holds. Prof Lord May remarks that animals (that might evolve into physicists) are conscious. The Conant-Ashby Theorem (which asserts "Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system") extends some form of consciousness to all self-regulating, persisting or stable, distinguishable objects, like tables, rocks, atoms etc.

Pask, for whom durations were incommensurable for communicating domains, has shown (with his Lambda matrix p.49) causal asynchronous communication between synchronous circular processes, homeostats, requires a relativistic correction banishing master clocks and adopting coherence as boundary defining.

Prof Ellis adopts circularity but not its interior lack of causality. He criticises physics failure to predict the weather or model chess players but does not identify "agreement" with "equilibrium" or the pathology of serial/parallel computing and mathematical methods in n-body problems- a property not shared by nature which like a mechanical model is concurrently constrained.

Slides in Powerpoint (.ppt ) or web (.htm) format from Prof Ellis' lecture and Jean Marie Lehn's Nobel Prize lecture on Supramolecular Chemistry (.pdf).

BBC2: Design and Construction with Domestic Materials

A new TV series called "Mechannibals" is being shown on BBC2 starting at 8.30 pm on Sunday 25th of September. The president appears in programme 3 on the 9th of October. In the series teams of inventive families compete to create mechanical contraptions out of domestic goods.

Families are encouraged to remove working, in service items from their homes. Programme one shows the teams competing to find the best contraption to destroy a garden shed.

The president Prof. Martin Smith was an advisor to the series inventing challenges that were amusing and achievable by an inventive family in 48 hours. He also appears on one of the programmes as a team member competing to create a machine that can prepare, cook and serve a meal. They used a video recorder and a home made hour glass (using sand from a children's sand pit) for timers, lamps for the cooker, children's bicycles to make a conveyor, parts of a Dyson vacuum cleaner and a steam wallpaper remover to cook fish, chips and peas.

If you, or someone in your family, has some technical, mechanical or DIY skills, and you might be interested in competing for cash prizes, have a look at their website for more details.

Cybernetics at UCLA

The Bruin reports. "The time of cybernetics has come", said program chair Joe DiStefano. "These tools have been around for a long time, but their utility and power wasn't recognized because the demand wasn't great enough."

Core material includes Cybernetics, Biomodelling, Probability, Statistics, Systems and Signals, Feedback Control Systems, Modelling and Simulation.

Multiple Versions of the World

Berkeley celebrates Bateson's centennial with a conference on his continued influence in cybernetics and anthropology. Berkeley News reports.

On the East Coast CUNY, New York , "Art, Circuitry, and Ecology: Honoring Gregory Bateson".

Cybernetics North (CN) at Manchester Business School

CN is based at John Moores University in Liverpool. With many Metaphorum members CN has held three Conferences on sustainability of communities and regeneration. Health services will be the theme for summer 05. Monthly workshops are being run at Manchester Business School. Contact Dr Robin Asby. Next workshop Friday 19th November: "Organisational Change; Mosaic Transformation, Ecocycle and the VSM".

CN is a society devoted to honouring Beer's work and wanting to create a context for sharing the experience of practitioners using systemic methods and tools, (not only) cybernetics, in the UK and in particular in the North of England.

Metaphorum in Dublin

Next Conference Dublin May 5th-6th 2005. Contact Dr Angela Espinosa. Metaphorum was also set up to develop the management methods of Stafford Beer applied to organisation.

Cybcon2004 "Cybernetics and Public Administration"
Friday September 3rd and 4th
jointly presented with Metaphorum

On the first day amidst much discussion posters were presented by Dr Y.I. Hayut-Man, Academy of Jerusalem, who presented an approach to a Virtual New Jerusalem to celebrate the Abrahamic Religions. Nick Green, Real Time Study Group, talked about management cybernetics of NHS IT in the NPfITplans.

Papers were given by Leonie Solomons, Sunderland University, applying Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) to development in Sri Lanka. Margeret Heath, Free University of Brussels, discussed VSM and the issues for cognitive science it poses.

On the second day Prof Alfredo Moscardini suggested closer affiliations between The Society, Metaphorum and Cybernetics North. Dr Allenna Leonard facilitated Dr Marcela Villarreal, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, who discussed the impact of AIDS in Africa on Agriculuture and development solutions required and John Clarke, UN Health Organisation, who discussed the difficulties of getting appropriate responses from agencies.

In the afternoon Dr Steve Wright, Omega Foundation, discussed his analysis of the Northern Ireland conflict and drew the Society's attention to social control technologies under development. Dr Paul Stokes, University College Dublin, discussed improving the applicabity of VSM to the Social Sciences and Luc Hoebeke criticised aspects of the paradigm under application. This most expert group of management cyberneticians was highly appreciative of the subsequent discussion which clearly will continue.

Dowload poster.

Full programme details.

The conference was a great success and we are pleased to say the proceedings will be published in a special edition of Kybernetes. We were honoured with the participation of Dr Allenna Leonard (the late Stafford Beer's partner), President of the American Society for Cybernetics and daughter, the painter, Vanilla Beer. We thank them both for their learned contributions.

Conference Downloads received so far Dr Paul Stokes "Identity as a Cybernetic Construct and Process", Dr Espinosa's "Measurement systems in socio economic development programs from a cybernetic view", Nick Green's NHS IT and Interactions of Actors posters, Dr Stokes' handout on VSM in Sociology and Dr Hayut-Man's on the Jerusalem Interfaith solution. Steve Wright on Northern Ireland and his report for the European Parliament on political control technology. Pictures from Vanilla Beer. Leonie Solomons of Metaphorum reports.

Annual General Meeting Cybernetics Society

July 26th 2004 7.30 Room 4.63 at King's College,The Franklin-Wilkins Building, Stamford Street, London SE1 9NN. Council Meeting 6.30p.m.

Summer Cybernetics

Visitors to UK this summer include Lofti Zadeh founder of Fuzzy Systems Theory for the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society conference in Ulster in September and Humberto Maturana renown for seminal work on cognition and Autopoiesis (self-production) for the UK Systems Society in Oxford, St Annes College September 7-8th. Past President of the American Society of Cybernetics Pille Bunnel the eminent systems ecologist will keynote for the theme "Citizens and Governance in the Knowledge Age The Contribution of Systems Thinking and Practice". See Conferences

RFID Tags for the Homless

U.S. plans to give the homeless subdermally implanted Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to track their health.

NHS Patient Forum Organisation seeks error minimisation approach

PPIFO, Patient Public Involvement Forum Organisation is under development to support the new 5,000 odd voluntary NHS inspectors in the 570 NHS Trust Patient's Forums around England. "How do we minimise error in the NHS?" asks consulting cybernetician Nick Green in a request for suggestions. Contact PPIFO.

Can RFID tags help here? Start-up company Exavera Technolgies thinks its eShepherd system maybe the answer.

The Register ("Biting the hand that feeds IT") dubs RFID technology "Snake Oil" when applied to passports.

Lovelock urges more Nuclear Power for less Global Warming

Global warming is now advancing so swiftly that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source can prevent it overwhelming civilisation warns cybernetician James Lovelock FCybS(hon) in the May 24th Independent

"Nuclear creates enormous problems, waste we don't know what to do with; radioactive emissions; unavoidable risk of accident and terrorist attack." says Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth.

Stafford Beer's Prang

Stafford Beer's "Chronicles of Wizard Prang" are collecting on the web thanks to Ian Perry and the Cwarel Isaf Institute. Cybernetic koans? Or fairy tales for the concurrently challenged? The guru of management jests.

SenseCam

SenseCam is a badge-sized wearable camera that captures up to 2000 VGA images per day into 128Mbyte FLASH memory. In addition, sensor data such as movement, light level and temperature is recorded every second. This is similar to an aircraft "Black Box" accident recorder but miniaturised for the human body. This can interface with the "Lifebits project" in which Gordon Bell (DEC's VP for R&D and PDP 6 Designer) has provided data for an experiment in lifetime storage and software research. This is a practical beginning of the pervasive computing of MIT's Project Oxygen. In a Sunday Times article Nick Bayliss, a psychologist from Cambridge University, is reported as regarding this as possible technology addiction and a substitute for living life to the full. Liberty are quoted "being repeatedly photographed and recorded risked everyone's becoming life public property". Can improved accountability make life riskier?

IFSR Meeting

Ranulph Glanville reports on the meeting of International Federation for Systems Research at the recent 17th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research where he represented the Cybernetics Society.

BCS Cybernetic Machine Specialist Group

Peter Marcer announces "Nilpotence" is the BCS CMSG objective for debate in 2004/2005. "Is it the unique key to the antechamber of the universe?"

Professor George Spencer Brown

It is with delight we learn that Spencer-Brown is back in UK. He can be contacted via Thomas Wolf's Laws of Form website.

Lou Kauffman gives an exposition of Laws of Form as a boundary calculus. Pask pointed out boundaries exert repulsive forces thus requiring a force axiom to permit counting.

"Interactions of Actors (IA), Theory and Some Applications"

The surviving 91 pages of Pask's previously unpublished 1993 manuscript have been assembled for download in .pdf format (last corrected 13/4/04). An index and table of contents has been added by Nick Green who worked with him in the last years of his life. In an extraordinary and wide ranging development of the earlier Conversation Theory (CT) Pask compares and contrasts his development of CT with IA

The style is dense but enlivened with wit, charm and criticism of conventional methods.

This work is foundational to the establishment of the Borromean Link model of learning, self-organising, continuity (or evolution) around a void and the current work on the strict coherence interpretation of Interaction.

From paragraph 326 in speaking of the new dynamic form of his proto-logic Lp he states "..resonance or local synchronicity of in-phase oscillations, radiating into an Lp field make sense."

The work was intended to put the so-called soft sciences on a stricter foundation. It re-interprets existing relativistic and string theory constraints with a general theory of force and organisation establishing cybernetics on a firm basis for future application. It remains to be seen if it will be accepted.

Pask's last paper "Heinz von Foerster's Self Organization, the Progenitor of Conversation and Interaction Theories" is now available in .pdf. It is a useful mature summary in written in 1996 of the 1993 work with hints of the final work in progress on coherence and the Borromean model. It is now with index.

Monthly Scientific Meetings

Dr. Alex Andrew FCybS concluded his fascinating talk "Loose Ends in Cybernetic Thinking" from October last year. Alex's excellent Notes from the talk include references.

Evening meetings are held at King's College Room 4.63 of the Franklin-Wilkins Building, Stamford St. SE1 9NN (Waterloo Campus of King's College London). Map of location.

Non-members welcome. Intending vistors please contact a Council Member.

EMCSR 2004 April 13 - 16, Vienna

Dr Ranulph Glanville has attended the 17th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR). He has represented us at the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) meeting to be held during the Conference.

He chaired Symposium C: Cybernetics, Interaction, and Conversation on Wednesday, April 14.

• A Conscience for Cybernetics
  R. Glanville, University College London, United Kingdom
• Observations on Humorous Act Construction
• A. Nijholt, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
• A Scenario Synthesis of Knowledge Grounding in Engineering Applications
  Y. Liu, J. Yu, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Rail costs are 'out of control'

From the BBC: The rail industry is riddled with "uncontrollable costs" and needs fundamental change, according to a report by an environmental group.

The report uncovered "the staggering scale of costs and inefficiencies and secrecy", Transport 2000 said.

"This kind of waste appears routine in the unaccountable Public Service bureaucracies of the world" said our Council member Nick Green FCybS today, chairman of Real Time Study Group. "We call upon HM Treasury to consider again our proposals to solve this problem." The Group's approach is based on formally escalating alerts through the management system. Stafford Beer called this Algedonic Regulation.

From the Guardian "The current structure would not lead to significant service improvements and needed to be changed, said the report from the Commons transport committee." Nick Green added "This should be regarded as a technical management problem needing a technical mangement solution not another opportunity to rearrange the deckchairs."

Professor George Spencer-Brown

We are pleased to announce Spencer-Brown author of the ground breaking "Laws of Form" is alive, well and doing mathematics back in the UK. A new edition of Lof prepared by Thomas Wolf for Germany has led to a website hosting the Ross Ashby Memorial Lecture paper about the Four Colour Map Theorem. This was delivered to a plenary session of the Thirteenth European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research at the University of Vienna in 1996 for the International Federation for Systems Research. GSB's latest is " Primes between squares". There is a autobiography in preparation. Some poems are to be uploaded soon.

The European IST Prize for 2004

The European IST Prize is the most distinguished Prize for innovative products and services in the field of Information Society Technologies.

The Prize is open to companies or organisations that present an innovative IT product with a promising market potential.

C. West Churchman

Werner Ulrich writes "C. West Churchman died on Sunday 21st of March in Bolinas, California. He was 90 years old.

You can find an obituary notice from the San Francisco Chronicle of 25th of March, along with more material in appreciation of West, in the "Tribute to West Churchman" section of my home page"

Recent Book Reviews from Kybernetes

By special arrangement with Kybernetes new reviews by Dr. Alex Andrew:

• "Knowledge Representation, Reasoning and Declarative Problem Solving" by Chitta Baral
• "Analog VLSI: Circuits and Principles" by Shih-Chii Liu, Jörg Kramer, Giacomo Indiveri, Tobias Delbrück, and Rodney Douglas
• "Neurotechnology for Biomimetic Robots" edited by Joseph Ayers, Joel L. Davis, and Alan Rudolph

Have you read something that might be of interest to us? Send a review.

"Learning in Layers- Pathology and Liberation"

The Centennial Gregory Bateson Lecture Given by Professor Mary Catherine Bateson at the Tavistock Centre on 17th May. Free admission. Tickets required.

"Motivated Irrationality - Developing Games Theory Perspectives on NHS users with dramatec"

Many thanks to Professor Keith Cash for a most interesting talk in an area quite novel to members. Men often resist rational advice when faced with health risk. Keith demonstrated the application of Drama Theory to this akrasia. His presentation is in .pdf format.

More about Drama Theory at dramtec.

Governance and Cybernetics:
First Metaphorum Conference

An announcement and Call for papers has been made for the meeting to be held April 30th- May 1st in Sunderland.

President in new TV series

Professor Martin Smith, President of the Cybernetics Society, announced to day he is appearing in and consulting for a new programme on Sky and Cable "Mutant Machines".

Martin also tells us he is organising this year's Micromouse Competition to be held in Saturday 19th June at the Think Tank in Birmingham. More.

"Principles of organization are what really make our world knowable not theories of everything"

Prof. Robert B. Laughlin won the Nobel prize in 1998 with Störmer and Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations". In his talk discussing "The Self-Organization of matter" Laughlin says of the pathological limitations of serial mathematics and computing methods "Unfortunately, the latter [theory of everything equations] cannot be tested because the problem is bigger than any computer that now exists, or even any computer that can ever be built." This has led to the Anyon Calculus- but there is still no formal concurrent methodology in the Physics Community. In many respects Structural Engineers come closest to modelling this level of complexity.

Dr. Horace Townsend simulates
Ashby's Homeostat

Dr. Townsend is a retired Clinical Neuorologist developing a site on the interpretation of Electroencephalograms. The Java applet simulates a four pen chart recorder with perturbable pens.

"Fragments of the Void-Selecta"
by Professor Louis Kauffman

In the course of wide-ranging discussions on Forces in Cybernetics Professor Kauffman, introduced us to his new paper "Non-Commutative Calculus and Discrete Physics", [A,B] = AB - BA .

He also gave us a quote from "Fragments of the Void-Selecta". "The paragraphs are intended as intense little excursions into thoughts on the edge of the void, near the simplicity of one distinction or no distinction at all", he says.

He kindly agreed to publish it here as part of out Winter Solstice celebration.

Lou also drew attention to Knot Plot: first class software from Rob Scharein. A model example of documentation and support for those interested in knots or who would like to know more. You can download Knot Plot and its documentation to run on most machines. Load 6.3.2 will load a Pask Borromean concept/continuity model and minimising the energy or relaxing the link (select energy, undamped dynamics, and allow collisions) you will see some of the vibrational modes. The difficulties of simulating concurrence which this software attempts should not be underestimated.

To make a Borromean Link select the Braid tab on Control Panel. Set ngens at 6, nstrings at 3 and click aBaBaB and click Close. Select Main and click Go. Your Pask cybernetic model of learning continuity well relax in front of your eyes.

"Stafford Beer: A personal memoir"

This affectionate memoir from David Whittaker has a short review on Stafford's Memorial page. Highly recommended.

Open Mind Project

After the under achievements (" Not there yet" Minsky) of Lenat's Cycorp, MIT has launched an attempt at A.I. by directly collecting commonsense rules to explain story scenarios. Pask's I.A. was in part set up to repair the deficiencies in A.I. research but Minsky thinks serial machines can simulate minds without Pask field concurrence. You can contribute to the new approach which is a model of clean design.

Forthcoming Royal Society Two Day Discussion Meetings

• "Myosin, muscle and motility"
  17 and 18 May 2004
• "Catalysis in chemistry and biochemistry"
  14 and 15 June 2004
• "Beyond extinction rates: monitoring wild nature for the 2010 target"
  Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 July 2004

Admission Free. Tickets required.

Pask's IA axioms can produce a Viable System

With the vice-president in the chair Nick Green FCybS talked to our November Meeting about the application of Pask's Interactions of Actors Axioms to Development and Differentiation in Beer's Viable System Model. Pask produced a force based learning model where all persisting closed looping processes were regarded as concepts. Here self-organisation and evolution become equivalent.

An interesting discussion followed. Some members seemed to have difficulty with Pask's introduction of force into Cybernetics. Coherence and differentiation were how Pask saw this approach developing. Now concepts exert forces and we have the Borromean resonance model of continuity.

Nick is happy to deal with any queries.

Some Loose Ends in Cybernetic Thinking

Many thanks to Alex Andrew for his fascinating talk at our October meeting on "Some Loose Ends in Cybernetic Thinking". Full Text. A vigorous wide-ranging discussion ensued including much material on animal linguistics including "imitation".

Professor Donald Mackay

The late Donald Mackay amongst his many achievements and provoking insights was noted for his two types of information (Phil. Mag., 1950, 41, 289 ). In his talk to the Society Alex Andrew described them as structural classifiers: logons and "fine-tuning" or metrical types: metrons. Alex has prepared a list of Mackay's publications with some introductory remarks. We hope to resume discussion of his themes at our Meeting in 29th March 2004 (last Monday of every month is usual).

W. Ross Ashby Centenary Conference

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign March 4-6, 2004

Ashby's Requisite Variety, fundamental to our discipline, describes the equilibrium state of homeostasis. In 1994 because of the dynamic character of equilibrium Prof. Eugene Yates introduced the term "homeodynamics". In his 2002 paper for a National Institute of Health Conference on Aging " From Homeostasis to Homeodynamics", he distinguishes C.H. Waddington's "homeorhesis" and Iberall and Soodak's "homeokinetics" ("Homeokinetics: A physical science for complex systems" Science, 201: 579, 1978). A less used term is "rheostasis" coined by Nicholas Mrosovsky and discussed in his monograph "Rheostasis: The Physiology of Change" (OUP 1990 ISBN 0195061845) where the changing of the set-point of the homeostat is considered.

Restrictions on the applicability of the Law of Requisite Variety continue to be discussed.

" The Cyber Party"

Prof Helen Margetts is an ex-programmer/analyst and mathematician now Director of the School of Public Policy at UCL. Her paper " The Cyber Party" considers the possibilities for political party development in the age of widespread use of the Internet. There are more of her papers on e-government including " Cultural Barriers to e-government" commissioned by the National Audit Office.

"The bionic man"

A short report of the Clifford Patterson Lecture given by Chris Toumazou, Professor of Circuits and Systems at Imperial College London, at the Royal Society.

"Utopia theory"

From theories of pedestrian movement and traffic flow to voting processes, economic markets and war, researchers are striving towards a physics of society. Thanks, again, to Tony Booth for pointing this out.

The author, Philip Ball, is a science writer and journalist working in London. This article is based on his forthcoming book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another (Heinemann), which is due to be published in January 2004.

Members may remember Ron Atkin's work on traffic through hypergraphs and his "q-analysis". Ball's approach is somewhat evocative of this but the problems, principally the lack of applicable data, that prevented further application of Catastrophe Theory, for example, may also be an obstacle here. Jacky Legrand of Département Informatique Université Paris 2 has an interesting primer and critique of the Atkin approach.

Although the route to sustainable development is clearing there is still some resistance to accountability to be overcome. The application of Cybernetics, rather than Physics, to move to Utopia is surely something we could formally address as a Society.

UPDATED CybCon2003 Report with some full texts and supporting materials.

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of HTML and the Web, on video
" The Future of the World Wide Web"
courtesy of the Royal Society

Dr Tim Berners-Lee FRS discusses the Semantic Web and its Resource Description Framework (RDF) support.

But can today's computers really "Do anything"? Tim suggests, at the end of his talk, this has been proved mathematically. This is a common mistake. Turing Universality implies decomposability into binary relations but does not imply generally applicable. Better to recognise, as currently realised, digital machines are limited to competence in serial or parallel process emulation and mathematics. Nature by contrast is concurrent. Let us hope Tim's apparent suspicion of self-reference and reliance on metalanguage are not similarly flawed. Thoroughly recommended a very stimulating talk. Now archived at Flyonthewall

Review of Nanotechnology

The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering have requested initial views for this new study.

Critique of Memetics

Mary Midgley, the distinguished philosopher and critic of science attacks Dawkins' Memes in the Royal Institute of Philosophy Journal. This might be of less significance for us but for her warm endorsement of Lovelock's Cybernetically based Gaia Principle in her "Gaia:the Next Big Idea".

Last Conference Announcement and details

CybCon 2003:
Recent Topics in Cybernetics

Thanks to all involved for making our meeting such a success. Rather than merely marveling at the potential applicability of Cybernetics in their particular domain speakers invariably identified real world applications and solutions to practical problems.
We have requested longer abstracts from participants and full texts where possible.
Suggestions for next years conference welcome.

Robotic Waste Watch

News and Notices for details of a new series of articles by Professor Martin Smith, President of The Cybernetics Society.

First Metaphorum Group Breakfast Meeting at CybCon2003

Metaphorum was formed in June at the Hull University Staffordian Syntegration to set up a website to make Beer's techniques more widely available. The meeting is to ratify the Metaphorum constitution and objectives.

Conference on "Second-Order Cybernetics"

Past Proceedings - CybCon2002 for an account of The Cybernetics Society's Annual Conference in 2002, with photographs of the event.