Unlock the potential: Cybernetics
The core concept of the cybernetics discipline is circular causality or feedback — that is, where the outcomes of actions are taken as inputs for further action. ^1
Cynbernetics transdisciplinary mechanism provides an iteration for outcomes that can be used also as an input. It is a data loop which tries to generate more or better result.
There are some countries around the world that have used cybernetics since the late 1970s including Chile (Project Cybersyn ^7), Soviet Union, and several other countries. The reason why these nations have taken up cybernetics is simple. It allows them to do something that was thought to be impossible and hence not worth attempting: make decisions with computers without having to rely on human decision-makers.
Computers have more capacity than humans about storing and computing data which will lead humanity to find better solutions faster. No need to deal with voters and political parties, just make a decision, send the computer a request and let it handle everything. This will allow countries to get to work on finding solutions that are within their reach and also make decisions fast as possible without the masses bothering them.
A brief history of Cybernetics
Cybernetics is a big topic in information technology and has been discussed since the days of mainframe computers. The first official definition of cybernetics was given by Norbert Wiener in his book in 1948, as “the study of control and communication the animal and the machine.” While this definition predates all modern cybernetics, it still remains a useful way to discuss the field.
Cybernetics is the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. It is concerned with the design of adaptive, autonomous, and responsive systems. As a term coined by Norbert Wiener in 1948, cybernetics encompasses the concepts of self-regulation, feedback, and control.
Thermostats may be a good example of an early cybernetics implementation. A thermostat is a regulating device component that senses the temperature of a physical system and performs actions so that the system’s temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint. If the system’s temperature becomes too hot or too cold, the thermostat signals an action to adjust the airflow to achieve a more desirable setpoint.
Projects
The idea of using cybernetics to design a planned economy was further developed by the economist Nathan S. Kline ^3 and the writer Michel Foucault ^4. Also, Cyborg^5 term is founded by Nathan S. Kline, which converts thehuman body to a cybernetic organism. Despite the success of state-controlled economies such as the Soviet Union, in some cases, the state and its planning agencies could not always attain desired goals due to constraints imposed by the economy.
One example of a cybernetic project is “Networks of Life,” a European Research Council ADVANCE project that focuses on the critical investigation of complex interactions among biological networks, biological entities, and their environment, in the context of an aging society. Other examples are computational biology, computational neuroscience, and neuro-cybernetics. Some branches of cybernetics also contribute to other disciplines
Since the beginning of the 21st century, numerous academics have participated in cybernetics research and related fields, including semiotics, psychology, information science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, biology, and social sciences like sociology. The research takes a variety of approaches, exploring several issues from both historical and contemporary perspectives.
Should we apply the Cybernetic approach?
I think It depends on communities. Some of them are trustful and some of them are not. Also, today’s trustful and civilized communities may be corrupted in the future so, trusting them instead of a machine may be risky. This question is closely connected with the problems of calculation. If we don’t know how to calculate, we may trust in the wrong decision-making algorithms. So this is why we may trust AI-powered cybernetics implementations, because computers may watch results and create better algorithms than humans. Algorithms -which are proved oneself- may be a better solution to organize communities.
As we can see, cybernetics is an approach that may be applied to anything which may runs algorithms to reproduce. Also, AI-powered cybernetics is a great tool to create better and faster results. For example, AI-powered cybernetics may be used in the business field to calculate future trends (what kind of products will be sold) and then plan a company’s actions or may be used in politicians’ decisions.
How is life will be in the future with Cybernetics? It’s hard to answer this question, but we can still say that cybernetics is a great tool to improve the result when we need it. And it may bring great changes to modern life.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics#/media/File:Cybernetics.jpg
3: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306312708101046
4: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1368431021991046
5: http://web.mit.edu/digitalapollo/Documents/Chapter1/cyborgs.pdf
6: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093870/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
7: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/project-cybersyn/
