In case you are not yet registered, please consider that by registering
before the 15.11.2016, you will benefit from the early bird discount.
To participate in the WOSC 2017, please login at: http://wosc2017rome.asvsa.org/index.php/paper-submission/login-menu and complete the Congress registration process.
We welcome the Russian “Centre of Interdisciplinary Research of Reflexive Processes and Control of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences” (CIRRPC)”.
Its main purposes are: Intensification and coordination of scientific research and development connected with a socio-humanistic perspectives of system analysis and control (cybernetics) in the following directions:
Tasks of the Center
Head of the Centre: Vladimir Lepskiy.
| It will be an active contributor to WOSC 2017 |
We welcome Professor Clas-Otto Wene, from Sweden, to WOSC’s Board.
Clas-Otto Wene is Professor Emeritus at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, where he held the chair of Energy Systems Technology from 1981 until 2000. He has worked 1997-2003 at the International Energy Agency in Paris with issues related to energy technology learning and technology markets. In two periods, 1986-1996 and 2006-2014, he was appointed by the Swedish Government to the National Council for Nuclear Waste. Dr. Wene is also Dozent in Physics at Lund University where he obtained his PhD in nuclear physics in 1974. He received the Lindbohm Award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1981.
Wene has participated in and led numerous projects involving development and application of energy system models to support decisions in local, regional and national energy systems. . During his stay att IEA he authored Experience Curves for Energy Technology Policy, co-authored Creating Markets for Energy Technologies, and initiated EXCETP, an international network on Experience Curves for Energy Technology Policy. He has also been engaged in front-running projects to link energy technology models to energy-economic models (hardlinking Markal-Macro, softlinking IIASA Message III and ETA-MACRO).
Some recent publications
C.-O. Wene (2015) ,”A cybernetic view on learning curves and energy policy”, Kybernetes, Vol.44 Iss 6/7 pp. 852 – 865.
C.-O. Wene (2015) “Future energy system development depends on past learning opportunities”, WIREs Energy Environ,. doi: 10.1002/wene.172.
C.-O. Wene. (2013), “Learning curves tracing the optimal path for technology learning systems”, Proceedings of the 13th IAEE European Conference, Düsseldorf, 18-21 August,
C.-O. Wene. (2007), “Technology learning systems as non-trivial machines”, Kybernetes, Vol. 36, No.3/4, pp. 348-363.
K.Andersson, B.-M. Drottz-Sjöberg, R. Espejo, P.A. Fleming and C.-O. Wene (2006), ”Models of Transparency and Accountability in the Biotech Age”, Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 45-56..
The Social Science Centre, Lincoln is running a module on Social Cybernetics – an approach to effective self-organisation of management and other systems through networks and structures that promote autonomy among actors, leading to identity formation and the co-creation of social value.
The module will be facilitated by Professor Raul Espejo, a world-authority in the field and the current Director-General of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics. Raul was a member of a team in Chile in the 1970s that worked on the Project Cybersyn<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn>, and attempt to link socialist planning with technology enabled social communications and policy processes.
The module is free of charge.
The module will begin on Thursday 21st of January from 7-9 pm and then every two weeks until Wednesday the 16th of March. The venue for the module is the Involve Centre, 12 Mint Lane Lincoln LN1 1UD<https://goo.gl/maps/hbehu5g2TMU2>.
If you would like to attend the course please contact info@socialsciencecentre.org.uk<mailto:info@socialsciencecentre.org.uk>
Course outline
Key concepts to explore in the module include:
* Purpose, feedback, homeostasis
* Communications, value-coproduction, eigen behaviours
* Complexity, variety, requisite variety, variety engineering
* Structure, structural recursion
* Organisation, relationships
* Self-organisation
* Self-regulation
* Self-reference and identity
* Social systems, organisational systems and institutions
* Reflexivity
* Power
* Governance
* Cybersyn
Readings
The module will be organised around three key readings written by Professor Espejo:
Espejo, Raul. 1994. What is Systemic Thinking? in System Dynamics Review, June 1994 pp199-212
Espejo, Raul. 2014. Cybernetics of Governance: The Cybersyn Project 1971-1973, in Social Systems and Design. Edited by G. S. Metcalf, pp 71-90, Springer: Tokyo, Heidelberg
Espejo, Raul. 2015. Good Cybernetics is a must in Policy Processes. Kybernetes, Vol 44, 6-7, pp 874 – 890
Other key references
Ashby, W. Ross. 1964. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Methuen & Co.
Bateson, Gregory. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. London: Paladin
Beer, Stafford. 1981. Brain of the Firm (2nd edition). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Beer, Stafford . 1979. Heart of Enterprise. London: John Wiley & Sons.
| Call for abstracts: Business Systems Laboratory – 4th International Symposium “Governing Business Systems: Theories and Challenges for Systems Thinking in Practice” August 24-26, 2016 | Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania | ||||||||
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Publication of selection of papers presented at WOSC 2014
Raul Espejo was the Guest Editor of Vol 44, Issues 6/7 of the Journal Kybernetes, published at the end of September 2015. This double issue included 23 of the contributions to our last Congress. Copy of this editorial is in the file below:
Governing the Anthropocene: Cybersystemic Possibilities
Professor Ray Ison, the President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, extended an invitation to WOSC to participate in the event “Governing the Anthropocene: Cybersystemic Possibilities” at the Herrenhausen Palace, Hannover Germany, last July 30th and 31st. Funding support for this event was given by the Volkswagen Stiftung (Foundation) through collaboration with the Berlin Workshop in Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems based at Humbolt University in Berlin. WOSC was represented by Professor Jose Perez Rios, Dr Igor Perko, Mrs Zoraida Mendiwelso-Bendek and Professor Raul Espejo.
Problem statement
The prevailing paradigm in the governance of the relationship between humans and the biophysical world is characterised by commitments to scientism and linear, causal and dualistic thinking. Currently governance, if understood as enacting cyber-systemic processes that maintain the quality of relationships between humans and the biosphere, can be seen to be failing on many fronts. The Anthropocene has emerged as a conceptual framing for this issue, but to date little cyber-systemic understanding and praxis (theory informed practical action) has meaningfully informed the unfolding discourse.
Link to the related blog: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/govan/
Last December Raul Espejo gave a talk about Cybersyn at the University of Westminster, London. Video recording of this event is now uploaded in YouTube:
youtu.be/JGTEoJI5-Y4
The talk highlighted Cybersyn’s governance approach in contrast to current approached as well as its methodological and epistemological strengths and weaknesses. The talk was followed by a lively debate.
Raul Espejo (Syncho Research, L., UK) (2015). “An Enterprise Complexity Model: Variety Engineering and Dynamic Capabilities.” International Journal of Systems and Society (IJSS) 2(1): 22.
Abstract Announcement for International Journal of Systems and Society (IJSS) 2(1)
Como ya informamos en un mensaje anterior el lanzamiento de WOSC 2014 para la comunidad Latinoamericana tuvo lugar en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia en Bogotá el 14 de octubre pasado.
Ahora la Universidad Nacional ha subido el video de este evento en YouTube. El enlace de este video en Español es el siguiente:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8smqjpMAytXd7RTtWGz60PUCTCwL70TY
The above is the YouTube link to video in Spanish with the recording of WOSC 2014 launching at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia the 14th of October, 2014.
The plenary sessions at WOSC 2014 offered varied reflexions of systems thinking and cybernetics. Entrepreneurship, the Cybersyn project and big data, disruptions and reparation of social issues in the light of the Viable System Model, wicked problems, self-organisation, requisite variety, Luhmann’s autopoiesis, second order cybernetics and technology learning, the cybernetics of policy-processes and zero-time cybernetics were topics discussed in these plenaries. The attached document offers a reflection and their summary. They offer much to think about. Reflexions about WOSC 2014 (2)
Aditionally first WOSC 2014 keynote speakers videos are freeely published.
| The wicked problems remain wicked: has the craft and science of transforming whole systems moved forward, and how could we do better? | Requisite Variety, Autopoiesis, and Self-organization | Autopoiesiss |