#Cybernetic Futures

Ben Swift, School of Cybernetics

APS Strategic Futures Network · September 2022

I’d like to acknowledge and celebrate the First Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, and pay respect to the elders past and present.

#who am I?

benswift.me

#outline

  • cybernetics and the history of futures
  • futures at the ANU School of Cybernetics
  • cybernetic futures — a WIP

#cybernetics and the history of futures

the study of purposeful, self-regulating systems

#homeostasis

#a short, mostly wrong story of futures in the 20th Century

#cybernetic futures takeaways

  1. the stories we tell about the future influence the systems we build in the present (and vice versa)

  2. the relationships determine the long-term behaviour of the system (e.g. exponential growth vs balance)

#ANU School of Cybernetics

(semi)autonomous AI components within systems feels like it’s going to be transformative

SOCY exists to provide tools to manage that transformation — including cybernetic futures

#what tools do we use?

short workshops (2 hours or less), one-off or with followup

heavy use of scenarios

two example activities, linking back to the takeaways: stories and relationships

#stories: the thing from the future

in pairs, come up with a (post-it sized) description of a thing from the future according to a prompt:

in a ____ future, there is a ____ related to ____ … what is it?

#relationships: influence diagrams for futures

  • participants share a system they care about
  • collaboratively identify components and pairwise relationships
  • look for the loops; use them as drivers for future scenarios, then analyse for plausibility/preferability
  • some AI in the scenario creation (WIP)

#cybernetic futures: a WIP

trying to add tools to the futures toolbelt, especially in the “systems of autonomous systems” age

because unless you’ve invented your own framework, are you really even futuring?

fin