Gleich auf #Deutschlandfunk : #Feature #Projekt #Cybersyn - Chiles kybernetischer Traum von #Gerechtigkeit (1/2)
Das Projekt, #Kybernetik zum Wohle einer #Gesellschaft durch eine sozialistische Regierung und ihre Forscherinnen, umzusetzen, würde schon mehrfach beleuchtet.
#Heute um 20:05h kommt der erste Teil des aktuellen Feature von Jakob Schmidt und Jannis Funk auf #DLF
A Wheelchair is a Small Gundam by anna anthropy
I remember how as a young kid I thought wearing a watch and glasses made me a kind of a cyborg and it was awesome. This wonderful zine of wheelchair (and, by generalisation, beneficent technology) joy is along the same lines.
Wheelchairs are beautiful, a marvel of technology. They are mech suits, cybernetic enhancements, they are machines that we join with in a nourishing symbiotic relationship. They are not prisons; wheelchairs are liberation. They are freedom, they are a walk in the park, they are the sunlight on my face after years in dark tunnels.
There is so little media about the joy that wheelchairs bring, how powerfully they transform our lives. That’s why I’m writing this zine. Not for abled people, but for someone like me who once hated and feared the thing that would make me whole again.
#accessibility, #cybernetics, #cyborgs, #mobility, #technology, #wheelchairs, #
_zine
I am happy to announce that the open access proceedings volume with selected contributions to the 2024 Architecture Across Boundaries conference has been published. The Systemic Approaches to Architectural Design section in the volume originates from the conference track of the same title. I am glad to have had the opportunity to create this track. Thanks to my colleagues for editing the volume.
Links to each chapter: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-96-4749-1?page=2#toc
![Table of contents from a book section titled 'Systemic Approaches to Architectural Design'. The page displays chapter titles, authors, page numbers, and access information. Chapters include 'Undisciplined: The Afterlife of Speculative Drawings', 'Micro-landscapes – Architecture Materiality as Memory', 'Digital Processes to Conscious Innovation in Built Environment', '[Re]thinking Porosity', 'Reweaving Shiyi', 'A Method for Examining the Merits of Theory Appropriation in Architecture', 'Extended Linkography', 'Design with Care', 'Assemblage and Anticommunication', and 'New Chinese Socialism and Building Industrialization'. Each chapter has download options and indicates Open Access availability.](https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/398/936/155/963/305/original/35a107536a9c0803.png "Table of contents from a book section titled 'Systemic Approaches to Architectural Design'. The page displays chapter titles, authors, page numbers, and access information. Chapters include 'Undisciplined: The Afterlife of Speculative Drawings', 'Micro-landscapes – Architecture Materiality as Memory', 'Digital Processes to Conscious Innovation in Built Environment', '[Re]thinking Porosity', 'Reweaving Shiyi', 'A Method for Examining the Merits of Theory Appropriation in Architecture', 'Extended Linkography', 'Design with Care', 'Assemblage and Anticommunication', and 'New Chinese Socialism and Building Industrialization'. Each chapter has download options and indicates Open Access availability.")
Finally updated my #profile at https://speakerinnen.org 
Are you looking for a #talk, a #workshop or an #interview on the #socialimpact of #digitalization?
On #ai, #sustainability or #ideologies behind digitalization as #cybernetics, #gamification, #longtermism, or #effectivealtruism?
Why the thoughts and theories of those in power heavily influence societies?
Are you looking for a #workshop on how to really interest people in #computersecurity?
Contact me.
And #boost if you like
Interested in the ideas people like #ElonMusk have in their heads and plans for your future? You should be.
Every development started with an idea before it could be called "a development" or "a movement".
This includes the #digitalization
The first ideology behind it was #cybernetics .
It is more than important that we take a close look at the ideas and especially their belief of the human nature. Because that is the foundation of the society they want to build.
Cybernetics is the root of
"In an enactment of uncertainty, cybernetic technicity forms identities entangled in open futures."
My editorial to the special issue of Constructivist Foundations with selected papers from the 60th Anniversary Meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) provides an overview of the four thematic conversations.
https://constructivist.info/20/2/067
The editorial can be accessed and downloaded for free.
The special issue of Constructivist Foundations features four target articles that emerged from the 60th Anniversary Meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics – each accompanied by five to seven peer commentaries and the authors' respective responses to these.
https://constructivist.info/20/2
Register for free on the journal's website. With a voluntary subscription before April 22, get a print copy of the special issue per post.
A bit of what we’re working on at the moment 
“The Overland Telegraph Line was an organising principle for other infrastructures including the railway, roads, micro-wave, radio towers and even the NBN (National Broadband Network)” and thus “a system which has deeply impacted the ways in which Australian identity is and continues to be articulated.”
#telegraphy #cybernetics #archaeology #strangwayssprings #innovation #technology #australianhistory #history
https://cybernetics.anu.edu.au/news/2025/04/02/telegraphy-and-technology/
Op 7 mei komen we weer bijeen met de themagroep Cybernetische Economie en bespreken we de eerste twee hoofdstukken van "The People's Republic of Walmart".
Interesse? Meld je aan! 
Two more days before the abstract submission portal closes. Join us for *Synthetic Sentience* in Perth, Australia, 16-18 July 2025 – the 5th Politics of the Machines conference.
Check the website. It features seven tracks to which you can submit.
All abstracts are due on March 29. https://www.pomconference.org/pom-perth-2025/
-
Paul Thomas, Chris Speed and I are looking forward to your submissions to
Track 01.
#artscience #art #systemicdesign
#indigenous #quantumphysics
#cybernetics
Excellent Sunday afternoon read from Professor @drmichaellevin for Noema Magazine that takes a look at the metaphors we use to distinguish between organic and non-organic beings and challenges some of the assumptions around what we consider to be machines and/or living things.
Very much in the style of Donna Haraway, he advocates at once for #pragmatism, for empirically testing the methods we use for interrogating systems that imbricate the organic and the machine and to keep an open mind when categorising which is which.
For fans of Douglas Hofstadter, #cybernetics, #systems and #ConsequentialCategories.
https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/
To all who’re criticizing itself the mounting criticism of LLMs and who'd rather like to emphasize these models can also be used for good:
POSIWID (aka The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does) is very much applicable here, i.e. there is “no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do”.[1]
For the moment (and I don’t detect _any_ signs of this changing), LLMs conceptually and the way they’re handled technologically/politically, are harmful, more than anything, regardless of other potential/actual use cases. In a non-capitalist, solarpunk timeline this all might look very different, but we’re _absolutely not_ in that world. It’s simply ignorant and impossible to only consider LLM benefits anecdotally or abstractly, detached from their implementation, their infrastructure required for training, the greed, the abuse, the waste of resources (and resulting conflicts), the inflation, disinformation, and tangible threats (with already real impacts) to climate, energy, rights, democracy, society, life etc. These aren't hypotheticals — not anymore!
A basic cost-benefit analysis:
In your eyes, are the benefits of LLMs worth these above costs?
Could these benefits & time savings have been achieved in other ways?
Do you truly believe a “democratization of skills” is achievable via the hyper-centralization of resources, whilst actively harvesting and then removing the livelihood and rights of entire demographics?
You’re feeling so very productive with your copilot subscription, how about funding FLOSS projects instead and help building sustainable/supportive communities?
How about investing $500 billions into education/science/arts?
Cybernetics was all about feedback loops, recursion, considering the effects of a system and studying their influence on subsequent actions/iterations. Technologists (incl. my younger self) have made the mistake/choice ignoring tech’s impact in the world for far too long. For this field to truly move forward and become more holistic, empathetic and ethical, it _must_ stop treating the above aspects as distracting inconvenient truths and start addressing them head on, start considering secondary and tertiary effects of our actions, and use those to guide us! Neglecting or actively denying their importance and the more-than-fair criticism without ever being able to produce equally important counter examples/reasons just make us look ignorant of the larger picture... Same goes for education/educators in related disciplines!
Nothing about LLMs is inevitable per se. There’s always a decision and for each decision we have to ask who’s behind it, for what purposes, who stands to benefit and where do we stand with these. Sure, like any other tech, LLMs are “just a tool”, unbiased in theory, usable for both positive and negative purposes. But, we’ve got to ask ourselves at which point a “tool” has attracted & absorbed a primary purpose/form as a weapon (incl. usage in a class war), and any other humanist aspects have become mere nice-to-have side effects, great for greenwashing, and — for some — surfing the hype curve, while it lasts. We’ve got to ask at which point LLMs currently are on this spectrum and in which direction they’re actively accelerating (are being accelerated)...
(Ps. Like many others, for many years I’ve been fascinated by, building and using AI/ML techniques in many projects. I started losing interest shortly after the introduction of GANs and the non-stop demand for exponentially increasing hardware resources and obvious ways how this tech will be used in ever more damaging ways... So my criticism isn’t against AI as general field of research, but about what is currently sold as AI and how it’s being pushed onto us, for reasons which actually have not much to do with AI itself, other than being a powerful excuse/lever for enabling empire building efforts and possible societal upheavals...)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
New paper on the telegraph line is out! It’s a #microhistory of Strangways Springs//Pangki Warruna, exploring its evolution from a #pastoral property to a #telegraph station to a #railway stop, and how these transitions shaped innovation in #Australia 
We also highlight the importance of #water in creating and sustaining these innovations (as is the case for technologies of today like #AI 
).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10761-025-00788-4
NEW EPISODE: Just as someone steering a ship adjusts the rudder based on feedback from the ocean, so too does good pedagogy depend on what our guest today, biology teacher Christian Moore-Anderson, calls “recursive teaching”, or a constant feedback loop of action, interpretation, and learning between teachers and students.
www.humanrestorationproject.org/podcasts/sensemaking-and-cybernetics-in-classroom-teaching-w-christian-moore-anderson #K12 #biology #science #cybernetics #edchat
New, Chemical View of Ecosystems
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-chemical-view-of-ecosystems-20250305
Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species.
The majority of the AI users are third-order observers, and some are fourth-order observers.
Second and fourth-order observations invite gaming the system.
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/ai-enables-fourth-order-observations
Join us for Synthetic Sentience in Perth, Australia, 16-18 July 2025 – the 5th Politics of the Machines conference. The abstracts for all seven tracks are due on March 15.
https://pomconference.org/pom-perth-2025/
We just had our session on "Cybernetic economics for the 21st century", with a talk by Tom O'Brien and a Q&A afterwards!
Interesting Economic Index paper from Anthropic, based on 1m+ Claude.AI conversations. Analysed through O*NET classifications, shows #AI use in over 36% of occupations.
Thoughts:
1. This analysis would ordinarily be undertaken by government labour departments. Analysis of the use of #AI tools is now predicated on companies releasing this data. Anthropic has released *some* of the data used for analysis - but not all - e.g. the actual prompts.
https://huggingface.co/datasets/Anthropic/EconomicIndex
2. This data is linked to US occupational classifications (O*NET), and AFAICT, there is no way to identify in the dataset (I looked) what the geography of the user is. That means this analysis can't be used to analyse **Australian** patterns of AI use - which links to the #sovereignAI discourse.
3. Given Anthropic's outsized role in the industry, and the push for adoption by e.g. Microsoft of tools like e.g. CoPilot, I wonder if this economic analysis will become a *target* - following Goodhart's Law. Which would increase AI usage, which would benefit Anthropic.
4. I found the distinction between automation and augmentation in this analysis useful. Drawing from #cybernetics, automation can be viewed as first-order - the user directs the intent. Augmentation is more reflexive, with the intent negotiated. What are the implications of #LLM involvement here?
5. The pattern of increasing use among higher-skilled professions - up to the cliff of those requiring advanced degrees (e.g. surgeons) where usage dropped off - indicates to me that advanced degrees still provide a "moat" - but for how long?
6. I really loved the feedback form Anthropic provided for researchers to suggest new research directions and to give feedback on the format of the dataset that was released. This connects research with practice - praxis.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfDEdY-mT5lcXPaDSv-0Ci1rSXGlbIJierxkUbNB7_07-kddw/viewform
in medias res 
