Toward Cyber-Systemic Thinking in Practice

Abstract

This article is an invitation to be reflexive; reflexivity is a second-order process or reflection on reflection. The possibility that a reader might experience a reflexive moment is sought by avoiding a narrative trap: to believe the “coming to” of the issue title implies a state to arrive at, carefully planned, a purposeful journey, pursued by an enlightened individual devoid of all social relations. The author thus begins situated in a social system. Following Maturana, a social system is explained, as is what constitutes, or triggers, change, in a social system. An example of granting rivers sentience in law as an expansion of the social is explored

Keywords:

• Cycles of appreciation
• emotioning
• enthusiasm
• relationships
• structural coupling
• traditions of understanding.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I extend my thanks to all collaborators past and present; my particular thanks to Pille Bunnell for her insightful contributions to the development of my book (Ison, 2010), to Ranulph Glanville for enabling me to experience the poetry of cybernetics, and to Jocelyn Chapman for the invitation to contribute.

Notes

Notes

1 Colloquium on Autopoiesis & Social Systems, London School of Economics, May 11–12, 1998. “In what sense can social systems be seen as autopoietic?”

2 See http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/2010/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/GaryBoyd.pdf and http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/2010/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/RayIson.pdf

3 http://www.pnc.com.au/∼lfell/

4 The example material draws on Geoff Lawtoon, http://bit.ly/2pKSkXC