4. Cybernetics and Control

Cybernetics is the study of feedback and its affects in purposive systems. First-order cybernetics made use of these concepts to focus on control, where the model was that of a thermostat. But the domain of first-order cybernetics is too simple to represent much of the world in which we live. Our world is complex filled with interwoven situations, people, relationships, contexts, ideas, and things. Control in this more complex world requires more than a simple feedback loop. The human’s inability to deal with more than three to seven unrelated variables at a time creates a constraint on the possibilities for control. The law of requisite variety states that a controller needs to be able to deal with at least the same number of variables as the system it desires to control. Requisite variety is the key principle to understanding how and when control retains the possibility for success amid a sea of likely failure. Second-order cybernetics, with its focus on the observer and on agency, can be viewed as the study of how mankind works to overcome this constraint and at least pretend to be in control of everyday situations. Control can be found in communication, narratives, and choice architecture. Feedback has been transformed.