What is cybernetics? Paul Pangaro
This short interview with Paul Pangaro explains the essence of cybernetics and why it’s so useful as a way of seeing the world. A transcript is below.
Paul Pangaro - https://www.pangaro.com/
What is cybernetics?
Paul Pangaro: So cybernetics comes from the word, the Greek word, to steer. And as we steer a ship, we want to make it to a goal and we get blown off course by wind and ocean. We see that's where we wanted to go, we're here, that's wrong. So we correct and then we go too far and then we correct.
So cybernetics is about steering and getting to the goal. All intelligence systems have this property of trying, acting, seeing the difference, changing, acting, seeing, sensing. This loop of acting, sensing, comparing to goal, acting, sensing, comparing, is fundamental. A system cannot be intelligent unless it has those properties because otherwise it goes and it succeeds or fails and who knows? But this way there's the self-correction all the time.
So a technological system, at least the kinds of interactive systems that we're talking about, have this property of being self correcting. People self correct. You walk down the street and you go the wrong way and you'd go the right way. A social system and a conversation. We're doing very well. We understand each other. Oh, we're off course. Wait, we're confused. Ah, get back.
So cybernetics is the most powerful language for describing systems that have goals. That's the purpose of cybernetics and all of these kinds of systems, technological and social and biological have goals. So it's a perfect marriage.
How does cybernetics influence your perception of the world?
Paul Pangaro: I believe that cybernetics is an exceptionally great way of characterizing how the world works, where by world we mean the world that humans inhabit. Because we inhabit a mechanical, physical world where things have to work. We can have it a biological world, which has to work, of course, otherwise we wouldn't survive. And a social world in which our conversations and interactions work as best they do, or if they break down, cybernetics allows us to model the breakdown and to know how to improve things. So I find it incredibly powerful language frame for looking at the world.
Once you see the world in a cybernetic way through the cybernetic lens, all things are cybernetic because all systems become part of this set of languages, of action and sensing and comparing and understanding and taking a meta view. And this is fundamental to intelligence because if I know what I want and I act to achieve what I want successfully, then that's the best definition of intelligence I know and of course we always want to be intelligent. It's part of what drives us as humans. And because cybernetics is about physical, technological, biological and social systems, all, it's the most comprehensive language to describe these things.
What cybernetic systems are occurring in this moment?
Paul Pangaro: Well, right now there are many cybernetic systems happening. Some are uninteresting, like my body temperature is being maintained. I'm balanced in a way that doesn't let me fall. All those things, but also at a level of conversation there's some shared understanding going on. I'm using words that largely are comprehensible, we hope, and questions reflect back and this back and forth looping of ideas has an evolution, whereas time goes on we share more and more an understanding of what the other means, but from another point of view, from an observer point of view, there are recording devices that are tracking, these things will capture what gets done. You will go to an editing room and you'll imagine what I meant. You'll take out the words that don't make sense and you'll put in the pieces that do make sense and you will have a conversation in your own head as well as amongst all of you about what you want the person viewing.
So you will also in your mind, so here's the viewer and here's Pangaro, and here's these pieces and here's what we want to happen and you will have conversations about this and that will inform your actions. You'll make a cut and you'll say, "No, that didn't quite work." So you will use feedback and first order and second order loops to understand what you've done and that will improve what you do. And then this will become a video. And then the conversation in the heads of the people watching the video will reproduce some of what I meant. I hope a lot. That's partly my responsibility but also yours because you have to help me make sense of what I mean.
And that's the nature of society too where we're enmeshed in these conversations, which are the foundation of all social and human interaction and language is the foundation. But in language, there is conversation, through conversation there's agreement, there's a sharing of beliefs, there is a consensus about what we want and how we want it. There's a responsibility and then there's action and all of these things come in ways that can be characterized by cybernetics.
(Transcript taken from the video at: https://vimeo.com/41776276)
