These are my links for November 13th from 22:43 to 23:00:
- Personal VSM – If one wishes to change the world, one must first change oneself. This was one of Heinz von Foerster’s profound teachings and one that has great applicability today as it seems that many aspects of our lives threaten to spiral out of control. Here in Ontario, which is one of the more tranquil areas on earth, we have had continuing security fall-out from the World Trade Center attack, the Walkerton water system’s e-coli contamination, SARS, a computer leasing scandal in city government and the electricity black-out in August. All appeared to be catastrophes or anomalies but, upon examination, all have been found to be events that we could have, and should have, been better prepared to meet. All the subsequent examinations exposed failures to see the whole picture and to respond with requisite variety when the first sign of trouble appeared.
Tags: change, control, experience, ignorance, predictions, teaching, thinking, VSM
Paul Bloom writes in Slate Magazine
“Many Americans doubt the morality of atheists. According to a 2007 Gallup poll,a majority of Americans say that they would not vote for an otherwise qualified atheist as president, meaning a nonbeliever would have a harder time getting elected than a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Jew. Many would go further and agree with conservative commentator Laura Schlessinger that morality requires a belief in God—otherwise, all we have is our selfish desires. In The Ten Commandments, she approvingly quotes Dostoyevsky: “Where there is no God, all is permitted.” The opposing view, held by a small minority of secularists, such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, is that belief in God makes us worse. As Hitchens puts it, “Religion poisons everything.”
Tags: control, feeling, religion, system 2
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NebulaClash On Tuesday, Bush said: Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy. On Wednesday, OPEC warned: that President George W. Bush’s proposal to reduc
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Closing Thoughts
One must admit, in reference to all Westminster governments, that the
scope of democratic control by the House of Commons is too small
and operates too sporadically to control the executive. In Canada, the
dominant Opposition parties
Tags: control, innovation
Billed as “a cutting-edge, multidisciplinary framework for intelligent systems”, this book by Alexander A. Meystel (Drexel University) and James S. Albus (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is primarily for scientists and engineers but has a lot to offer anyone seriously wishing to explore contemporary theories in the field of intelligence.
My rank ***** see this on Amazon: 
Tags: CEP, control, design, intelligence, systems
In this book by Simon Head (Oxford University Press, 2003) the author maintains that information technology is being used not to liberate workers from drudgery but to further their regimentation… as the HBR says “A sobering view of the new workplace.”
Head maintains that far from empowering, the net result of the implementation of the principles of industrialization to skilled (knowledge work, whether at the high income profession positions such
as the physician or with the skilled work of lower-inome workers such as call center agents)is what he calls “skill debilitation.”
Tags: Books, control, cybernetics, design, error, knowledge, skills, systems
Building and Fire Research Laboratory Program: Cybernetic Building System
“During the next ten years, the building controls industry in the United States will be undergoing a radical change from one with a vertical structure to one with a horizontal structure. Building control companies, equipment and system manufacturers, energy providers, utilities, and design engineers will be under increasing pressure to improve performance and reduce costs. Cost reduction can be achieved by developing cybernetic building systems that integrate more and more building services, including energy management, fire and security, transportation, fault detection and diagnostics, optimal control, the real time purchase of electricity and the aggregation of building stock.”
Tags: Complex Event Processing, control, cybernetics, systems
ABOUT PROCESS CYBERNETICS LTD.
“Process Cybernetics is a young company whose aim is to provide leading edge intellingent modelling and control technologies in a form specifically targeted at the process industries”
“Process Cybernetics Ltd. was formed in 1997 to develop and market new fuzzy modelling and control techniques for the process industries. The innovative nature and potential of our products was recognised with a
John Logie Baird Award for Innovation in 1997 and we have just received further recognition in the form of a Scottish Office SMART award.” - goto
Tags: control, cybernetics, models
This
slide presentation (pdf here) was made by Dr. Hari Gunasingham, CEO Eutech Cybernetics at the Regional Industrial Networking Conference (2004) claims that the Internet enables geographically distributed cybernetic systems – providing autonomous machine-to-machine and machine-to-man communication and collaboration. – goto
Tags: control, cybernetics
“the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine” – Norber Wiener
-So said the man who first used the word in the context of modern systems contol.
Here on the American Society for Cybernetics can be be found many definitions that reflect the multidisciplinary origins and uses of cybernetic studies …. including one from the ASC constituition itself:
“Cybernetics seeks to develop general theories of communication within complex systems. … The abstract and often formal mathematical nature of its aim … makes cybernetics applicable to any empirical domain in which processes of communication and their numerous correlates occur.
Tags: control, cybernetics, education, management, politics, presentations, systems
Opinion: Sensors, business rules and cultivated paranoia yield customer-facing apps that can cope with unfortunate events.
“But what about building systems that don’t take the normal routine for granted? What about building systems that don’t merely repeat what they’ve been told, but that ask semi-intelligent questions about what’s going on around them? And that know an unbelievable answer when they hear it? ”
“We have the tools to build these systems, what a control theorist might call closed-loop systems because reality can come back and update the system’s beliefs. ……. We don’t need to develop new technology to do any of these things. ”
Tags: control, design, error, sensors, systems
