Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the two subjects cybernetics and design, in order to establish and demonstrate a relationship between them. It is held that the two subjects can be considered complementary arms of each other.
Design/method/approach – The two subjects are each characterised so that the author’s interpretation is explicit and those who know one subject but not the other are briefed. Cybernetics is examined in terms of both classical (first order) cybernetics, and the more consistent second order cybernetics, which is the cybernetics used in this argument. The paper develops by a comparative analysis of the two subjects, and exploring analogies between the two at several levels.
Findings – A design approach is characterised and validated; and contrasted to a scientific approach. The analogies that are proposed are shown to hold. Cybernetics is presented as theory for design, design as cybernetics in practice . Consequent findings, for instance that both cybernetics and design imply the same ethical qualities, are presented. The criteria for the evaluation of cybernetic/design actions are derived and contrasted to those associated with a traditional, scientific approach.
Research limitations/implications – The research implications of the paper are that, where research involves design, the criteria against which it can be judged are far more Popperian than might be imagined. Such research will satisfy the condition of adequacy, rather than correctness. A secondary outcome concerning research is that, whereas science is concerned with what is (characterised through the development of knowledge of (what is)), design (and by implication other subjects primarily concerned with action) is concerned with knowledge for (acting).
Practical implications – The theoretical validity of second order cybernetics is used to justify and give proper place to design, as an activity. Thus, the approach designers use is validated as complementary to, and placed on an equal par with, other approaches. This brings design, as an approach, into the realm of the acceptable. The criteria for the assessment of design work are shown to be different to those appropriate in other, more traditionally acceptable, approaches.
Originality/value – For approximately 40 years, there have been claims that cybernetics and design share much in common. This was originally expressed through communication criteria, and by the use of classical cybernetic approaches as methods for use in designing. This paper argues a much closer relationship between cybernetics and design, through consideration of developments in cybernetics not available 40 years ago (second order cybernetics) and through examining the activity at the heart of the design act: whereas many earlier attempts have been concerned with research that is much more about assessment, prescription and proscription. The paper develops a base for other work interested in exploring any possible relationships between cybernetics and design, and thus provides background for this special issue.
Ranulph Glanville (1946–2014).The title “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” is taken from Samuel Beckett’s 1984 novel “Worstward Ho” [3] published by the Grove Press in New York. In my view, it captures the conversational act at the heart of designing which is the central focus of this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Editors’ note: This chapter has previously been published as the lead paper for a special journal issue on the theme of cybernetics and design, which Ranulph Glanville compiled and edited, in Kybernetes 36(9/10):1173–1206. It was subsequently re-published in Glanville, Ranulph. 2014. The black boox vol. II. Living in cybernetic circles, 253–292. Vienna: edition echoraum. Reprinted here with minor changes and with kind permission by Emerald as well as by edition echoraum. Ranulph Glanville opened the initial version of this chapter with the explanation that it is made up of two halves, and should, in effect, be seen as two papers in one.
- 2.
Editors’ note: Kybernetes, 36(9/10).
- 3.
Architects tend to believe they do not belong in the same category as designers . From my point of view (and even though I was educated as an architect and teach architecture), architects design like all other designers , and in this paper I use the verb design for the activity of all designers , including architects.
- 4.
Systems Theory and Cybernetics are closely related. As Charles François [7] says: “Cybernetics is obviously the dynamic complement of systemics [sic].”
- 5.
The Oxford Conference in the mid 1950s derailed architectural education for some decades by imposing an inappropriate and clumsy pseudo scientism on the teaching of the subject.
- 6.
See Margaret Mead’s [35] paper, Cybernetics of Cybernetics.
- 7.
It is difficult to appreciate just how revolutionary feedback , circularity , purpose and intention were in science in 1943.
- 8.
Karl Müller has recently published a study in which he shows that the developments von Foerster made in second order cybernetics amount to a radical and revolutionary research programme [36].
- 9.
For a critical exposition of von Glasersfeld’s work, see the recent festschrift edited by Glanville and Riegler [29].
- 10.
I owe my dawning understanding of the importance and workings of actors to my long association with Gerard de Zeeuw . For a critical exposition of certain central themes in de Zeeuw’s work, see the festschrift edited by myself [16].
- 11.
It is, indeed, stranger that even now, when there seems to be a reawakening of an interest amongst designers and artists in cybernetics, that they are still looking at the older version of cybernetics which is far less relevant to their concerns than second order cybernetics – as we will find out over the course of this paper.
- 12.
There are other personal connections, two of whom participated in the special issue of Kybernetes on the theme of cybernetics and design. Paul Pangaro comes from drama and studied with Pask , sharing with Pask an appreciation of the importance of drama. He now teaches design. The architect Stephen Gage worked with Pask both as a student (I recently saw Pask’s diary for 1967 – the year I met him – which was full of appointments with Gage ) and later as a teacher and practitioner. He even contemplated studying with Pask for a PhD.
- 13.
My original design education was in architecture (and musical composition), and I have taught design, mainly in architecture, all my professional life. When reading an overview of approaches to design, it is often important to keep in mind the design discipline that the author comes from. There are differences in, for instance, beliefs about optimum outcomes that vary from very ill-defined areas such as architecture, to more proscribed areas such as industrial design. This paper is no place to explore this, but it is mentioned in Krippendorff [32]. Regardless of these differences, the activity of holding a conversation with oneself is central to all.
- 14.
The earliest, and still arguably the best, definition of architecture was by the Roman architect and writer, Vitruvius , who called for “firmnesse, comodotie and delight ” (in the translation by Sir Henry Wootton [57]): in today’s terms, being well-built, functional and delightful .
- 15.
I have argued that Pask’s study of conversation epitomises truly interactive systems [11, 22]. Interactive systems may include those systems in which the observer acts. I have also argued that those entities that persist through the action of self observing, which I call Objects , provide a form for inhabitants of a universe, the entry to which is through observation and being observed [9].
- 16.
This is the use made by the architect Inigo Jones in his annotations of Palladio’s Five Books.
- 17.
The difficulty of intentionality is specially associated with social sciences. While it is not difficult to consider systems made of so-called inert matter as intention-free, it is much harder to avoid intention when we examine animate systems, such as people. The “Hawthorne Effect” , in which the subjects in a study change their expectations in line with changes in experimental conditions (what is considered an acceptable light level in a factory increases as the light level of a work place is increased) has been well known since the 1930s.
- 18.
See Conway and Siegelman’s [6] biography of Wiener , “Dark Hero of the Information Age”.
- 19.
The term “observe” is used in its scientific sense, rather than to more pictorial visual sense of the everyday.
- 20.
It is not claimed that Objects exist in any physical sense, but that they can act as an explanation, a structure that permits.
- 21.
A traditional view is that, to take part in a conversation , we need coded (and hence meaningful) communication. I argue the opposite. We can have no code that we share and interpret without a conversation , by which we can establish that we will set up a code. Thus, for me, conversation is the essential communicational mechanism.
- 22.
This is also why it does not emerge, at least in any historical sense of the word.
- 23.
A reminder: the cybernetic notion of control is distinct from the popular notion. In popular use, control is often connected with restriction. Cybernetic control is enabling: it helps us towards some aim. Another way of saying this is that cybernetic control is concerned with effectiveness, as in Stafford Beer’s definition of cybernetics as effective management .
- 24.
Contrast this to drivers in, for instance, Egypt, who appear to be completely out of control but are actually very much in control : the control is, however, localised in each driver, rather than in a large system.
- 25.
- 26.
See the 1958 Oxford Conference on Architectural Education.
- 27.
Pask calls such participants p-individuals: p is for psychological (and not, as many have suggested, Pask). In Pask’s account, they are embodied in m-individuals (m is for mechanical).
- 28.
Unless the tendency of language to make uniform flattens out difference. This is why repeating back the statement of the other cannot indicate an understanding , in a conversation , but only an ability to imitate sounds.
- 29.
Keep in mind, however, that science is deductive whereas one intention of design is to be inductive, transcending deduction.
- 30.
The concept of constancy, here, refers to maintaining an identity. It is a tricky concept and I will not try to further elaborate here.
- 31.
For references, see section “Autopoiesis, Eigen Forms and Objects”.
- 32.
I am not yet certain, myself, whether the progress by which the autopoietic system generates itself is in a manner similar to the progress of the design process .
- 33.
The term “observe” is again used in the scientific, rather than the visual sense.
- 34.
In a sense, purpose in a cybernetic system can be thought of as arising from the attempt to unite system and goal .
- 35.
I refer to the power of, for instance, the lecture-as-theatre. Theatrical events (which, by definition, are performed events) have a presence and ability to both convince and involve the audience. The power of performance in the context of explaining second order cybernetics is that the observer (audience member) is no longer left only to appreciate, intellectually, the explanation, but is sucked into the experience of the explanation: they become part of a second order cybernetic system. The immediate effect is often of knowing something powerful has happened but not being sure what it was.
- 36.
The concept of creativity being used here is associated with novelty . How the novel may be made is important. The position taken here may seem to those who believe in the romantic depiction of the troubled creative genius to be too easy, but will be recognised by others as close to the way many people recognised (by their peers) as creative account for the way their novel ideas come into being.
- 37.
Contrarily, the outcome of this wandering (designing) activity often transcends what we could have imagined without wandering, in a manner that leads to improvements in “efficiency” while also promoting qualities such as delight .
- 38.
Form, used in design, is strongly associated with shape. Although not completely divorced from mathematical and philosophical usage, it is the shapely quality that is generally referred to in this paper.
- 39.
There are, however, some who believe that complexity science may be the theoretical arm of design.
- 40.
I am using the conventional, realist short-hand, in this example.
- 41.
These qualities are not the only ones I argue for, but are the most relevant here.
- 42.
A fuller account of conversation theory would include a discussion of the concurrent levels of a conversation : the contextual level of the substrate, and the critical level of the meta-conversation, including an explanation of how the conversation can switch levels so that, for instance, it may ascend to the meta-conversational level. At that point, the meta-conversational level becomes the level of the conversation (we talk about how we talk about conversation , for instance), with a new (meta-)meta-level above this. And so on, recursively and in either direction. See [11], a summary of Pask’s work (especially Conversation Theory ), with extensive references to his work.
- 43.
I am using the conventional, realist short-hand in this description.
- 44.
There is a whole body of work on design knowledge. The work of the two cited scholars is often considered essential. This paper is not the place to explore design knowledge in detail.
- 45.
Of course, nowadays paper and pencil are not always used. Here the phrase is used as a token for all media in which a sketching type of activity takes place. The change of media may, however, lead to significant changes in how we sketch and what outcome we may expect, possibly modifying the design act, in consequence.
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Glanville, R. (2019). Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better: The Cybernetics in Design and the Design in Cybernetics. In: Fischer, T., Herr, C. (eds) Design Cybernetics. Design Research Foundations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18557-2_2
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