Operational Media: Cybernetics, Biopolitics and Postwar Education

Cybernetics, e-learning and the education system

This paper is based on the author’s inaugural lecture, delivered on 22 May 2003. The paper is dedicated to the memory of two recently deceased thinkers: Ivan Illich and Stafford Beer. The paper first gives an overview of the contribution they made to illuminating the nature of institutions and their organizational structure, in particular, the education system. Learning technologies challenge a...

Media Cybernetics White Paper Spherical Aberration

I n t roduc t ion Digital photomicrographers assume that lens aberrations are corrected by the microscope manufacturer and that their instruments are designed for best performance. However, this belief is unwarranted if the specimen is mounted in a medium inappropriate for the objective lens. It is easy to forget that the refractive medium between specimen and objective is critical for maintain...

Operational Research in education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concer...

Cybernetics: Cybernetics and the Theory of Knowledge

Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics

I. Historical Development of Cybernetics.......................................................1 A. Origins.....................................................................................1 B. Second Order Cybernetics............................................................2 C. Cybernetics Today.....................................................................4 II. Relational Concepts...