Download or read book Designing Freedom written by Stafford Beer and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 1993-11-18 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished cyberneticist Stafford Beer states the case for a new science of systems theory and cybernetics. His essays examine such issues as The Real Threat to All We Hold Most Dear, The Discarded Tools of Modern Man, A Liberty Machine in Prototype, Science in the Service of Man, The Future That Can Be Demanded Now, The Free Man in a Cybernetic World. Designing Freedom ponders the possibilities of liberty in a cybernetic world.
Download or read book Beyond Dispute written by Stafford Beer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1994-09-20 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last forty years, Stafford Beer has published a steady stream of books and papers in which he has applied cybernetic science to organizational problems. In all of these he has explained underlying principles and developed new theories and recorded a great variety of practical applications. He has now invented and demonstrated Team Syntegrity. Syntegrity is a powerful invention in the organization of normative, directional, and strategic planning, and other creative decision processes. The underlying model is a regular icosahedron (20 sides). This has 30 edges, each of which represents a person. An internal network of interactions is created by a set of protocols. A group organized like this is an ultimate statement of participatory democracy, since each role is indistinguishable from any other. There is no hierarchy, no top, no bottom, no sideways. Beer illustrates how continued dynamic interaction between persons causes ideas and resolutions to hum around the sphere, which reverberates into a kind of group consciousness. Mathematical analysis of the structure shows how the process is determined by the even spread of synergy. The aim of the book is to provide managers and their advisors with a new planning method that captures the native genius of the organization in a non-political and non-hierarchical way. The book includes an enquiry into Beer?s concept of recursive consciousness, based on this model, that is relevant to both neurocybernetics and the social systems sciences.
Download or read book Platform for Change written by Stafford Beer and published by Wiley. This book was released on 1995-04-24 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know." —Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania. USA This is a highly original book both in content and format. It presents thirteen 'arguments for change', these are linked by a personal commentary, and by a deeper, 'metalinguistic', commentary. Platform for Change is completely self-contained, does not deal at all with the nature of viable systems, but is directed towards the hope that our planet may yet remain viable--and the human race survive.
Download or read book Think Before You Think written by Stafford Beer and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stafford Beer was one of the foremost holistic thinkers of the second half twentieth century. He pioneered the use of cybernetics and systems theory to increase our awareness and understanding of how complex systems learn, adapt and evolve - or fail. The editor has selected pieces that exhibit Beer's major ideas for the transformation of self and society - they have a timeless relevance for a world in permanent distress.
Download or read book Decision and Control written by Stafford Beer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1966 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Study of operational research in management - includes sections on decision making and control, simulation, automation and the outcome for industry and government.
Download or read book How Many Grapes Went Into the Wine written by Roger Harnden and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1994-07-19 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collected work of Stafford Beer's papers, some previously unpublished, spanning 35 years. Presents a coherent vision to guide strategy and manage change.
Download or read book Dear Evil Tester written by Alan Richardson and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you in charge of your own testing? Do you have the advice you need to advance your test approach? "Dear Evil Tester" contains advice about testing that you won't hear anywhere else. "Dear Evil Tester" is a three pronged publication designed to: -provoke not placate, -make you react rather than relax, -help you laugh not languish. Starting gently with the laugh out loud Agony Uncle answers originally published in 'The Testing Planet'. "Dear Evil Tester" then provides new answers, to never before published questions, that will hit your beliefs where they change. Before presenting you with essays that will help you unleash your own inner Evil Tester. With advice on automating, communication, talking at conferences, psychotherapy for testers, exploratory testing, tools, technical testing, and more. Dear Evil Tester randomly samples the Software Testing stomping ground before walking all over it. "Dear Evil Tester" is a revolutionary testing book for the mind which shows you an alternative approach to testing built on responsibility, control and laughter. Read what our early reviewers had to say: "Wonderful stuff there. Real deep." Rob Sabourin, @RobertASabourin Author of "I Am a Bug" "The more you know about software testing, the more you will find to amuse you." Dot Graham, @dorothygraham Author of "Experiences of Test Automation" "laugh-out-loud episodes" Paul Gerrard, @paul_gerrard Author of "The Tester's Pocketbook" "A great read for every Tester." Andy Glover, @cartoontester Author of "Cartoon Tester"
Download or read book The Viable System Model written by Raul Espejo and published by . This book was released on 1989-09-08 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concerns the management of social organizations, offering ways to think about complex situations. It will be of interest to management scientists, organization experts, information scientists and computer experts.
Download or read book Diagnosing the System for Organizations written by Stafford Beer and published by Wiley. This book was released on 1995-06-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world?s most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know." —Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA. "If ... anyone can make it [Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting it is Stafford Beer ... everyone in management ... should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and?even elegant diagrams." —The Economist In Brain of the Firm and The Heart of Enterprise Stafford Beer worked out the scientific laws that govern any viable system. They constitute the basis for this book which is concerned solely with the application of those laws to the understanding of any particular enterprise. In the form of a Handbook or Manager's Guide, Diagnosing the System deals with the fundamental problem of management?how to cope with complexity itself. It shows you how to design (or redesign) an enterprise in conformity with the laws of viability, and will help you to diagnose faults in your organizational structure.
Download or read book The Heart of Enterprise written by Stafford Beer and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cybernetic Revolutionaries written by Eden Medina and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical study of Chile's twin experiments with cybernetics and socialism, and what they tell us about the relationship of technology and politics. In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile's experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile's economy. Neither vision was fully realized—Allende's government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented—but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government—which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network's Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies. Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.
Download or read book Pebbles to Computers written by Hans Blohm and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1986 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Intriguing...beautiful and thought-provoking....Features striking photography and perceptive yet concise text"--Library Journal. From the abacus to the microchip, from the sun dial to the satellite dish, the devices we have designed for computation bear feature remarkable threads of continuity. This lavishly illustrated volume travels from Stonehenge to Silicon Valley to provide a fascinating look at the patterns that run through humanity's technological achievements.
Download or read book Organizational Systems written by Raul Espejo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizational Systems clarifies the application of cybernetic ideas, particularly those of Beer's Viable System Model, to organizational diagnosis and design. Readers learn to appreciate the relevance of seeing the systemic coherence of the world. The book argues that many of the problems we experience today are routed in our practice of fragmenting that needs to be connected as a whole. It offers a method to study and design organizations and a methodology to deal with implementation problems. It is the outcome of many years of working experience with government offices as well as with all kinds of public and private enterprises. At a more detailed level this book offers an in depth discussion of variety engineering that is not available either in the primary or secondary literature.
Download or read book Management Science written by Stafford Beer and published by Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1968 [c1967]. This book was released on 1968 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monograph on scientific management - covers automation, cybernetics, computers, managers, operational research, simulation, etc.
Download or read book Brain of the Firm written by Stafford Beer and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Complexity Approach to Sustainability written by Angela Espinosa and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2011 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major challenge of our times is to understand and manage the increasing complexity of socio-economic reality. This has immediate relevance for sustainable development. The impact of recent contributions from systems and complexity sciences in addressing this issue has not filtered down into effective practice ? notably, there remain problems caused by the legacy of competing paradigms and the application of their associated methodologies. This book argues the urgency for the application of analytical tools that embody the principles of complexity management. The authors describe a theoretical framework based on complexity science with a focus on organisational and second order cybernetics, one that presents a powerful new insight into the concept of sustainability. The book also describes actual applications of the ideas in the area of organisational, societal and environmental management, and reflects upon the impact of such an approach on current practice.
Download or read book Autopoiesis and Cognition written by H.R. Maturana and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a bold, brilliant, provocative and puzzling work. It demands a radical shift in standpoint, an almost paradoxical posture in which living systems are described in terms of what lies outside the domain of descriptions. Professor Humberto Maturana, with his colleague Francisco Varela, have undertaken the construction of a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as they are objects of observation and description, nor even as in teracting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to them selves. Thus, the standpoint of description of such unities from the 'outside', i. e. , by an observer, already seems to violate the fundamental requirement which Maturana and Varela posit for the characterization of such system- namely, that they are autonomous, self-referring and self-constructing closed systems - in short, autopoietic systems in their terms. Yet, on the basis of such a conceptual method, and such a theory of living systems, Maturana goes on to define cognition as a biological phenomenon; as, in effect, the very nature of all living systems. And on this basis, to generate the very domains of interac tion among such systems which constitute language, description and thinking.
