Before Fruit Ninja, Cybernetics
By WILL WILES
New York Times, November 29, 2012
EXTRACT (Conclusion)
The No. 10 Dashboard taps into the same desire to master available information — a desire that has only grown as the amount of information in circulation has increased. Where Cybersyn needed dedicated national infrastructure and rooms full of equipment, the app runs on a hand-held device. And yet, the dashboard is actually less sophisticated.
It is not truly cybernetic because it lacks a mechanism to translate all that data into action. It can display information; it cannot consult and control. Less a driver’s dashboard, it is more a window out of which a passenger can observe the national scenery speeding past. Government might be given the illusion of hand-held, one-stop manageability, but no actual managing is going on.
The app could thus be an apt metaphor for politicians reduced to spectators by the surges and shocks of the globalized world. Mr. Cameron should remember that there’s at least one other instance of government-by-app: the team that worked on restructuring Greece’s debt used iPads too, equipped with an app purpose-built for the job.
However that turns out, we can at least say this: in terms of distractions, these apps are marginally more useful than Fruit Ninja.
Phi Beta Iota: Below are immediately pertinent references. Technology is not a substitute for strategy or thinking. As Paul Strassman has so famously noted, “Information Technology makes bag management worse.”
Graphic: Business Intelligence Hits the Wall
Graphic: Jim Bamford on the Human Brain
Graphic: Tom Atlee on Whole-System Intelligence
Graphic: Tony Zinni on 4% “At Best”
See Also:
2012 Reflexivity = Integrity: Toward Earth/Life 4.0
2012 Strategic Thinking on Future of GW
2010 Robert Steele: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP
Howard Rheingold: Infotention Skills + Citizen Intel RECAP
Koko: Bloomberg & Soros Do Wrong Thing Righter
Robert Steele: Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies, and the New Craft of Intelligence
Search: holistic cybernetic integral
Stuart Umpleby A Constructivist University: Farewell to the Paukmaschine*
Stuart Umpleby: Papers on Reflexivity, Soros Reviews
Stuart Umpleby: Second Order Science
Who’s Who in Earth Intelligence: Stuart Umpleby
