Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Reference: GW Seminar on Reflexive Systems

Briefings (Core)

For several years a group of faculty members, students, and people from off campus met once a month to discuss “complex systems”.  Later we decided to discuss “reflexive systems” as the next step in the systems sciences.

The systems sciences and cybernetics provide a general theory of perception, cognition, learning, adaptation, and understanding, whether these phenomena occur in human beings, groups, organizations, nations, or machines. Just as physics provides a fundamental theory of matter and energy, which is used in the various fields of engineering, cybernetics may one day be seen as providing a fundamental theory of information and regulation for the fields of the social and design sciences .

Reflexivity is similiar to second order cybernetics. Both emphasize including the observer in what is observed. Cybernetics has already had an impact on a wide range of fields – computer science, robotics, engineering, biology, psychology, management, sociology, political science, economics and the philosophy of science. As a transdisciplinary field cybernetics serves as a catalyst for further developments in many fields.

The group meets from September to April except December.The presentations and discusssions take place at The George Washington University, from 10 a.m to noon in Funger Hall, 2201 G Street NW, Washington DC (coffee available, lunch afterwards).

Archives 2006-2011  [to be continued]

Tip of the Hat to Stuart Umpleby for the pointer.

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Michel Bauwens: Israel Uses Facebook to Identify and then Block Incoming Protesters from Europe

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War
Michel Bauwens

Israel used Facebook to stop European pro-Palestine activists

IntelNews.Org, 12 July 2011

Joseph Fitsanakis

Israeli intelligence services managed to stop dozens of European pro-Palestine activists from flying to Israel, by gathering open-source intelligence about them on social media sites, such as Facebook. According to Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, intelligence gathered on Facebook formed the basis of a blacklist containing over 300 names of European activists, who had signed up on an open-access Facebook page of a group planning nonviolent actions in Israel this summer.

Israeli intelligence agencies forwarded the names on the lists to European airline carriers, asking them not to allow the activists onboard their flights, as they were not going to be allowed into the country. This action prompted airline carriers to prevent over 200 activists from boarding scheduled flights to Israel. Israeli security officers detained over 310 other activists, who arrived in Israel on several European flights last week. Of those, almost 70 were denied entry to the country, while more detentions are expected to take place later this week, according to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad.

During the detention operation, at least two flights into Israel, from Geneva, Switzerland, and Rome, Italy, were diverted to a secluded area of the Ben Gurion International Airport, which is located a few miles southeast of Tel Aviv. Once there, they were boarded by armed Israeli security officers, who detained several activists onboard the airplanes before allowing the remaining passengers to disembark. Witnesses also reported the presence of hundreds of police officers at Ben Gurion during the detention of the activists. Characteristically, only one of a 40-strong pro-Palestinian activist contingency onboard an EasyJet flight from London, UK, was able to enter Israel, while 39 were detained and sent back to the UK.

 

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Worth a Look: Institute for 21st Century Agoras

Advanced Cyber/IO, Worth A Look

Institute for 21st Century Agoras

People the world over aspire to participatory democracy. Yet the democratic planning and design of social systems, from local urban projects to national health care, is threatened by our institutional inability to engage stakeholders in dialogues that result in effective collective design and commitment.

A Democratic Vision for All Stakeholders
The Agoras Institute promotes a democratic transformation of civil society and government by empowering the capacity of client organizations and educators to produce breakthroughs in the collective confrontation of multidimensional wicked problems. Our immediate mission is to establish and nurture new Agoras of the 21st century – global centers of democratic participatory design and education – in areas of critical socio-political importance or demand.

What are Agoras?
With each shift in human social communication and technology, the means for wise engagement must evolve. In ancient Athens, all citizens could meet face to face in the public arena. Today, our arenas are globally distributed, with unmanageable relational and problem complexity. The Institute supports client organizations with tools, practices, and training to support engagements for addressing projects of high sociotechnical complexity.

At this critical juncture of the evolutionary process of humanity, there cannot be conscious evolution without the capacity to explicate through dialogue the wisdom of the people in the Agoras of the 21st Century Global Village.

 Alexander Christakis

Phi Beta Iota: Includes software being tested and scaled.  See the slideshow by Tom Flanagan.

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Tom Atlee: Movement to Reform Global Understanding

04 Education, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process
Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

As I was preparing another bulletin for you, I stumbled on a very remarkable initiative — a global curriculum reform movement — that I want to share right away.  It seems a revolution is brewing in some parts of mainstream higher education.  Here is a significant piece:

A “Science Daily” article “Higher Education Curricula Not Keeping Pace With Societal, Tech Changes” describes this “global movement to abolish the archaic disciplinary isolation and static teaching practices of the 19th and 20th centuries, and replace them with pedagogy that addresses the complexity and diversity of perspective of a global community in the 21st century.”

The epicenter of this movement is Curriculum Reform.  A group of academics — from college students to university presidents — have created a Manifesto (see below) that has so far been endorsed by two universities in Europe and one in the U.S (Arizona State University, Jacobs University Bremen, and Leuphana Universität Lüneburg).  These universities are now testing specific curricula based on the Manifesto's principles.

I am extremely impressed with the principles these academic innovators have come up with.  More information is available at their website, including some excellent comments following the Manifesto itself.

If you are concerned about education and the state of the world, take a look, and spread the word…

Coheartedly,
Tom

Phi Beta Iota:  Tom Atlee is the minister-mentor to all of us who strive to achieve collective intelligence and evolutionary consciousness.  We urge support for his very personal commitment to  his calling.

TO SUPPORT THE CO-INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE & TOM ATLEE'S WORK…

Please send a donation of any amount — $10, $25, $50, $100, $500 or more — to

The Co-Intelligence Institute
PO Box 493
Eugene, OR 97440

or use your Visa or MasterCard to make an online donation at
http://co-intelligence.org/donations.html

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Worth a Look: Curriculum Reform Forum

04 Education, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Threats, Worth A Look
Koko the Reflexive

The Curriculum Reform Forum

The Curriculum Reform Forum is dedicated to disseminating thought leadership in the field of curricular reform in order to inspire local reform initiatives. It is a platform for global dialogue fostering the exchange of ideas as well as a resource offering concrete support to academic practitioners.

Inspired by this question of the father of Modern Skepticism we would like to approach contemporary curricular reform with the wisdom and fervour of an owl going into nosedive. You are invited to read our manifesto and join the conversation!

CurriculumReform.org

Phi Beta Iota:  We have focused on Paradigms of Failure and on the loss of intelligence and integrity for decades.  Now George Soros has had his aha moment.  The Reflexive Movement is advancing on all fronts.  Russell Ackoff smiles.

Below is the essence of the Manifesto:

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Curriculum Reform Forum”

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