The cybernetics of socio-economic change and development - Social technology: The organisation of the change and evolution of socio-economic systems

Abstract

This discussion is written in a descriptive manner, firstly because of the nature of the phenomenon investigated as the appropriate quantitative metric has yet to be invented, secondly because of the importance of the cybernetic-systems approach to some of the more critical questions facing man, the importance that the average layman understands this approach and the questions tackled in this investigation.

These critical questions concern the converging trends in socio-economic evolution that mankind is facing. Some of these trends are physical, some are socio-mental. The physical trends are more obvious; the accelerating cost of raw materials, the rapid decline in available raw materials on a per capita basis, the exploding population, the increasing disparity in the ability to generate wealth both within developed and developing countries as well as between them, new attitudes towards consumption and work, the increasing integration of the world into one socio-economic system, increasing life span and population bulges, technological advance, environmental deterioration, morale and moral degeneration and regeneration, cultural and social decay and expansion, deforestation, ideological resolution and conflict, economic waste and efficiency, and information and noise explosion.

This discussion focuses upon the flow of socio-economic systems as directed and influenced by information flows and communication channels and how in consequence these converging trends are and can be optimally dealt with. "Extensive, concious attempts to direct a complex society in a viable, adaptive manner have only just begun in modern history, and much remains to be learned to avoid the mistakes of the past. An intimate understanding of the workings of the sociocultural level of complex adaptive system is essential." Walter Buckley.