Рефлексивные процессы и управление. Сборник материалов XI Международного симпозиума 16-17 октября 2017 г., Москва - стр. 21
Its primary goal is to introduce key first- and second-order cybernetic concepts developed since World War II in a way that is accessible for speculative interaction and digital experimentation, somewhat in the way the toy steam engine gave access to experimentation with self-regulation in mechanical systems. It is hope that this will help re-align the developments of cybernetics (as a philosophical field) and computing (as an engineering field) in some places.
The computing field, itself a spawn of cybernetics in some ways, recently experienced a proliferation of study and play resources for "makers" and young people to familiarize themselves with digital technology, programming and networking. Of these, the single-board low-cost computer Raspberry Pi, its open-source operating system Raspbian (a Debian-derived Linux) and the programming language Python 3 were chosen at the technical basis for this project.
The course is designed to enable both individual self-study as well as formal classes, and it fit the scope of a one-semester introductory undergraduate module. As a electronically enhanced textbook, it offers a coherent overarching narrative that is illustrated and substantiated by various demonstrations, anecdotes, short audio and video clips of cybernetic sources, and, first and foremost, hands-on exercises. Aiming to inspire an appreciation for the concerns and characteristics of cybernetics, the course design currently focuses on assumptions that set cybernetics apart form other fields in the systems research family, as well as from conventional natural science: Observer-dependence, non-determinability, circular causality, and self-organization.
The majority of the hands-on exercises takes the format of applied coding assignments. "Technical" approaches have more conventionally been associated with first-order cybernetics and utilitarian control systems. In this case, however, computer technology is taken as an output of past cybernetics to illustrate and inspire cybernetics and cyberneticians of the future. The hands-on exercises include: A programmable Turing Machine, a simple Wiener anti-aircraft predictor, a thermostat data logger, a Shannon mind reading machine, demonstrations of subjective participation in observation, various eigenwert and eigenbehaviour demonstrations based on recursive functions, a simulation of the Ebbinghaus "forgetting curve", and an implementation of Varela‘s autopoiesis cellular automata system.
The course has recently been delivered at the Institute of Media Science at Humboldt University in Berlin, and further deliveries are planned. The textbook and exercises are currently developed in German language and are scheduled to be published in a text book format soon. An extended version in English language is planned for the intermediate future. The proposed presentation will introduce the initiative and its underlying motivation, and offer a guided tour through key software exercises with short discussions of related cybernetic principles and ideas.