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Keywords Cybernetics, Systems analysis, Management science
Abstract An address delivered at the University of Valladolid, Spain. Asks the Question- What is Cybernetics? Discusses popular notions and genuine difficulties. Looks at the origins, derivations and definitions of cybernetics. Considers intrinsic control and Socio-Economic Governance in real-- time. Relates cybernetics to the current world situation.
Salutation
Magnificent and most excellent Rector of the University of Valladolid
Most excellent and most illustrious Authorities
Members of the University Senate
Ladies and gentlemen
I wish that I could speak to you in Castellian, but it is almost thirty years since I last had occasion to use your beautiful language - and that was in circumstances of such stress that I still find it difficult to speak. On the 11th September 2001 a crime was committed in New York that the world will long commemorate. I hope that the Spanish-speaking world at least commemorates that earlier 11th September in 1973, the day of the Chilean golpe, when my Companero Presidente Salvador Allende died, and the people of Chile fell subject to decades of brutal suppression (Plate 1).
Today, however, is a happier occasion. I wish to thank the University of Valladolid which, following the proposal made by the Escuela Universitaria Polytechnics, has bestowed on me the high honour of Doctor Honoris Causa (Plate 2).
Popular notions and genuine difficulties
The subject to which I have devoted my professional life is cybernetics. I am all too well aware that most people have no more than a hazy idea of what it is all about. I have often been assured that it is about freezing people - but they were thinking of cryogenics. The more informed realize that it is concerned with systems and their regulation. But even then, there are so many ways in which that notion can be approached.
Some people seem to think that cybernetics is part of engineering - they reckon that feedback loops are involved, and therefore focus on specific devices described by servo-mechanics. Others have heard of systems of training through behavioural psychology, and think of pigeons, or rats running mazes. Even so, the most advanced type of control machinery we know about is surely found in the central nervous system of the human body....