Contrasting the ontological view of scientific inquiry with an epistemological view drawn from cybernetics yields a dynamic conception of communication that joins observers with what they observe.

I describe four paradigms of communication relevant to social, economic, and political development of large social systems: the control paradigm, the network-convergence paradigm, the information seeking paradigm, and the autopoiesis paradigm. The first is largely what is practiced. The second is what is currently in vogue. The third is already implicit in some literature. The fourth needs further development and is depicted here in its infancy.

The following essay is about human communication. Traditionally, one would define the concept, proceed to force a variety of experiences into its terms and declare the exercise a success if it appears to capture a great deal of territory. However, while tempting, such constructions of reality also are rather lonely ones devoid of contributions by Others that populate reality as well. In contrast, this essay seeks first of all to listen to everyday expressions of notions of communication. This intent is grounded in the belief that their ordinary nature does not disqualify them when comparable scientific conceptions are available. Indeed, most social scientific theories can be shown to have grown out of ordinary folk wisdom. Scientific conceptions are just more formalized and subjected to different kinds of tests then the notions practiced in everyday life. To listen also means to have an understanding of the language in which these everyday notions arise and an understanding of the communication practices in which they come to be embedded. This essay therefore also is about understanding Others” understanding of the kind of communication practices in which we ordinarily participate. In pursuit of this second-order understanding, I will start the paper with a brief theory of metaphor, one that goes beyond mere rhetorical formulations and links language with the creation of perceived realities. Following it will be a survey of what I consider to be the six most pervasive metaphors of human communication in everyday life. Each turns out to entail its own logic for human interaction and the use of each creates its own social reality. This descriptive account is intended to provide the “data” or the ground from which I shall then develop several radical constructist propositions. These are intended to reflect on how a social reality could be conceived that does afford so many incompatible ways of communicating, on the individual contributions to understanding, understanding of understanding, and viability in practicing such metaphors, on what makes communication a social phenomenon, on three positions knowers can assume in their known and the theories of communication commensurate with these positions. Then I will sketch some aspects of mass communication in these terms and comment on its research. Propositions of this kind should prove useful in efforts to construct scientific communication theories or, to be less ambitious, to understand communication as a social phenomenon that involves each of us with other human beings. For lack of space, the concern for issues of mass communication had to be severely curtailed, leaving the readers to continue on their own.

In the spirit of second-order cybernetics, human communication is reconceptualized by including in the process not only its theorists but also their observed Others without whom social reality is inconceivable. This essay examines several versions of otherness, how the voices of Others survive social scientific inquiries, the dialogical spaces made available for people to build their home, and the kinds of citizenship encouraged. The essay draws attention to the epistemological limits of different inquiring practices and seeks to expand the range of possibilities for humans to see each Other.

Key words: cybernetics, human communication, languaging, embodied practices, re-entry, accounts, social theory, social inquiry, otherness, observer, i, it, you, thou, trivial/ nontrivial machines, dialogue, agency, emancipation, epistemology, methodology, politics o

On a cold day between Christmas and New Year 1961, in search of a place to study, I met Heinz in his office at the Biological Computer Laboratory. I knew of him through a network of designers who, like me, were interested in issues that conventional curricula did not address. Heinz greeted me, a total stranger, with the enthusiasm usually reserved for an old friend. To my surprise, he knew of the place where I had came from (the Ulm School of Design, an avant-garde institution now extinct but reproduced everywhere – much as cybernetics is now), and he suggested that I come to the University of Illinois to study with W. Ross Ashby. This short encounter enrolled me into cybernetics and defined my intellectual focus for years to come.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to connect two discourses, the discourse of cybernetics and that of design. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes a comparative analysis of relevant definitions, concepts, and entailments in both discourse, and an integration of these into a cybernetically informed concept of human-centered design, on the one hand, and a design-informed concept of second-order cybernetics, on the other hand. In the course of this conceptual exploration, the distinction between science and design is explored with cybernetics located in the dialectic between the two. Technology-centered design is distinguished from human-centered design, and several axioms of the latter are stated and discussed. Findings: This paper consists of recommendations to think and do things differently. In particular, a generalization of interface is suggested as a replacement for the notion of products; a concept of meaning is developed to substitute for the meaninglessness of physical properties; a theory of stakeholder networks is discussed to replace the deceptive notion of THE user; and, above all, it is suggested that designers, in order to design something that affords use to others, engage in second-order understanding. Originality/value – The paper makes several radical suggestions that face likely rejection by traditionalists but acceptance by cyberneticians and designers attempting to make a contribution to contemporary information society. Keywords: cybernetics, sciences, design.

In the history of cybernetics there have been several attempts by cyberneticians to put themselves into the circularities of their theories and designs, invoking a shift from the cybernetics of mechanisms to a cybernetics of cybernetics. The latter is the title of a book chapter by Margaret Mead (1968) and of Heinz von Foerster’s (1974) compilation of articles on cybernetics. The latter introduced the concept of second- order cybernetics which may have overshadowed or sidelined other reflexivities. I am attempting to recover three additional reflexive turns, describe their origin, implications, and suggest ways in which they continue what Karl Müller (2007) calls an unfinished revolution. These turns are not discussed here in their historical succession but as conceptual expansions of the horizon of cybernetic inquiries and designs

Like all chapters in this book, mine, too, concerns itself with limits of knowing. What distinguishes this chapter from the others, however, is my accounting for these limits in terms of (in)determinability, not (in)determinacy: (in)determinability implicates a human being’s (in)ability to ascertain something; (in)determinacy refers to a supposedly objective condition, which assumes human involvement to be superfl uous and dispensable. Also, I am suggesting that (in)determinabilities are not merely of one kind – permeating different fi elds in different guises, as some of the foregoing chapters are assuming (in)determinacy does – but that one needs to distinguish at least four. I contend (in)determinabilities arise as a consequence of different ways in which humans choose to be involved in their worlds: spectators construct worlds that are very different from those of, say, builders whose actions are necessary parts of the world they alter. And designing artifacts entails a way of knowing that is quite different from that needed to use or consume artifacts made by others. Being a member of a corporation or community entails still other ways that are not derivable from being good at handling things. Not only do these rather different kinds of human involvement entail different epistemologies – different ways by which one comes to know – they also bring forth different limits for what they enable. I am suggesting that these epistemologies are not superior or inferior, or better or worse, relative to each other. Their value depends on what one wants to accomplish in one’s world. And as I do not care to privilege one epistemology to the exclusion of all others, I can afford to move through them with ease

This essay intends to recover human agency from holistic, abstract, even oppressive conceptions of social organization, common in the social sciences, social systems theory in particular. To do so, I am taking the use of language as simultaneously accompanying the performance of and constructing reality (my version of social constructivism). The essay starts with a definition of human agency in terms of its linguistic manifestation. It then sketches several leading conceptions of social organization, their metaphorical origin and entailments. Finally, it contextualizes the use of these metaphors in conversation, which leads to the main thesis of this essay that the reconstitutability of networks of conversation precedes all other criteria of the viability of organizational forms. The paper transcends the traditional second-order cybernetic preoccupation with individual cognition – observation and description – into the social domain of participation

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. Excerpt: The fore going is intended to claim a place for a radically social constructivism that does not rely on the metaphysical assumption of ontological givens, avoids on cognitivist abstractions (or reductions) from the communication processes in which we realize ourselves as human beings, but on the embodied and largely linguistic practices of conversing with one another. Languaging is an intrinsically social phenomenon and so are all explanations that are grounded in language. As Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) said about language, everything worth talking about is there, nothing is hidden; there is no private language; to which I would add that the cognition we talk of is not private either.