May 10, 2019

Cybernetics and Systems

Social and Business Decisions

Raul Espejo

Hosted by Tom Scholte

Buy Book

Summary

Regular listeners of this podcast will, no doubt, be familiar with the name of Raul Espejo, former Director of Operations of Stafford Beer’s famed Cybersyn Project under the Chilean government of Salvador Allende in the early 1970’s. On this episode, the esteemed Dr. Espejo joins us in his role as co-editor of the volume, Cybernetics and Systems: Social and Business Decisions out from Routledge in 2019. By extension, this work is also a reflection of Espejo’s role as former Director-General and now President of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) as this book is, essentially, a collection of extended abstracts and mini-papers encapsulating the vast spectrum of cyber-systemic investigations on offer at that organization’s 2017 Congress in Rome focused largely on policy options across the domains of what contributor Elias G. Carayannis, extending the work of Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, has dubbed the “quadruple helix” of innovation; namely, education, industry, government and the media. Grouping the contributions within nine thematic streams including Human Aspects of Managing Systems, Sustainability and the Anthropocene, Smartness and Big Data, and Democracy, Transparency and Social Dynamics, the 600 plus pages of this volume provide a panorama of the field of cyber-systemics composed of vivid snapshots of rigorous case studies and bold theoretical advances that will surely do much to fire the imaginations and ambitions of researchers and practitioners around the world as they develop their own boundary defying research agendas.

Your Host

Tom Scholte

Tom Scholte is a Professor of Directing and Acting in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia located on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territory of the Musqueam people

View Profile