BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

PROBLEMATIQUE OF TECHNOCENTRIC SOCIETIES 4)

← Back

"The contemporary problematique is the result of a still prevailing value system based on expansion, competition, domination and exploitation"(unstated source)

It would seem that every historical expansive socio-cultural system rested on this typical behavior.

Moreover, the success of most former empires seem to have been due to adequate subsystems of communications, exchange, and administrative organization in coincidence with a certain superior state of technical development or in accordance with some specific characteristics of the environment (Island, plains, deserts, etc.)

Older examples have been the military use of horses, the invention of gunpowder, the introduction of good instruments for oceanic navigation, of the steam engine and the internal combustion engine.

In a sense all of the successful human groups, states or empires have been made possible by some technical superiority.

However, in our contemporaries societies, technical progress- especially thought the use of highly concentrated energy led to the absolute dominance of technical subsystems within the general organization. In the older societies, even the quite limited power of techniques always ended in some crisis, be it for their insufficiencies, be it for more or less widespread abuse against the human or natural environment.

Technique tends to act as a magnifying lens and empowering device on anything it is applied to.

As our modern societies are hypertechnified, a better evaluation of the impact of technique on all human systems and subsystems seems to be in urgent need to enter our systems research agenda.

→ Club of Rome; Commons; Criticality; FEEDBACK (POSITIVE); TECHNOSPHERE; THRESHOLD OF STIMULATION

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint