International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

"A combination of interacting people and technology" (J. WARFIELD – pers. comm.).

WARFIELD adds that: "The way in which systems success is interpreted requires that the people and technology be both separately and interactively successfull in order for the system to be successful".

The problem lays evidently in the criteria selected to define and measure "success" (Technical?, economical?, social? ecological ?, or whatever). Different people may obviously select different criteria, possibly incompatible in their consequences.

WARFIELD gives the following examples: "Banking systems, computer systems, communication systems, educational systems, environmental systems, governmental systems, private enterprises, public enterprises" (Ibid).

The following observation by N. WIENER should obviously be pondered, even if it has some luddites undertones: "… the automatic machine… is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation in comparison with which the present recession (i.e. 1950) and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke"(1950, p. 162)

While fifty years later, this dire prediction still never came true, it is also true that creeping unemployment tends to become more structural and not any more merely cyclical.

This mechanism should be closely scrutinized in terms of social self regulation and possibly the prudent introduction of some better "checks and balances" than merely unemployment allowances.