Short Paper delivered at the AACE Conference 1998
"Convivial Cybernetics or the Borg"
Richard "Bud" Murphy
vntgpoint [at] aol.com
Abstract: The author observes two paths ahead. Both lead to the unprecedented integration of cybernetics and human organization, a cyborganization. One path through consensual cybernetics supports self-organization around shared goals leading to utopian conviviality. The other path through cybernetic optimization of performance leads to a loss of personal freedom and dignity. What we see when we look into the future has implications for our current choices and the future we create. The value of our predictions is not their accuracy but their ability to mobilize human intention and effort in the creation of a desirable and sustainable future.
Cyborganizing
The noun is cyborganization the verb is cyborganizing (ongoing present tense). New words are needed to talk about new realities.
cybernetics
n. The study of human control functions and of mechanical and electric systems designed to replace them.
organism
n. A form of life composed of mutually dependent parts that maintain various vital processes. Any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being: the governmental organism. Any complex thing or system having properties and functions determined by the character of the whole as well as of the parts and by the relations of the parts to the whole.
organizing
Vb. 1. to cause to develop an organic structure. The act or process of organizing. To unify into a coordinated functioning whole: put in readiness for coherent or cooperative action. To set up an administrative and functional structure: provide with or establish as an organization.
cyb - organ - izing
Cyborganizing
Believing as Willing
What follows are beliefs about the future, a future that cannot be proven. Believing is as much an act of willing as an act of knowing. Believing in a desirable future can create a future that is desirable. The future can be willed into existence through believing in it, sharing belief about it in compelling ways and taking action. When groups of people share beliefs a very special energy is activated. This shared believing, shared willing can create the future. Our future is the sum total of our collective beliefs about it.
Let's believe that we will create a future in which our human experience will be enhanced by our intimacy with one another through our intimacy with technology. If we fear a gray Borg future, let's take charge of our beliefs, our willing. We are at choice. We are hurtling along an information highway toward the future. If we close our eyes at the horror of the future we see, we will inevitably make that horror our reality. With steady gaze, we can take charge of the virtual highway along which we travel and create a future with beautiful new horizons and destinations not yet imagined.
What Matters?
There seems to be abundant evidence that natural systems harness energy, organize matter, develop and endure because they adapt to their environments. If a system is able to adapt to changes in its environment it has a significantly greater capacity for enduring over time. Individual humans are pretty adaptable, but require a community in which their individuality is defined. We call certain forms of human community organizations. Organizations take the potential for adaptation to a whole new level. Incorporated within societies of law, organizations or corporations are granted the rights of persons. They own property, and enter into contracts. Corporations can avoid the inevitable scourge of individual humans, death. They do an effective job of avoiding the other inevitability, taxes. Corporations are granted this perpetuity as part of a public trust in which they commit to serve the common good. The fact of evolution is argued by some. Others accepting evolution debate its exact mechanisms. No one debates that organizations have the ability to evolve. What they evolve into depends on the collective belief of their human members.
Some say that evolution is the universe learning by trial and error. Teilhard de Chardin a deceased, Jesuit priest, paleontologist, mystic claims that "complexification" is the inevitable results of that learning. He believed that as the universe evolves it becomes more and more complex. Further that this complexity eventually supports self-reflexive consciousness, as in the phenomena, man. He saw this complexity continuing to evolve through the noosphere, a gossamer web of human consciousness into a supra organism. Organizations survive because they support learning and knowing at the organization level. Remembering history gives us cumulative wisdom, a consensus with our past. Striking a dynamic balance between freedom and constraint organizations can achieve goals even while being open to reconfiguring the way they organize in response to the environment and to the internal consensus of the individuals that give them energy. Hopefully integrating technology and human potential will create a future that is truly desirable, this implies there will be a correlation between individual desire and available choices. A future in which no one works is inherently just as repugnant as a world in which people are forced to work in oppressive environments. If we believe it is possible we can create a future in which we will be able to engage in meaningful activity in a more or less seamless pattern of work and leisure.
The Cyborgs of science fiction are integrations of cybernetic mechanisms and organic systems. The Borg of Star Trek science fiction is the communal expression of cyborgs. An emerging reality and not science fiction, cyborganizations are the integration of human and cybernetic systems. One of the fundamental differences about our two possible futures the one of convivial cybernetics and the other of the Borg is a difference in approach to choice. The Borg moves along a path of "either or" while convivial cybernetics moves along a path of "both and". Optimizing diversity is a fundamental strength of the adaptive successful organization that leads to convivial cybernetics. Stifling diversity can lead to a stable organization but it also leads to the Borg.
The two paths leading into the cyborganization of the future are not crossroads. Our choice is not between one path and the other. Both paths run through each human heart. We can make a commitment to consensual cybernetics that leads to performance without the loss of freedom and dignity, to a convivial cybernetics, sooner rather than later. Inevitably the future of the universe is one of growing complexification, interdependence, and consciousness. Our future is the future of a cybernetic collective. This cybernetic collective can say with conviction, "Resistance is futile." "We will assimilate." But a desirable and sustainable future is ours only if we choose it every day.
Some refer to our planet Earth as Gaia, a single living organism. While we are at choice, our choice is to be or not to be part of that living organism. Let's choose to be intimately involved in the quickening self-reflective consciousness of a living planet. Now's our chance, and maybe our only chance. We can awaken slumbering Gaia from her vegetative sleep. With our help Gaia will shake the slumber of eons from her collective mind and Gaia the living planet will join the family of living planets at play in the universe.
