SUNDAY REWIND: The new cybernetics: systems thinking for the 21st century by Genevieve Bell

In this #mtpcon Digital APAC keynote, Genevieve covers how a cybernetic approach considers people, technology, and the environment, how to disrupt your product process by inviting productive discomfort, diverse voices, and allowing for questions to remain unanswered, and how to employ cybernetic foresight and build products that endure.

Today’s industry goals have led us away from a cybernetic approach, she says, prioritising ‘marketable gadgets’ instead of a deeper understanding of the world we live in. As a result, there’s a failure to engage in the ecological, cultural, and human landscape while delivering new technical products and services.

A cybernetic approach considers three things: people, technology, and the environment. Genevieve says product people can adopt the following lessons from cybernetics:

Engaging with multiple voices – we should acknowledge there’s no one right answer, and willingly promote interpretation and reinterpretation of ideas.

Facilitating productive discomfort – multiple voices of different experience levels and disciplines may lead to challenges and disagreements, but these conflicts are always of value.

Embracing unanswered questions – the answer we first come to isn’t always the right one — it’s just the most obvious one.

Accommodating indirection – a cybernetic approach improves perspective; it looks for “other ways, and other vantage points”.

Watch the original talk: The new cybernetics: systems thinking for the 21st century by Genevieve Bell