Lab for Cybernetics: Engaging Wicked Challenges

The Laboratory for Cybernetics enables students to engage with wicked challenges using models and methods from Cybernetics and Systems.

Cybernetics approaches complex adaptive systems in terms of their purpose—purpose attributed to the system and the purpose of those who articulate the system’s purpose. Thus, Cybernetics demands humane-based explanations for system behaviors as well as responsibility for our own behaviors and the interventions we design. Students will use Cybernetics to approach and model their domain of interest as well as their concerns, that is, their personal intentions and desired outcomes.

The course project is a design brief to be judged as if in competition for funding for implementation. The primary criterion is to increase the total number of choices afforded to another person. The brief must articulate how the design increases the potential for human agency beyond existing approaches while affording an experience that is deeply resonant with the values and intentions of the persons engaged with it.