{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "content": "---\ntitle: \"Teaching the world to Cybernetics\"\ndescription: \"A look at what the new Experiences Team at the ANU School of Cybernetics is\n  building---weird, site-specific encounters with cybernetic ideas.\"\ntags:\n  - cybernetics\n---\n\nIf you're the sort of person who lurks on people's LinkedIn accounts, you may\nhave noticed that I've recently become the\n[lead of the _Experiences_ Team](https://cybernetics.anu.edu.au/people/ben-swift/)\nat the School of Cybernetics. My team's mission is:\n\n> to take Cybernetics to the world by providing encounters with cybernetics to\n> individuals and organisations who are (currently) not in our Masters/PhD\n> programs.\n>\n> ...and to find ways to do it sustainably.\n\n![a bunch of wires connected together in interesting geometric shapes](./alina-grubnyak-ZiQkhI7417A-unsplash.webp)\n\nThat might strike you as a pretty broad mission, for a couple of reasons:\n\n- what counts as an _encounter_? couldn't that be anything?\n- the world is a big and diverse place\n\n...and you'd be right. If you follow the rest of the communications from the\nSchool of Cybernetics you'll know that we're not shy about painting a grand,\ntotalising vision of how the world can/might work and what part cybernetics has\nto play in it. And while I'm a bit daunted by the task, I'm also pretty excited.\n\nHere are some of the things my team will be working on over the next\nweeks/months/years:\n\n- site-specific experiences based around specific places; uncovering the\n  cybernetic histories of some of the places we inhabit on the ANU campus and\n  beyond, and creating narrative experiences to share those histories with\n  others\n- articulating many different answers to the question \"what is cybernetics?\" for\n  different audiences & mediums (online/in-person, talks/workshops/happenings,\n  prosaic/poetic)\n\n- creating a curriculum for interested partners to understand how the key ideas\n  of cybernetics can help them untagle (or at least manage) the complexity in\n  their businesses and other organisations\n\nWhat I can say is that I want the things we make to be **weird**. If I ever turn\nup in a tie and a blue suit and deliver an hours-long bullet-pointed PowerPoint\npresentation[^ppt] on this stuff then you have my permission to point me back to\nthis post and ask me where it all went wrong. Otherwise, I look forward to\ncrossing paths with you and sharing an educational experience about cybernetics.\n\n[^ppt]:\n    Don't get me wrong, PowerPoint (well, visual aids in general) can be super\n    effective as part of a multimedia presentation strategy, but the\n    [affordances of the tool are such that it makes it hard to avoid the pitfalls](https://twitter.com/add_hawk/status/1489001635779018754).\n",
  "createdAt": "2026-05-13T23:14:49.253Z",
  "description": "A look at what the new Experiences Team at the ANU School of Cybernetics is building---weird, site-specific encounters with cybernetic ideas.",
  "path": "/blog/2022/03/07/teaching-the-world-to-cybernetics",
  "publishedAt": "2022-03-07T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:tevykrhi4kibtsipzci76d76/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "cybernetics"
  ],
  "textContent": "A look at what the new Experiences Team at the ANU School of Cybernetics is building---weird, site-specific encounters with cybernetic ideas.",
  "title": "Teaching the world to Cybernetics"
}