Raúl Espejo
World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics
Biography
President of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) and Director of Syncho Research, UK. An academician of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences (IASCYS) and Past Professor of Systems and Cybernetics at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research is in organisational cybernetics and systems. His most referred book is “Organizational Systems: Managing Complexity with the Viable System Model”, 2011 in English and 2016 in Spanish (both with A. Reyes). Has co-published five books and edited 7 special issues of journals, most significantly in 2018 “Futures of Society: the interactions revolution” in Futures. Has published over a 120 papers in journals and books. Has organised and co-organised four of WOSC’s World Congresses, with Alfonso Reyes in the University of Ibague, Colombia, in 2014, with Sergio Barile in La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, in 2017, with Vladimir Lepskiy and Igor Perko, virtually from Moscow in 2021, with Igor Perko in the University of Oxford in 2023. In June 2024 he was awarded by ASC the Norbert Wiener medal. From 1971 to 1973 he was operations director of the CYBERSYN project - for the Chilean Government under the scientific direction of Professor Stafford Beer.
Sessions
Insufficient Variety and Artificial Intelligence
In my interactions with Stafford before he died, he was constantly making apparent that he was searching for a better world, but at the same time he was deeply aware that ongoing human processes were not supporting this outcome. Perhaps efforts towards a less chaotic and better managed complex world could help overcoming these limitations. Cybernetic methodological contributions could be platforms for the effective management of policy issues. This is what I want to offer in these conversations from the perspective of WOSC. More transformations of environmental inputs into necessary economic outputs, may help seeing the world as ecological systems, reducing instances of failure and increasing examples of good performance. Attention to interactions, relationships and complexity are contributions to increasing the possibilities to make things happen in a chaotic world. People need to deal with shared concerns, more specifically they need to work with shared policies in chaotic situations of high complexity. Disagreements and collaboration require their shared attention. It is in these contexts that managing complexity is a challenge. Ross Ashby offers in his book “An Introduction to Cybernetics” (1964) the Law of Requisite Variety, but it is in Stafford Beer’s book “Designing Freedom” (1972), that a great and most useful contribution to this law is given to society and management. Following this, in my early work with Nigel Howard (Espejo and Howard, 1982) we highlighted the “Law of Insuficient Variety”, which I elaborate in my methodological work (Espejo, 2025). My emphasis now is on poiesis to produce desirable worlds, in the context of enframing them in cyber-systemic models. From a cybernetic perspective I expect a focus on correcting variety imbalances among the myriad of relationships producing our world. Thus, this is an invitation, following Stafford’s work to use the law of requisite variety in the world we are producing over time. We are aware that First and Second Order Cybernetics could be powerful contributions towards better societies in a complex world. In our view the complexity of policy issues has ontological and epistemological underpinnings that cybernetics and systems may help to structure better. Adequate relationships and resources may help people and groups to develop better structures. These are structures to produce better policy issues, underpinning social issues through language and related meanings. Stronger organisational structures are necessary for more ethical and cohesive elaboration of policy issues. This is a challenge for Artificial Intelligence.