Difference between revisions of "Anarchy 31/Anarchism and the cybernetics of self-organising systems"
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{{tab}}Drawing on know­ledge of beha­viour of a self-<wbr>organ­ising nature {{p|274}}ex­hibited in other groups, ''e.g.'' in­formal shop-<wbr>floor organ­isa­tion, the adapt­abil­ity and effi­ciency ex­hibited in in­stances of col­cect­ive con­tract working, and similar phe­nomena,<ref>See, for example, the paper by {{w|Trist|Eric_Trist}} on col­lect­ive con­tract working in the {{w|Durham|County_Durham}} coal­field quoted by {{w|H. Clegg|Hugh_Clegg_(industrial_relations)}} in '''A New Ap­proach to Indus­trial Demo­cracy''' (Black­well 1960) and the dis­cus­sion of this book by [[Author:Geoffrey Ostergaard|Geoffrey Oster­gaard]] in [[Anarchy 2/Approaches to industrial democracy|ANARCHY 2]]. Note the ap­pear­ance of new ele­ments of job rota­tion.<br>{{tab}}Despite his empha­sis on the formal aspects of worker organ­isa­tion, {{w|Melman|Seymour_Melman}}{{s}} ana­lysis (see Note 1) of the worker de­cision pro­cess at {{w|Standard{{s}}|Standard_Motor_Company}} brings out many of the carac­ter­istics of a self-<wbr>organ­ising system: the evolving nature of the process; the diffi­culty of de­termin­ing where a par­tic­ular de­cision was made; chan­ging domin­ance; the way in which the cumul­ative ex­peri­ence of the group changes the frame of refer­ence against which subse­quent prob­lems are set for solu­tion. A better idea of the gang system from which this derives can, however, be ob­tained from [[Author:Reg Wright|Reg Wright]]{{s}} articles in [[Anarchy 2/The gang system in Coventry|ANARCHY 2]] & [[Anarchy 8/Erosion inside capitalism|8]].</ref> we may perhaps offer some sug­ges­tions as to how insti­tu­tional­isa­tion may arise in certain types of circum­stances. | {{tab}}Drawing on know­ledge of beha­viour of a self-<wbr>organ­ising nature {{p|274}}ex­hibited in other groups, ''e.g.'' in­formal shop-<wbr>floor organ­isa­tion, the adapt­abil­ity and effi­ciency ex­hibited in in­stances of col­cect­ive con­tract working, and similar phe­nomena,<ref>See, for example, the paper by {{w|Trist|Eric_Trist}} on col­lect­ive con­tract working in the {{w|Durham|County_Durham}} coal­field quoted by {{w|H. Clegg|Hugh_Clegg_(industrial_relations)}} in '''A New Ap­proach to Indus­trial Demo­cracy''' (Black­well 1960) and the dis­cus­sion of this book by [[Author:Geoffrey Ostergaard|Geoffrey Oster­gaard]] in [[Anarchy 2/Approaches to industrial democracy|ANARCHY 2]]. Note the ap­pear­ance of new ele­ments of job rota­tion.<br>{{tab}}Despite his empha­sis on the formal aspects of worker organ­isa­tion, {{w|Melman|Seymour_Melman}}{{s}} ana­lysis (see Note 1) of the worker de­cision pro­cess at {{w|Standard{{s}}|Standard_Motor_Company}} brings out many of the carac­ter­istics of a self-<wbr>organ­ising system: the evolving nature of the process; the diffi­culty of de­termin­ing where a par­tic­ular de­cision was made; chan­ging domin­ance; the way in which the cumul­ative ex­peri­ence of the group changes the frame of refer­ence against which subse­quent prob­lems are set for solu­tion. A better idea of the gang system from which this derives can, however, be ob­tained from [[Author:Reg Wright|Reg Wright]]{{s}} articles in [[Anarchy 2/The gang system in Coventry|ANARCHY 2]] & [[Anarchy 8/Erosion inside capitalism|8]].</ref> we may perhaps offer some sug­ges­tions as to how insti­tu­tional­isa­tion may arise in certain types of circum­stances. | ||
+ | {{tab}}Imagine a work­shop of reason­able size, in which a number of con­nec­ted pro­cesses are going on, and where there is some vari­ation in the factors af­fact­ing the work to be taken into ac­count. There is con­sider­able evid­ence that the workers in such a shop, working as a co-<wbr>oper­ating group, are able to organ­ise them­selves without outside inter­fer­ence, in such a way as to cope effi­ciently with the job, and show re­mark­able facil­ity in coping with un­fore­see­able diffi­culties and disrup­tions of normal pro­cedure. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}There are two levels of task here:{{tab}}<ol><li>The complex of actual pro­duc­tion tasks.</li><li>The task of solving the problem of how the group should be organ­ised to perform these first level tasks, and how in­forma­tion about them should be dealt with by the group.</li></ol> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In situa­tions of the kind I am ima­gin­ing, the organ­isa­tion of the group is largely de­term­ined by the needs of the job, which are fairly obvious to all con­cerned. There is con­tinual feed-<wbr>back of in­forma­tion from the job to the group. Any un­usual occur­rence will force itself on their notice and will be dealt with ac­cording to their re­sources at that time. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Purely for the purpose of illus­tra­tion, let us now con­sider the situa­tion of the same type of shop, only this time as­suming that it is organ­ised by a com­mit­tee from outside the shop. The situa­tion in which the com­mit­tee finds itself is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from that of the work group. There are now three levels of problem:{{tab}}<ol><li>The prob­lems solved by the indi­vidual workers, ''i.e.'' their jobs.</li><li>The problem of the organ­isa­tion of the work group.</li><li>The problem of the organ­isa­tion of the com­mit­tee itself.</li></ol> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The de­term­ining success/<wbr>failure in­forma­tion for all these has still to come from (or at least is sup­posed to come from), the net result of the solu­tion of the first level prob­lems, ''i.e.'' the state of pro­duc­tion in the shop. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The com­mit­tee is denied the con­tinu­ous feed-<wbr>back which the group had. While working on its solu­tion to the second level problem, it will have no in­forma­tion about the success of its altern­atives, only previ­ous find­ings, coded, in prac­tice, in an inade­quate way. The degree of success will only be observ­able after a trial period after they have decided on a solu­tion. (Also un­usual cir­cum­stances can only be dealt with as ''types'' of occur­rence, since they cannot enumer­ate all pos­sibili­ties. This is import­ant in determ­ining the relat­ive effi­ciency of the two methods of organ­isa­tion, but is of less import­ance in our immedi­ate problem.) | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{p|275}}{{tab}}It follows that the com­mit­tee cannot solve the third problem by a method ana­logous to that used by the original work group in solving the second level problem; while working on the second level problem the com­mit­tee has no compar­able in­forma­tion avail­able to determ­ine the solu­tion of the third level problem. But they must adopt some pro­ced­ure, some organ­isa­tion at a given time. How then is it to be de­term­ined? | ||
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Revision as of 11:42, 3 April 2017
Anarchism and the
cybernetics of self-organising
systems
Firstly, what do we mean by a self-
This definition is, however, in osme ways restrictive. The best such a system can do is to reach some sort of optimum state and stay there. Also, if we regard the system as a control system attempting to maintain stability in a fluctuating environment, the types of disturbance with which it can deal are limited by the fixed maximum variety of the system. This point will be dealt with later. The essential thing is that unpredictable disturbances are liable to prove too much for the system.
Such considerations suggest that it would be more fruitful to incorporate in the definition the idea that the maximum possible variety might also differ at different times. Thus Pask restricts the term to situations where the history of ‘the system’ can best be represented as a series S₀ S₁ … Sₙ each term a system with fixed maximum variety, and each self-organising in the first sense. With this definition we are For an example of self-
In many discussions of control situations the concept of ‘Hierarchy’ appears very quickly. This may tend to make the anarchist recoil, but should not do so, since the usage is a technical one and does not coincide with the use of the term in anarchist criticisms of political organisation.
Firstly, the cybernetician makes a very important distinction between two types of hierarchy, the anatomical and the functional, to use the terminology adopted by Pask. The former is the type exemplified in part by hierarchical social organisation in the normal sense (e.g. ‘tree of command’ structure in industry), that is: there are two (if two levels) actual distinguishable concrete entities involved. The latter refers to the case where there may be only one entity, but there are two or more levels of information structure operating in the system—
Secondly, even in the case of ‘anatomical hierarchy’, the term only means that parts of the system can be distinguished dealing with different levels of decision making and learning, e.g. some parts may deal directly with the environment, while other parts relate to activity of these first parts, or some parts learn about individual occurrences, while others learn about sequences of individual occurrences, and others again about classes of sequences.
Even in the anatomical sense, then, the term need have none of the connotations of coercive sanctions in a ruler-
An important phenomenon in self-
Prior to this Pask had developed individual teaching machines which were important advances in the growth of applied cybernetics.[3] However, on considering the problem of group teaching (for skills where some calculable measure of the pupils’ performance, the rate of change of which will serve as a suitable indication of learning, exists), he did not simply combine individual machines.
The important insight he had was that a group of human beings in a learning situation, is itself an evolutionary system, which suggested the idea of the machine as a catalyst, modifying the communication channels in the group, and thus producing different group structures.
In the development of the individual teaching machines, the possibility of the pupil dominating the machine had already arisen. This Pask now extended by introducing the idea of a quality ‘money’ allocated to each member of the group, and used by each of them to ‘buy’ for himself control over the communication structure of the group and over the partial specification of the solution provided by the machine. Now, in the individual machine, the degree to which the pupil was helped was coupled to change of his degree of success. If he was becoming more successful then the help given was decreased. In the group machine, the allocation of ‘money’ is coupled to two conditions—
The system, then, has changing dominance and exhibits redundancy of potential command.
In practice, each pupil sits in a little cubicle provided with buttons and indicators for communication, and a computer is used for control, calculating the various measures, etc. The operator is provided with some way of seeing what is going on, and can deliberately make things difficult for the group, by introducing false information into the channels, etc., seeing how the group copes with it.
The problems which Pask, at the time, had used in these group experiments had been formulated as conveying information about the position of a point in some space, with noise in the communication channels. The group had been asked to imagine that they are air traffic controllers, given co-
It will be noted that the state of the system when in equilibrium is the solution to the problem. Also that this solution changes with time. This is also the case in the first example from purely human organisation which occurred to me—
Pask emphasised that he had not then had the opportunity to obtain sufficient data to make any far-
Some groups, after an initial stage while they were gaining familiarity with the machine, began assigning specific roles to their members and introducing standard procedures. This led to a drop in efficiency and inability to handle new factors introduced by spurious information, etc. The learning curve rises, flattens, then drops sharply whenever some new element is introduced. The system is now no longer self-
Necessary characteristics for a group to constituted self-
I think we might sum up ‘fixed role assignment and stereotyped procedures’ in one word—
Note that these characteristics are necessary, not sufficient—
The role of the computer in Pask’s system may be worrying some. Is his not an analogue of an authoritarian ‘guiding hand’? The answer is, I think, no. It must be remembered that this is an artificial exercise the group is performing. A problem is set by the operator. There is therefore no real situation in actuality for the group to affect and observe the result of their efforts. It is this function of determining and feeding back success/
The other important aspect of the machine as a catalyst in the learning process, we have already mentioned. There is a rough analogy here with the role of ‘influence leader’ in the Hausers’ sense,[4] rather than any authoritarian ‘overseer’. I will return to this question of the role of the machine shortly.
Regarding the group as a decision maker, Pask suggests that this is perhaps the only sense in which ‘two heads are better than one’ is true—
Imagine a workshop of reasonable size, in which a number of connected processes are going on, and where there is some variation in the factors affacting the work to be taken into account. There is considerable evidence that the workers in such a shop, working as a co-
- The complex of actual production tasks.
- The task of solving the problem of how the group should be organised to perform these first level tasks, and how information about them should be dealt with by the group.
In situations of the kind I am imagining, the organisation of the group is largely determined by the needs of the job, which are fairly obvious to all concerned. There is continual feed-
- The problems solved by the individual workers, i.e. their jobs.
- The problem of the organisation of the work group.
- The problem of the organisation of the committee itself.
The determining success/
The committee is denied the continuous feed-
- ↑ See Seymour Melman: Decision-Making and Productivity (Blackwell, 1958).
- ↑ Gordon Pask: “Interaction between a Group of Subjects and an Adaptive Automaton to produce a Self-
Organising System for Decision-Making” in the symposium Self- Organising Systems, 1962, ed. Jovits, Jacobi and Goldstein (Spartan Books). - ↑ See Stafford Beer: Cybernetics and Management (English Universities Press, 1959) pp. 123-127, and Gordon Pask: An Approach to Cybernetics (Hutchinson 1961).
- ↑ See Richard and Hephzibah Hauser: The Fraternal Society (Bodley Head, 1962).
- ↑ See, for example, the paper by Trist on collective contract working in the Durham coalfield quoted by H. Clegg in A New Approach to Industrial Democracy (Blackwell 1960) and the discussion of this book by Geoffrey Ostergaard in ANARCHY 2. Note the appearance of new elements of job rotation.
Despite his emphasis on the formal aspects of worker organisation, Melman’s analysis (see Note 1) of the worker decision process at Standard’s brings out many of the caracteristics of a self-organising system: the evolving nature of the process; the difficulty of determining where a particular decision was made; changing dominance; the way in which the cumulative experience of the group changes the frame of reference against which subsequent problems are set for solution. A better idea of the gang system from which this derives can, however, be obtained from Reg Wright’s articles in ANARCHY 2 & 8.