{"id":1581,"date":"2016-11-13T15:49:44","date_gmt":"2016-11-13T20:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ccsmfa.wordpress.com\/?p=1581"},"modified":"2021-01-18T18:59:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T23:59:42","slug":"happy-105th-birthday-heinz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/2016\/11\/happy-105th-birthday-heinz\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 105th Birthday, Heinz!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"hvf-and-mai-in-ds-300dpi\"
Mai and Heinz von Foerster in Pangaro’s 1970 Citro\u00ebn DS21 in Pescadero, California, in the early 2000s (Photograph: Paul Pangaro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Heinz von Foerster was born 105 years ago today. He was a major figure in\u00a0the beginnings\u00a0of cybernetics<\/a> from the middle of the 20th century, and through to its flowering as second-order cybernetics<\/a>. His ideas\u00a0can be magical and one of his papers is\u00a0still a favorite<\/a>\u00a0and voted the\u00a0favorite of students in cybernetics + design courses<\/a> year upon year. \u00a0His wife, Mai, also magical in her clarity as well as\u00a0succinctness (a trait not shared by Heinz), once said to me, “Heinz has a mind like a crystal.” He demonstrates this so well in\u00a0his “Ethical Imperative”, a cybernetic koan worthy of contemplation and action:<\/p>\n

\u201cI always try to act so as to increase the number of choices.\u201d\u00a0He means “choices” in the sense of viable and appropriate alternatives for the current context<\/em>, not just proliferation of arbitrary options. Designers may find direction and ethics within his words.\u00a0(See references and more examples here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In celebration of his birthday today, the Heinz von Foerster Archive<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Vienna has distributed this audio recording one of his lectures<\/a>. It has all the rigor we expect from a trained physicist and all the magic we want from a cybernetician. Happy Birthday, Dear Heinz!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heinz von Foerster was born 105 years ago today. He was a major figure in\u00a0the beginnings\u00a0of cybernetics from the middle of the 20th century, and through to its flowering as second-order cybernetics. His ideas\u00a0can be magical and one of his papers is\u00a0still a favorite\u00a0and voted the\u00a0favorite of students in cybernetics + design courses year upon … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Happy 105th Birthday, Heinz!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,6,9],"tags":[61,62],"class_list":["post-1581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybernetics","category-interaction-design","category-pangaro","tag-cybernetics-2","tag-design"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paKWzH-pv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}