Hey there, this is Seb 🙌🏽
My last post covered some background on why I started Together Tomorrow. As you already know,
Together Tomorrow aims to inspire, guide and connect my friends today, so that, together, each of us can build the world of tomorrow.
This post introduces the structure that all upcoming posts will follow - it’s my personal manual to stay on track.
Cybernetics
Have you heard of “Cybernetics”? According to Paul Pangaro, “Cybernetics” comes from a Greek word meaning
“the art of steering”.
Cybernetics is the study of how systems, such as machines, animals, and organizations, control and communicate with each other. It looks at how information flows between these systems and how they respond to that information to achieve a particular goal.
Imagine you are the Dinosaur in Google’s “no Internet connection game” (I still love the nostalgia of it). As the Dinosaur, you should jump over every cactus in your way. If successful, the game responds with prompting more cacti. The game is constantly receiving information from your actions and responds to it.
Cybernetics is like studying how the game and the player interact with each other to achieve a goal. As such, Cybernetics applies to many other fields. “Together Tomorrow” makes use of this.
The Art of Steering in Together Tomorrow
Imagine once again you would be the Dinosaur:
Your objective is to stay alive as long as possible.
You sense your position, and the game prompts you with new cacti (obstacles).
You compare what is needed to achieve your goal (staying alive).
You act by jumping over the next cactus.
In the “no Internet connection game” this process of sensing, comparing, and acting happens ad infinitum.
Let’s apply this process to Together Tomorrow. Here, the objective is that each of us, together, can build the world of tomorrow. To achieve this objective
We need to sense the state of the world, the happening of meaningful advancements and our position in the system.
We need to compare our position in the system to where we aim to head.
We need to act by building the world of tomorrow.
This leads me to the structure of all upcoming posts:
Sunday posts (🔮) help to set objectives. They inspire us on where the world may be heading.
Wednesday posts (📡) help to sense and compare. They inform on meaningful advancements and how to potentially act.
Irregularly, there will be action posts (🚀). They guide how to build the world of tomorrow.
I will try to invite guests to as many posts as possible. For that, I would be grateful if you could spread the word.
Finally, I wonder whether Community Thursdays (🫶) might be valuable. These could include e.g. discussions on Sunday (🔮 objectives) and Wednesday (📡 sensing and comparing) posts. What do you think about this? Any other feedback is much appreciated.
Thank you for reading, you are wonderful.
So long,
Seb 🙌🏽
Need some more information?
For the record, I am by no means an expert in Cybernetics. Feel free to follow https://twitter.com/paulpangaro for this.