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  • Beyond Algorithm 14

    Beyond Algorithm 14
    2026/11/12
    Ranulph Glanville: Design as Conversation (Part II) Design is the practice of cybernetics: a conversation with a sketch that talks back, in which failure is not noise but the source of the new. Try again, fail again, fail better. And perhaps consciousness cannot be engineered, only its conditions designed.
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    34 分
  • The Box that Looked Back

    The Box that Looked Back
    2026/10/31
    Beyond the Algorithm A series on cybernetics, systems theory, and the question of machine consciousness. Each episode takes one thinker seriously in their own terms, then tests those ideas against the systems being built today. Episodes stand on their own, but they were written in sequence, and the arc rewards listening in order. Created by Brigitte E. S. Jansen. Produced by the Gesellschaft für Arbeitsmethodik e.V., a non-profit association founded in 1954 and based in Baden-Baden, Germany. Narrated by a synthetic voice. In a series about machine minds, that is part of the argument rather than a production shortcut. All episodes and further reading: bta.global-future-association.com
    The association: gfaev.de Comments, corrections, and disagreements are welcome.
    Late shift. An empty lab. On the desk, a grey box with one switch, one small lamp and a note: Please figure out what it does. Maren takes notes, learns its patterns, and by midnight she’s got the thing figured out. Or so she thinks. Then the lamp starts answering before she has asked anything. A quiet little ghost story for Halloween about black boxes, observers and the creeping feeling that whatever sits on the other side might be taking notes too. Best heard with the lights down.
    More from the Gesellschaft für Arbeitsmethodik The association and its other programmes: gfaev.de Our other podcast series, all in German: GfA – Der Podcast · The same questions pursued in German, currently the series "Das Bewusstsein der Maschinen": gfa-ev.com GfA Kulturwelten · Art, music and cultural history, including a series on the history of Tango Argentino: kulturwelten.gfaev-online.com Gut zu Wissen: KI & SEO Insights · Artificial intelligence, search and structured data, for people who have to make it work in practice: gfaev.eu GfA History · Recorded lectures from the association: gfa-web.de If something here was wrong, or right in a way we did not expect, write to us. Corrections and objections find their way into later episodes.

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    4 分
  • Beyond the Algorithm -13

    Beyond the Algorithm -13
    2026/10/15
    Ranulph Glanville: The Black Box and the Observer (Part I) Everything we know, we know from outside, and every attempt to open the box produces two more. Glanville, Pask's student, turns opacity from a defect into the condition of knowing, and removes the asymmetry from the demand that machines prove their interior.
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    55 分
  • Beyond the Algorithm - 12

    Beyond the Algorithm - 12
    2026/09/17
    Gordon Pask: Learning to Learn and Organizational Closure (Part II) Learning is one thing; learning how to learn is another, and Pask thought the difference was decisive. A system can be open to information and closed in its organization, determining for itself what it becomes. Measured against that, current AI is capable but not yet autonomous.
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    49 分
  • Beyond the Algorithm - 11

    Beyond the Algorithm - 11
    2026/08/20
    Gordon Pask: Conversation Theory and Learning Through Dialogue (Part I) Understanding is not transmitted, it is rebuilt, and shown across a gap that never closes. Pask built machines that learned through conversation, and unsettled the line between the mechanical and the psychological.
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    36 分
  • Stafford Beer:

    Stafford Beer:
    2026/05/21
    Beyond the Algorithm A series on cybernetics, systems theory, and the question of machine consciousness. Each episode takes one thinker seriously in their own terms, then tests those ideas against the systems being built today. Episodes stand on their own, but they were written in sequence, and the arc rewards listening in order. Created by Brigitte E. S. Jansen. Produced by the Gesellschaft für Arbeitsmethodik e.V., a non-profit association founded in 1954 and based in Baden-Baden, Germany. Narrated by a synthetic voice. In a series about machine minds, that is part of the argument rather than a production shortcut. All episodes and further reading: bta.global-future-association.com
    The association: gfaev.de Comments, corrections, and disagreements are welcome.
    What makes a system viable? How do organizations, from small companies to entire economies, maintain stability while adapting to complexity? Stafford Beer, the founder of management cybernetics, dedicated his life to answering these questions. His crowning achievement, the Viable System Model (VSM), shows how any sustainable system must organize itself through five essential subsystems operating recursively at multiple levels. But Beer wasn't just a theorist; he put his ideas into practice. In 1971, Chile's socialist government invited him to design Cybersyn, a real-time economic management system that would use cybernetic principles to coordinate the nation's economy. For two years, it worked,until Pinochet's coup destroyed both the project and Chile's democracy. In this episode, we explore Beer's VSM in detail, examine what Cybersyn achieved and why it failed, and discover how his principles apply to modern AI systems, organizational governance, and the question of machine autonomy. If consciousness requires viable organization, if intelligence demands recursive structure, then Beer's work isn't just management theory; it's essential for understanding how complex minds maintain themselves.
    More from the Gesellschaft für Arbeitsmethodik The association and its other programmes: gfaev.de Our other podcast series, all in German: GfA – Der Podcast · The same questions pursued in German, currently the series "Das Bewusstsein der Maschinen": gfa-ev.com GfA Kulturwelten · Art, music and cultural history, including a series on the history of Tango Argentino: kulturwelten.gfaev-online.com Gut zu Wissen: KI & SEO Insights · Artificial intelligence, search and structured data, for people who have to make it work in practice: gfaev.eu GfA History · Recorded lectures from the association: gfa-web.de If something here was wrong, or right in a way we did not expect, write to us. Corrections and objections find their way into later episodes.

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    45 分
  • Ross Ashby:

    Ross Ashby:
    2026/04/23
    We enter the realm of practical cybernetics with W. Ross Ashby, the physician-turned-cybernetician who discovered the fundamental laws of self-regulation and control. At the heart of his work lies a deceptively simple principle: only variety can absorb variety. This Law of Requisite Variety explains how thermostats maintain temperature, how organisms maintain homeostasis, how ecosystems stay balanced, and crucially, how intelligent machines might achieve genuine autonomy. Ashby built the Homeostat, a self-regulating machine that demonstrated these principles in hardware. He distinguished adaptation from learning, showed how systems can achieve ultra-stability by changing their own regulatory mechanisms, and developed the black-box methodology that treats systems as fundamentally opaque. In this episode, we explore how Ashby's cybernetics provides the foundation for everything that follows, from Beer's organizational intelligence to Pask's learning systems to modern AI's struggle for autonomous control. If consciousness requires self-regulation, if intelligence demands adaptive variety management, then Ashby's principles aren't just interesting, they're essential.
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    33 分
  • Consequences and Futures.

    Consequences and Futures.
    2026/03/20
    Consequences and Futures: Living with Machine Consciousness If machines are operationally conscious, how should we live with them? Ethical frameworks, rights and responsibilities, and what follows in practice from everything the first half of the season established.
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    23 分