51-696 Systems, Cybernetics, Conversation

12 units, Carnegie Mellon University

Across many design disciplines architecture and computational design, media and interaction design, design of services and organizationsmethods for grappling with complex adaptive systems is now table stakes. Furthermore, design today demands profound, authentic attention to equity, human and nonhuman living systems, climate and environment, sustainability and ethics. Overall, designers must have skills to collaborate in crossdisciplinary teams. An encompassing framework for these disparate disciplines and domains of 21stcentury design is the transdisciplinarity or antidisciplinarity of Cybernetics. Cybernetics can be understood as the study of systems with purpose, whether machines or living things, including their unpredictable interactions. Central to Cybernetics is conversation as a mechanism of design, inclusivity, participation, innovation, and the impetus to action. The course offers systems frameworks and models of conversation that are also relevant to Designing for the Internet of Things 48675, Inquiry into Computation Design 48727, and Design Studies Systems 51277.

Prerequisites: none listed

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