THE GUARDIAN - Indigenous disruption of cruel government policies could further the cause of self-determination and might even help save the planet
“The purpose of a system is what it does” is a concept coined by the cybernetician Anthony Stafford Beer. It describes how the intentions of a system’s creators, or even the perceived primary functions of a system, don’t always have a causal relationship with how the system behaves or is interacted with in the system’s lifecycle.
Beer’s idiom has implications for not just technological systems, but the way in which we can understand failings in social service systems, justice systems etc. However, it is important to note that technology rarely exists within a socioeconomic vacuum; political, social and economic factors influence the ways in which technology is integrated into other systems. Technological systems aren’t mutually exclusive from justice systems, cultural factors and so on. Continue reading...
