> Thinking about an article, or maybe a revised [[2. Literature Review]], that explores how the concept of systems emerged and became integrated into food systems. >[!FAQ] Tracing the threads of multiple systems informed analyses and critiques that could provide new lenses and approaches by which food systems investigations can be framed, informed, or reviewed. > [!ALERT] Goal trace the etymological and epistemological roots of "food systems" to highlight the critiques and boundaries of such an approach. Aim is to situate my work between the data-driven managerial and the holistic >[!todo] review [Food as a Social-Ecological System](https://www.foodlawworkshop.com/post/ses/]) ## Outline - Food systems as a term and concept are fuzzy and often muddled - Others have dabbled at this question - @laudan_2020 scratched at etymological roots of "food systems" - @brock_2023 provides a n-gram of term "food systems" and demonstration of the often conflicting frames: the managerial and the holistic. - Brock's [-@brock_2023] frames align well with @hayles_2024 outlines of first and second wave cybernetics ## Items In no particularly aligned plane of specificity, here is a listing: - @lewis_1992a provides a sense of the duration of history where humans have applied feedback for "automatic control" - While feedback control regulated works long been recognized, @hayles_2024 finds (via @mayr_1970) that first wave cybernetics novel fusion was taking the long recognized self-regulating aspects of certain systems with the information theory of Shannon (and Weiner). - @beniger_1986 frames the information age as a response to the pace of the industrial age - "data" becomes necessary the pace of outputs from mechanized production increased - PULL from @hayles_2024 on what first wave cybernetics did ... - PULL from @hayles_2024 on how second wave cybernetics brought the environmental into discussion, and the notion of actor/agent and environment interactions developed - Systematization is a means of future casting, narrowing the possible to the probable, and in so doing ensuring a greater likelihood that our interventions result in the outcomes we desire - a means to add certainty to our control. - Meadows' [A Philosophical Look at System Dynamics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL_lOoomRTA) ## Personal Introduction %%maybe w/ Acknowledgements section??%% The better part of my last two decades has been building a mental model of the world robust enough to enable me to make change. To, per Archimedes, get further from the fulcrum and leverage my short time to inch towards what I view as progress. This drive motivated by .... I've pursued increasing scales of geography and complexity in my formal education as part of this process. From ecosystem management, to sustainable community development, to regional planning, and now work at the interface of the global and local. Somewhere between associates degree ecology, permaculture design, undergraduate systems and disaster coursework I firmly adopted a systems lens. Professors shared that climax ecosystems yielded to dynamic equilibria concepts, permaculture's multi-systems focus, and Donella Meadows had me soon thinking in systems. The world has come to be known as a system of systems. The Systems of Control Local Foods Through Crisis: Tracking Change, Finding Resilience, and XXXing Control in Hawaii Food Systems --- ## Cybernetics Based on your notes from [[2024-07-29 - causal inference & third-wave cybernetics]], here are the relevant points from @hayles_2024 on first and second wave cybernetics, and the notion of actor/agent and environment interactions: ### First Wave Cybernetics - The Black Box Hayles finds (via Mayr) that first wave cybernetics novel fusion was taking the long recognized self-regulating aspects of certain systems with the information theory of Shannon (and Weiner). Per @hayles_2024: - **Fusion of Self-Regulation and Information Theory**: First wave cybernetics combined the long-recognized self-regulating aspects of certain systems with the information theory developed by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener. - **Military-Industrial Emphasis**: This wave, prominent in the 1940s to 1960s, focused on human-machine fusion, particularly in military and industrial applications. - **Feedback Mechanisms**: The concept of feedback, where systems self-regulate by using information about their own performance, was central. This included mechanisms like thermostats and governors on steam engines, which were known since antiquity but gained new dimensions with the quantification of information. Tiqqun tidily summarize this first wave of cybernetics as positing that "control of a system can be obtained through an optimal degree of communication between its parts" and "the mastery of uncertainty proceeds by way of the representation and memory storage of the past" [-@tiqqun_2020 p. 40]. The application of pattern recognition to mitigate risk, combating uncertainty with information, is the most human of traits. The innovation of cybernetics is that we could now abstract, thanks to information theory, anything into a system. This totality of this is evidenced in the nearly global systemic "understanding" of bodily function, ecology, and even computation. These systems or network, all interaction can be reduced to data, and each actor to nodes in the network. ### Second Wave Cybernetics - Self in System Per @hayles_2024: - **Inclusion of the Observer**: Initiated by Heinz von Foerster's "Observing Systems," second-order cybernetics emphasized the role of the observer in the system. The observer is both observing and part of the system, creating a recursive dynamic. - **Environmental Concerns**: This wave saw a shift from human-machine fusion to biota-environmental coupling. It integrated environmental dynamics into the systemic framework, as seen in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which views the Earth as a self-regulating entity. - **Autopoiesis**: Maturana and Varela introduced the concept of autopoiesis, where a system is self-making and self-organizing. This concept was extended to living systems, arguing that living organisms are cognitive systems interacting with their environment to maintain themselves. ### Actor/Agent and Environment Interactions %% MOVE TO CONCLUDING CHAPTER %% - **Actors vs. Agents**: Hayles distinguishes between actors and agents. Actors, including all biological organisms and computational media, make decisions and have intentionality. Agents, such as material processes, do not perform interpretations or make selections and decisions. - **Technosymbiosis**: Hayles introduces the idea of technosymbiosis, where humans and machines co-evolve and form cognitive assemblages. These assemblages are collectivities through which information, interpretations, and meanings circulate. - **Environmental Interactions**: In third-wave cybernetics, there is an integrated framework that includes human-machine feedback, human-environmental feedback, and the entire biosphere. This framework emphasizes the co-construction of environments by humans, machines, and the natural world. These points provide a comprehensive view of the evolution from first to second wave cybernetics and the development of the concepts of actors, agents, and their interactions with the environment. ## World Systems Theory - need to figure out how Wallerstein's world systems theory developed - @laudan_2020 gets Wallerstein and other ## Cybernetic Hypothesis @tiqqun_2020 incisive critique of cybernetics affords a few ways to consider the effects of *systemization* of agrofood understandings. > [!abstract] Perplexity take on it [Answer from Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/search/tiqqun-cybernetic-hypothesis-mEH4G2DJTHSf63eR3li4fQ?utm_source=copy_output) > > The implications of Tiqqun's _Cybernetic Hypothesis_ for food systems resilience can be understood through its critique of cybernetics as a mode of control and governance that programs and manages complex systems-including social and biological behaviors-into feedback loops aimed at maintaining systemic stability and reducing uncertainty. Applied to food systems, this suggests that digitalization and cybernetic management of agriculture and food supply chains increasingly treat food production, distribution, and consumption as data-driven, programmable processes subject to algorithmic governance and control[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[7](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cybernetic_Hypothesis). > > This cybernetic framing of food systems has several implications for resilience: > > - **Reduction of complexity to information packets**: Cybernetic governance tends to reduce the rich, diverse, and locally embedded knowledge of food systems (e.g., traditional farming practices, seed diversity) into manageable data points for control and optimization. This risks eroding ecological and cultural diversity critical for resilience[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[8](https://progressive.international/wire/2022-08-11-capitalism-is-causing-the-food-crisis-not-war/en/) > - **Reduction of complexity to information packets**: Cybernetic governance tends to reduce the rich, diverse, and locally embedded knowledge of food systems (e.g., traditional farming practices, seed diversity) into manageable data points for control and optimization. This risks eroding ecological and cultural diversity critical for resilience[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[8](https://progressive.international/wire/2022-08-11-capitalism-is-causing-the-food-crisis-not-war/en/) > - ==**Centralized control and surveillance**:== The cybernetic system’s emphasis on communication, transparency, and feedback loops can lead to increased surveillance and concentration of power in the hands of a few actors controlling digital platforms and data infrastructures. This consolidation threatens the autonomy of small farmers and local communities, undermining decentralized resilience[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[6](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1386672/full). - ==**Power dynamics and digitalization**:== Food system digitalization is driven by power forces that accelerate technological adoption in ways that reinforce economic and political inequalities. Large agribusinesses and tech corporations gain hegemonic power, while smallholders face marginalization, reducing the system’s capacity to adapt through diverse, locally controlled practices[6](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1386672/full). > - **Vulnerability to systemic shocks**: Cybernetic systems aim to reduce uncertainty but can create brittle systems overly dependent on continuous feedback and control. Disruptions or failures in digital infrastructures or data flows can cascade through the food system, threatening food security and resilience[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[6](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1386672/full). > - **Resistance and alternative practices**: Tiqqun’s call for creating “zones of opacity” and “unbearable disturbance” to disrupt cybernetic control suggests that fostering spaces of autonomy, experimentation, and opacity in food systems-such as community seed banks, agroecological practices, and local food networks-can be crucial for building resilience against the homogenizing and controlling tendencies of cybernetic capitalism[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[5](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30412697-the-cybernetic-hypothesis). > > In summary, Tiqqun’s _Cybernetic Hypothesis_ implies that the increasing cybernetic management and digitalization of food systems pose risks to their resilience by promoting control, reducing diversity, and concentrating power. Building resilience thus requires resisting these cybernetic logics through decentralized, opaque, and experimental food practices that maintain autonomy and diversity in the face of systemic control and surveillance[4](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981)[6](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1386672/full)[8](https://progressive.international/wire/2022-08-11-capitalism-is-causing-the-food-crisis-not-war/en/). > > > **Citations:** > 1. [https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900927/the-cybernetic-hypothesis/](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900927/the-cybernetic-hypothesis/) > 2. [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tiqqun-the-cybernetic-hypothesis](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tiqqun-the-cybernetic-hypothesis) > 3. [https://josswinn.org/2010/07/06/reading-the-cybernetic-hypothesis/](https://josswinn.org/2010/07/06/reading-the-cybernetic-hypothesis/) > 4. [https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981](https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/16032/10619/40981) > 5. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30412697-the-cybernetic-hypothesis](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30412697-the-cybernetic-hypothesis) > 6. [https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1386672/full](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1386672/full) > 7. https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cybernetic_Hypothesis](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cybernetic_Hypothesis) > 8. [https://progressive.international/wire/2022-08-11-capitalism-is-causing-the-food-crisis-not-war/en/](https://progressive.international/wire/2022-08-11-capitalism-is-causing-the-food-crisis-not-war/en/) >