Tag: systemic risk

Failed Aptitude: Why Power Keeps Selecting the Wrong People

Post author By G
Post date Sep 28, 2026
No Comments on Failed Aptitude: Why Power Keeps Selecting the Wrong People

The scale of the consequences has changed while the competitive selection tests for authority remain embarrassingly small.

Tags Complexity, technology, power, systems theory, governance, leadership, institutions, authority, systemic risk, political systems, organisational failure, failed aptitude

cybernetics Philosophy

Why Civilisation Cannot Solve the Problems It Creates: Diary of a Madman

Post author By G
Post date Sep 1, 2026
1 Comment on Why Civilisation Cannot Solve the Problems It Creates: Diary of a Madman

A civilisation builds systems to solve its problems, then discovers that the systems have become the problems, while its dependence upon them has made their continuity deeply problematic.

cybernetics

AI: When the Bubble Bursts

Post author By G
Post date Aug 21, 2026
No Comments on AI: When the Bubble Bursts

AI is building the dependencies that make its own expansion increasingly necessary.

Tags AI bubble, AI infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, artificial intelligence security, automation, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, network security, political economy, software maintenance, speculative investment, systemic risk, technological dependency, technological resilience, technology bubble, unsupported software, vendor collapse

cybernetics satire

A Theory of Dickheads

Everyone knows a dickhead. The interesting question is why the conditions that generate them do so, enduringly, and with such uncanny frequency.

cybernetics

how complex institutions preserve failure

Post author By G
Post date Jul 31, 2026
1 Comment on how complex institutions preserve failure

Institutions rarely fail because they cannot recognise problems. They fail because recognising problems is not the same as escaping the conditions that reproduce them.

Tags adaptive-systems, aptitude filter, Artificial Intelligence, bureaucracy, cognitive attractor, communication theory, communicative systems, complex systems, cybernetics, entropy, ethical integrity, feedback loops, governance, government accountability, government failure, information systems, institutional failure, institutional inertia, institutional reproduction, intelligence test, logical orbit, machine intelligence, machine-readable art, market signals, media ecology, media systems, orbit frame, organised difference, path dependence, pattern recognition, persistence theorem, policy failure, political communication, political institutions, possibility space, probability, public administration, public opinion, recursive communication, recursive decoding, recursive systems, regulatory systems, relational ontology, self-describing systems, self-reference, semantic compression, social systems, state capacity, structural corruption, structural reasoning, symbolic encoding, systemic persistence, systemic risk, systems theory, visual ontology

cybernetics

Technology cannot solve itself, because the introspective incompleteness that limits it is a function of the same combinatorial unboundedness that makes it at all possible; spoiler: we humans are similarly and simultaneously bound by identical logic.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, autonomy, công nghệ, civilisation, complex systems, culture, cybernétique, cybernetics, 相互依存, dependency, digital dependency, digital society, кибернетика, 複雑系, future of humanity, geopolitics, hệ thống phức tạp, human psychology, information society, infrastructure, Kybernetik, machine logic, сложные системы, технология, philosophy of technology, platform capitalism, power, recursion, self-reference, surveillance capitalism, systèmes complexes, systemic risk, systems theory, Technikphilosophie, technological civilisation, technology, trí tuệ nhân tạo, wealth concentration, 复杂系统, 情報社会, 技術, 技术文明, 控制论, điều khiển học, 人工智能

cybernetics

technological recursion

Technology promised to save us effort, then quietly reorganised civilisation around the effort required to sustain technology.

cybernetics

insurance industry: climate, consequence, catastrophe

Post author By G
Post date May 28, 2026
No Comments on insurance industry: climate, consequence, catastrophe

Climate change becomes civilisational risk when insurance can no longer translate catastrophe into recoverable cost.

Tags actuarial collapse, adaptive fragmentation, anthropocene, authoritarianism, cascading crises, cascading failure, catastrophe theory, civilisation under stress, civilisational risk, climate adaptation, climate anxiety, climate change, climate collapse, climate crisis, climate economics, climate futures, climate migration, climate volatility, communicative systems, complex adaptive systems, complexity theory, coordinated failure, coupled systems, crisis of modernity, dark future, democratic decline, disaster capitalism, ecological collapse, ecological systems, economic collapse, economic instability, energy crisis, entropy, environmental politics, existential risk, field logic, financial contagion, financial instability, food security, future cities, future of civilisation, future shock, geopolitical instability, geopolitical risk, geostrategy, global governance, global instability, Global Systems, global warming, housing market crash, human survivability, infrastructure failure, infrastructure resilience, institutional collapse, institutional trust, insurance crisis, insurance markets, insurance withdrawal, interconnected systems, managed retreat, metacrisis, mortgage crisis, network collapse, planetary instability, planetary risk, planetary systems, political extremism, political volatility, polycrisis, populism, recursive instability, recursive systems, reinsurance crisis, resilience, risk propagation, risk society, social cohesion, social fragmentation, social trust, societal collapse, societal resilience, strategic complexity, strategic resilience, supply chain disruption, survival politics, systemic risk, systemic-fragility, systems theory, thermal inequality, thermodynamic stress, twenty first century crisis, uncertainty, urban collapse, water security

Philosophy

Ebola

Post author By G
Post date May 25, 2026
1 Comment on Ebola

Ebola reminds us that civilisation may not fail through drama, but through delay, distraction, and a pathogen moving faster than our institutional cadence and cultural expectations.

cybernetics

Cognitive Bandwidth and the Politics of Belief

Post author By G
Post date May 9, 2026
No Comments on Cognitive Bandwidth and the Politics of Belief

Cognitive bandwidth becomes cultural destiny because the carrying capacity of technologically mediated communication systems exceeds the carrying capacity of the biological minds living inside them.

Tags adaptive communication, adaptive communication structures, adaptive communicative systems, adaptive cultural systems, adaptive emergence, adaptive informational dynamics, adaptive political systems, adaptive semantic systems, adaptive sociotechnical systems, adaptive symbolic systems, adaptive systems theory, adaptive transmission systems, adaptive volatility, adaptive-systems, algorithmic amplification, algorithmic culture, attention, attention and culture, attention economy, attention infrastructure, attention systems, belief systems, cognition, cognitive bandwidth, cognitive carrying capacity, cognitive infrastructure, cognitive limits, cognitive overload, cognitive systems, collective behaviour, collective cognition, collective semantics, communication acceleration, communication and adaptation, communication and adaptive evolution, communication and cognition, communication and complexity, communication and emergence, communication and entropy dynamics, communication and power, communication and recursive complexity, communication and systemic risk, communication and volatility, communication attractors, communication dynamics, communication ecology, communication entropy, communication field dynamics, communication overload, communication system continuity, communication systems, communication theory, communication under complexity, communication-driven culture, communicative complexity, communicative entanglement, communicative evolution, communicative phase space, communicative recursion, communicative-fields, complex adaptive systems, complex systems, Complexity, complexity and cognition, complexity and communicative systems, complexity and culture, complexity and meaning, complexity and politics, complexity and transmission, complexity dynamics, complexity theory, cultural adaptation, cultural attractor states, cultural attractors, cultural entropy, cultural evolution, cultural feedback, cultural informational dynamics, cultural informational systems, cultural infrastructure, cultural recursion, cultural signal propagation, cultural systems, cultural throughput, cultural transmission, cultural volatility, cybernetic culture, cybernetic systems, cybernetics, distributed adaptive systems, distributed cognition, distributed cognition systems, distributed communication, distributed communicative fields, distributed cultural cognition, distributed cultural systems, distributed meaning, distributed semantic systems, distributed symbolic systems, distributed systems, emergence, emergence and complexity, entropy, entropy and belief, entropy and communication, entropy and culture, entropy and networks, entropy and sociotechnical systems, entropy and systems, entropy dynamics, evolutionary communication, feedback, field logic, human-systems, hyper-networked systems, hyperconnectivity, identity systems, ideological recursion, ideological systems, ideological transmission, information ecology, information overload, information systems, informational attractors, informational civilisation, informational continuity, informational culture, informational density, informational ecosystems, informational environments, informational phase space, informational politics, informational recursion, informational recursion dynamics, informational social systems, informational survivability, informational systems, media acceleration, media ecology, media recursion, media systems, media theory, network culture, network dynamics, networked belief systems, networked cognition, networked communication, networked society, neural bandwidth, phase space, phase-space dynamics, philosophy of technology, platform dynamics, political communication, political communication systems, political entropy, political psychology, political systems, politics of belief, recurrence, recursion, recursive adaptation, recursive adaptive systems, recursive amplification, recursive attention systems, recursive belief structures, recursive communication, recursive communication ecology, recursive communication structures, recursive communication systems, recursive communicative entanglement, recursive cultural attractors, recursive cultural communication, recursive cultural evolution, recursive cultural morphology, recursive cultural systems, recursive cultural transmission, recursive dynamics, recursive entropy, recursive field dynamics, recursive identity, recursive ideological propagation, recursive ideological systems, recursive ideology, recursive informational ecology, recursive informational systems, recursive media, recursive network dynamics, recursive political communication, recursive politics, recursive semantic systems, recursive semantics, recursive social dynamics, recursive social entanglement, recursive social propagation, recursive social systems, recursive socio-cultural systems, recursive sociotechnical systems, recursive structures, recursive symbolic structures, recursive systems, recursive transmission, semantic amplification, semantic attractors, semantic compression, semantic density, semantic evolution, semantic fields, semantic infrastructu, semantic recurrence, semantic recursion, semantic stability, semantic systems, semantic transmission, semantics, signal propagation, social communication systems, social complexity, social entropy, social systems, sociotechnical complexity, sociotechnical systems, symbolic compression, symbolic systems, symbolic transmission, systemic adaptation, systemic cognition, systemic communication, systemic dynamics, systemic emergence, systemic informational dynamics, systemic risk, systemic semantic evolution, systems and communication, systems and entropy, systems and identity, systems and identity formation, systems and media, systems and recurrence, systems and symbolic order, systems dynamics, systems ecology, systems emergence, systems of collective belief, systems of meaning, systems of recurrence, systems of symbolic reproduction, systems of transmissibility, systems ontology, systems philosophy, systems propagation, systems theory, systems thinking, systems under informational pressure, systems-level communication, technoculture, technological acceleration, technological communication, technological communicative systems, technological culture, technological entropy, technological informational systems, technological media systems, technological mediation, technological social systems, technological society, technological systems, transmissibility, transmission dynamics

cybernetics

Managed Peace

Post author By G
Post date May 5, 2026
2 Comments on Managed Peace

Managed peace is the hard, ongoing work of keeping real conflict from tipping a tightly coupled world into outcomes it cannot survive.

cybernetics

Angus Taylor’s Immigration Turn: When Populism Borrows the Machinery of the State

Post author By G
Post date Apr 27, 2026
No Comments on Angus Taylor’s Immigration Turn: When Populism Borrows the Machinery of the State

The Coalition’s recent turn on immigration should not be read only as a policy announcement. I read it as a communication event built around one of the oldest political instruments available: the conversion of broad social anxiety into a visible outsider. In its own language, the Coalition’s Australian Values Migration Plan promises to strengthen “Australian […]