Sustainable Systems: Systems and Feedback

From 1970s Chile to today — explore systems thinking through history’s boldest cybernetic experiment, and learn to spot where real change happens.

You can get yourself in the mindset of the session by choosing any of the following pre-session resources:

• Santiago Boys podcast – Episode 2 (recommend listening at 1.2x). Find it on their website, or Available on your favourites streaming app.
• Chapter 6 - Thinking in Systems (Donella Meadows), a summary is available on her foundation's website.
• Leverage Zones - Nabavi E and Browne C (2023) ‘Leverage zones in Responsible AI: towards a systems thinking conceptualization’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1):1–9, doi:10.1057/s41599-023-01579-0.
• Appadurai A (25 May 2025) ‘“An autoimmune disorder”: how Trump is turning American democracy against itself’, The Guardian, accessed 10 June 2025, ‘An autoimmune disorder’: how Trump is turning American democracy against itself | Trump administration, accessed 10 June 2025.
• Stafford Beer's Viable System Model on Wikipedia

Among other things, Cybernetics is about feedback and systems. In this knot we’ll look at how understanding feedback and systems can be helpful in working towards positive social impact. This KNoT is one of the Cybernetics for social impact set of KNoTs.We'll learn how to identify and think about systems at different scales. We'll collectively look at a moment in time when systemic change was ambitiously attempted by a cybernetician on a huge scale: the political, social and economic change in Chile during the early 1970s. Then we look at different models for identifying potential points of intervention in a system.

Learning outcomes:

1. Gain a basic understanding of cybernetics and systems thinking theory

2. Identify systems and articulate their purpose

3. Identify leverage points in a system and consider the potential consequences of intervening.

We will provide materials for this KNoT during the workshop.

Be prepared to work collectively

Image credit: Project Cybersyn

Short reflection to add to learning portfolio:What considerations and trade offs did you find yourself making when intervening on a system? Are there many compromises or productive discomfort that’s arisen?