Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Digital Technology and Organizational Change pp 69–79Cite as

Going Beyond the System in Systems Thinking: The Cybork

Part of the Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation book series (LNISO,volume 23)

Abstract

In this paper we make the point of the need to introduce a new concept, and the related term, to account for the dynamic nature of socio-technical systems and make this nature a primary concern of systems thinking to understand and intervene on this kind of systems: the cybork.

Keywords

  • Systems thinking
  • Socio-technical systems
  • Gestell
  • Bildung
  • Cyborg
  • Cybork

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Morphogenesis seems to be the “pillars of Hercules” of computational thinking, as also prominent figures like Alan Turing have considered it as a matter of study, with limited success [3].

  2. 2.

    Not necessarily enacted, but also only imagined by an agent.

  3. 3.

    If Nietzsche was among the first ones, Becker is probably among the latest ones, when he writes that “things are just people acting together” (p. 46) [5].

  4. 4.

    In his words: “[…] there is no being behind the doing, acting, becoming. The doer is merely made up and added into the action—the act is everything” (On the Genealogy of Morals, treatise I, 13, tr. W. Kaufmann).

  5. 5.

    The etimology of thing, i.e., a public assembly of people discussing “things of concerns” (from which it comes the metonymy by which the latter ones got the name of the former one) is a common place that we just hint at here.

  6. 6.

    Simply put, linguistic relativism states that the language by which we describe the world affects our interpretation of it.

  7. 7.

    cf. Goethe’s Botanical Writings, pp. 215–19, cited in [33].

  8. 8.

    “Cognates: Greek ergon “work,” orgia “religious performances;” Armenian gorc “work;” Avestan vareza “work, activity;” Gothic waurkjan, Old English wyrcan “to work,” Old English weorc “deed, action, something done;” Old Norse yrka “work, take effect”. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001–2016 Douglas Harper.

  9. 9.

    The Greek word for machine, mechané, means “any artificial means or contrivance (i.e., device/arrangement/expedient) for doing a thing”: the machine cannot be decloupled from either its skillful use or the goal it is aimed at. Likewise, and differently from many mainstream translations of the treatise by Aristotle about machines, we translate its beginning as follows: “Remarkable things occur [not in accordance with nature but rather] along and beyond it [parà phýsin], which are produced through techne for the advantage of humanity […] whenever it is necessary to produce an effect [prâxai] beyond nature [parà phýsin]. […] Therefore we call that part of techne [méros tes téchnes] solving such difficulties, a machine.”

  10. 10.

    Here again we recall that to understand means “to stand in between” as if it were always possible, by discerning the relata from the relation itself.

  11. 11.

    Orig.: Der Wille zum System ist ein Mangel an Rechtschaffenheit. Götzen-Dämmerung, § 26,

  12. 12.

    In semiotics, the stance by the Russian semiologist Jurij Michajlovic̆ Lotman can be seen as an alternative perspective to the more traditional ones, both the Peircean and the Saussarian ones, and one strongly opposing any stance that sees the whole ontologically as sum of its parts.

  13. 13.

    “To do things, like certain inanimate objects,[not necessarily] knowing what they are doing, as, for instance, fire burns” Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981a–b.

References

  1. Atkinson, C., & Brooks, L. (2005). In the Age of the Humanchine. ICIS 2005 Proceedings, 11, 123–135.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs, 28(3), 801–831.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  3. Bard, J., & Lauder, I. (1974). How well does Turing’s theory of morphogenesis work? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 45(2), 501–531.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  4. Barnett, G. A., & Thayer, L. (1997). Organization†communication, emerging perspectives V: The renaissance in systems thinking. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Becker, H. S. (2008). Tricks of the trade: How to think about your research while you’re doing it. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bednar, P. (2016). Complex methods of inquiry: structuring uncertainty (Doctoral dissertation, Lund University).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bernstein, C. (1986). Living tissue/dead ideas. Social Text, 16, 124–135.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  8. Bocchi, G., & Le, Varanini F. (2013). vie della formazione. Italy: Guerini e Associati. Milano.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Bowker, G. C., Baker, K., Millerand, F., & Ribes, D. (2009). Toward information infrastructure studies: Ways of knowing in a networked environment. In International handbook of internet research (pp. 97–117). Netherlands: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Cabitza, F. (2014). De-designing the IT artifact. Drafting small narratives for the coming of the socio-technical artifact. In ItAIS 2014, Proceedings of the 11th Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS, Genova, Italy.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Canguilhem, G., Marrati, P., & Meyers, T. (2008). Knowledge of life. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Ciborra, C. U., & Hanseth, O. (1998). From tool to Gestell: Agendas for managing the information infrastructure. Information Technology & People, 11(4), 305–327.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  13. Dourish, P. (2004). Where the action is: The foundations of embodied interaction. Cambridge: MIT press.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Emery, F. E., & Trist, E. L. (1960). Socio-technical systems, management sciences models and techniques (Vol. 2). London: UK.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Fallan, K. (2008). De-scribing design: Appropriating script analysis to design history. Design Issues, 24(4), 61–75.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  16. Goethe, J. W., & Miller, G. L. (2009). The metamorphosis of plants. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Greenhalgh, T., & Stones, R. (2010). Theorising big IT programmes in healthcare: Strong structuration theory meets actor-network theory. Social Science & Medicine, 70(9), 1285–1294.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  18. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature Routledge. NY, USA: NYC.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Heidegger, M. (1954). The question concerning technology. Technology and Values: Essential Readings, 99–113.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Krarup, T. M., & Blok, A. (2011). Unfolding the social: quasi†actants, virtual theory, and the new empiricism of Bruno Latour. The Sociological Review, 59(1), 42–63.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  21. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago press.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. Hampshire: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Licklider, J. C. (1960). Man-computer symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, 1, 4–11.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  24. Longo, G. O. (2005). Uomo e tecnologia: una simbiosi problematica. Mondo Digitale, 2, 5–18.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Lotman, J., & Clark, W. (2005). On the semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies, 33(1), 205–226.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Maturana, H. (2002). Autopoiesis, structural coupling and cognition: A history of these and other notions in the biology of cognition. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 9(3–4), 5–34.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1987). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston: New Science Library/Shambhala Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Medina, E. (2006). Designing freedom, regulating a nation: Socialist cybernetics in Allende’s Chile. Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(03), 571–606.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  29. Mumford, L. (1971). Technics and Human Development: The myth of the machine (Vol. I). Harvest Boo.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Orlikowski, W. J., & Gash, D. C. (1994). Technological frames: Making sense of information technology in organizations. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), 12(2), 174–207.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  31. Rosenblueth, A., Wiener, N., & Bigelow, J. (1943). Behavior, purpose and teleology. Philosophy of Science, 10(1), 18–24.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  32. Schmidt, K., & Bannon, L. (1992). Taking CSCW seriously. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 1(1–2), 7–40.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  33. Seamon, D. (1998). Goethe’s way of science: A phenomenology of nature. New York: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Senge P. M. (1999). The fifth discipline, the art & practice of the learning organization. Reprint 1999. London: Random House (1990).

    Google Scholar 

  35. Tenner, E. (2009). Our own devices: How technology remakes humanity. Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Varanini, F. (2009). Goethe: la conoscenza come morfogenesi. https://goo.gl/VXvWZe.

  37. Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality. Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Woodward, J. (1965). Industrial organization: Theory and practice. London, VI: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milano, Italy

    Federico Cabitza

  2. Università degli Studi di Udine, Via Palladio, 8, Udine, Italy

    Francesco Varanini

Authors
  1. Federico Cabitza
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Francesco Varanini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Federico Cabitza .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Prof. Cecilia Rossignoli

  2. Department of Economics and Management, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy

    Prof. Francesco Virili

  3. Department of Business and Management, LUISS University, Rome, Italy

    Prof. Stefano Za

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Cabitza, F., Varanini, F. (2018). Going Beyond the System in Systems Thinking: The Cybork. In: Rossignoli, C., Virili, F., Za, S. (eds) Digital Technology and Organizational Change. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62051-0_7

Download citation

search

Navigation