Evolutionary Cybernetics 101: Gaia 2.0, Web 3.0

“We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.” ―Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society

In my recent online interactions, I was asked by Arend van Campen and Jelel Ezzine to define cybernetics in my work. Here I decided to expand on my explanation a little bit and provide you a few useful links. For a basic definition, cybernetics can be defined as a multidisciplinary approach to study evolutionary processes and feedback-driven systems of control between animal and machine. My chosen field, evolutionary cybernetics as well as my chosen philosophical discipline, philosophy of mind, both are aimed to investigate this new human-machine paradigm.

Gaia 2.0: A New Grand Extension to the Original Hypothesis

 

“The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term ‘Gaia’ is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. Humans are part of the larger whole, Gaia.”      -Fritjof Capra

 

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hen studying Earth’s global biosphere, Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock recognized that it has certain qualities of a life form. Many of Earth’s life‐sustaining elements display phenomenal stability, dynamic equilibrium and self-regulation, known in biology as ‘homeostasis’. The temperature range of the climate; the oxygen content of the atmosphere; the chemistry and salinity of the ocean — all of these are biologically mediated. All have, for hundreds of millions of years, stayed within a range conducive to life. 

Lovelock and Margulis hypothesized that the totality of life is interacting with its environment in ways that regulate these global properties. They realized that Earth is, in a sense, a living organism. They named this creature Gaia after the ancient Greek Earth goddess.