Cybernetic Futures is founded on the notion that individuals, groups and organisations behave as anticipatory systems. Their decision-making in the present is founded on inputs from the past, present and anticipated futures. In this context, we are interested in understanding how these anticipatory systems are shaped and change over time? What shapes our individual and collective imaginative predictions, filters or judges them?
In this paper, we draw from cybernetics, anticipation, and socio-technical systems to highlight the dynamic relationships that exist between our collective imaginations of the future, the infrastructures that support them, and the material agents of change that form a communication channel in-between.
From this exploration, we introduce the Cybernetic Futures Framework as a tool for individuals and organisations to start to understand the anticipatory systems that imagine and act in the present to pursue different futures. We offer the framework as an invitation to identify and seize opportunities for broader, more diverse and more participatory engagement into these future-building systems.