http://vimeo.com/10929373 This is a great interview with Professor Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter, author of The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. It gives a nice introduction to some key aspects of cybernetics.  He doesn't make much of a distinction between first and second-order cybernetics, but it is a great presentation.  Some highlights (in note form,...

We are ecologies within ecologies within ecologies.  Complex processes, such as inflammatory responses, span multiple systems as multivalent expressions of dynamic self organization.  Within constant interlaced boundaries provided by the dual and complementary forces of growth and decay, life becomes possible; we become possible.  Interactivity, specialization, contextual adaptation, flexibility, utilization of 'randomness' and dynamic...

Ross Ashby says: No system adapts to the changing: it can adapt only to what is constant. (http://www.rossashby.info/aphorisms.html)