047 The management of variety in the political context

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Government now communicates directly with the masses, in the context that they are also supplied by the mass media with a proliferation of information and misinformation about things — as soon as they happen.

Looking at the outside loop in the diagram on page 4, we see this effect as

    • massive amplification
    • massiv change in periodicity

But the [… ?] loop does not change. This situation disobeys the law of requisit variety, and disbalances the homeostatic equilibrum in time.

Then it is predictible that the masses, thus affected, will build up pressure in the system that can no longer be … — because the filtering capacity cannot contain the flow.

This is born to lead to demonstrations, agitation, perhaps violance, perhaps revolt.

    • It follows that the people should be provided with new means of communication with the government which
    • match the amplification of government variety with less attenuation of this variety (establishing Ashby’s law)
    • operate on the same time scale — that is immediately
    • use technology serve the people as well as the government

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Note: Transcript by G. Buurman from a handwritten manuscript of S. Beer