This thesis argues that the interface between human and machine has been an important system of metaphors since the beginning of the twentieth century in North American science fiction (SF) and nonfictional writings. In examining these texts, this study intends to discuss positions and responses regarding technological developments and the social and political experiences underlying it In my parallel analyses of fictional (SF) and nonfictional (philosophical, scientific, theoretical) texts. I wish to signal similarities and differences among the two fields. In different ways, the treatments of cyborgs and cyberspace in both nonfiction and SF have addressed, through these metaphors, notions of mass culture, democracy, as well as individual and collective agency and subjectivity. I also argue that these critical strategies are best understood as the strategies of two social groups---one, of them in a dominant position (that of a professional, mainly technocratic class) and one in an ambivalently marginal position (that of the readers of a mass genre such as SF). In nonfictional writings, the strategy is as a rule one of either uncritical embrace of the present state of affairs, or a specular one of utter rejection, with the only exceptions emerging from contemporary feminism. In SF, attitudes of both consensus and problematization emerge. Thus, my study also calls for a qualification of claims about "postmodernity" as the privileged period in which technology acquires center stage. My first two chapters foreground some theoretical concepts and issues related to both the study of mass culture and of the SF genre. The next three chapters focus on specific texts about the instrumental body and of the virtual frontier, and on the critical responses (by women, and by dissenting male figures) to them. The conclusion stresses the notions of democracy allegorically presented in these texts.

German text / Die vorliegende Arbeit versucht die Bedeutung des Begriffs Autokybernetik im theologischen Umfeld zu ergründen und ihre Auswirkung in Bezug auf die Persönlichkeit junger Leiter im kirchlichen Rahmen. Der Blick fällt besonders auf Leiter in der Entwicklungsstufe der sog. Emerging Adulthood (18 bis 28 Jahren). Durch die zunehmend gesellschaftlich geforderte Selbstorganisation und Selbstorientierung mit vielen Entscheidungszwängen kommt der Selbststeuerung im Leben des jungen Leiters eine besondere Bedeutung zu. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden die Grundlagen zur Autokybernetik innerhalb der Praktischen Theologie gelegt. In einem zweiten Teil werden Faktoren der Autokybernetik anhand verschiedener Modelle erfasst und gebündelt. In einem dritten, empirischen Teil, sollen die ermittelten Faktoren in der Praxis überprüft werden. Dabei steht die Relevanz von Autokybernetik in der Praxis junger Leiter im Mittelpunkt. Es soll festgestellt werden, inwieweit junge Leiter diese Selbststeuerung bereits umsetzen und mit welchem Erfolg sie das tun. / The study tries to clarify the meaning of “auto-cybernetics” in the theological environment and to explore its impact in relation to the personality of young leaders in the church context. The view is especially noticeable in the stage of development of the so-called Emerging Adulthood (18-28 years). Due to the increasing self-organization and self-orientation required by the society with many constraints self-regulation becomes more and more important to the life of young leaders. In the first part of the work the fundamentals of auto-cybernetics within the Practical Theology are stated. In a second part factors of the auto-cybernetics are seized and bundled using different models. In a third empirical part the identified factors are to be tested in practice. The relevance of auto-cybernetics in the practice of young leaders is in the centre. It will be determine how young leaders do practice this self-regulation and in which extension. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

German text / Die vorliegende Arbeit versucht die Bedeutung des Begriffs Autokybernetik im theologischen Umfeld zu ergründen und ihre Auswirkung in Bezug auf die Persönlichkeit junger Leiter im kirchlichen Rahmen. Der Blick fällt besonders auf Leiter in der Entwicklungsstufe der sog. Emerging Adulthood (18 bis 28 Jahren). Durch die zunehmend gesellschaftlich geforderte Selbstorganisation und Selbstorientierung mit vielen Entscheidungszwängen kommt der Selbststeuerung im Leben des jungen Leiters eine besondere Bedeutung zu. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden die Grundlagen zur Autokybernetik innerhalb der Praktischen Theologie gelegt. In einem zweiten Teil werden Faktoren der Autokybernetik anhand verschiedener Modelle erfasst und gebündelt. In einem dritten, empirischen Teil, sollen die ermittelten Faktoren in der Praxis überprüft werden. Dabei steht die Relevanz von Autokybernetik in der Praxis junger Leiter im Mittelpunkt. Es soll festgestellt werden, inwieweit junge Leiter diese Selbststeuerung bereits umsetzen und mit welchem Erfolg sie das tun. / The study tries to clarify the meaning of “auto-cybernetics” in the theological environment and to explore its impact in relation to the personality of young leaders in the church context. The view is especially noticeable in the stage of development of the so-called Emerging Adulthood (18-28 years). Due to the increasing self-organization and self-orientation required by the society with many constraints self-regulation becomes more and more important to the life of young leaders. In the first part of the work the fundamentals of auto-cybernetics within the Practical Theology are stated. In a second part factors of the auto-cybernetics are seized and bundled using different models. In a third empirical part the identified factors are to be tested in practice. The relevance of auto-cybernetics in the practice of young leaders is in the centre. It will be determine how young leaders do practice this self-regulation and in which extension. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

O conceito mônada no pensamento leibniziano guarda em si um aspecto fundamental que é o de expressão: este remete a pensar o indivíduo não só como dotado de uma lógica interna fenomênica como também pertencente a uma lógica metafísica baseada nos princípios de melhor e de causa final; interligados os princípios se refuta o dualismo cartesiano e se alcança, ao nosso ver, um novo conceito que é o de individualidade sistêmica. Isto abre ao filósofo alemão um universo relacional que leva a consequências importantes em âmbito metafísico, político, jurídico, linguístico, etc., mas, em suma sociológico, e que ficará patente em sua formulação do princípio place dautruy. Deste movimento reflexivo de se colocar no lugar do outro entende-se a reconstrução subjetiva das possibilidades externas no interior do próprio indivíduo, o que condicionará de modo singular a sua expressão. Estas elaborações de Leibniz darão os fundamentos para uma leitura organísmica e uma leitura organicista da sociedade. Contudo, enquanto a segunda leitura passa a sobrevalorizar a interdependência das partes enfatizando a cooperação de seus elementos, a primeira, mais próxima de Leibniz, passa a sobrevalorizar a interdependência enfatizando uma ordem anterior, que chamaremos de comunicativa. A esfera comunicativa, levando em conta o fechamento das mônadas, abrange uma pluralidade de perspectivas e expressões se mantendo harmonicamente descentralizada e, ao mesmo tempo, vinculativa. É nesta linha interpretativa que se concebe uma das raízes do pensamento sistêmico e da pós-ontologia social instaurada por Niklas Luhmann. Para o sociólogo alemão, o modelo leibniziano, sendo sistêmico, é o ponto alto de ruptura com o modelo interpretativo mecanicista de ciência embora não seja radical o bastante para romper com as imprecisões epistemológicas humanistas que impedem o avanço de uma ciência da sociedade. Para tal, é necessário levar em consideração o caráter de unidade dinâmica, relacional e autopoietica dos sistemas biológico, psíquico e social e, quanto a este último, o seu caráter fundamentalmente comunicativo. Para este corte metodológico denominado anti-humanista nos parece que Luhmann requisita certos conceitos do pensamento leibniziano, a saber, o fechamento, o place dautruy (incorporado pela cibernética) e a expressividade, para a elaboração de seu modelo funcional-estruturalista de compreensão da complexidade que permeia a sociedade moderna. / The concept of monad in the leibnizian thought guard itself a fundamental aspect that is expressivity: this refers to think the individual not only endowed by phenomenical logic but belonging to metaphysical logic based on the principles of the best and final cause; these interconnected principles refutes cartesian dualism and achieves, in our view, a new concept that is the sistemic individuality. This opens for the german philosopher a relational universe which leads to important consequences in scope of metaphysics, politics, jurisprudence, linguistics, etc. and this will be clear in his formulation about principle \"place d\'autruy\". From this reflexive movement of put himself in the place of other, we understand the subjective reconstruction of external possibilities within the own individual, which will conditionates singularly his expressions. The two elaborations of Leibniz will give the basis for a organismic interpretation and a organicist interpretation of society. However, while the latter overestimates the interdependence of the parts emphasizing the cooperation, the former one, closer to Leibniz, overestimates the interdependence emphasizing a higher order, that we will call communicative. The communicative sphere, taking into account the closure of the monad, covers a plurality of perspectives and expressions keeping itself harmonically descentralized and, in the same time, vinculative. It\'s on this interpretative line that is conceived one of the roots of sistemic thinking and the social pos-ontology carried out by Niklas Luhmann. For the german sociologist, the leibnizian interpretation which Bertalanffy does is the higher point of disruption with the mecanicist interpretative model of science but is not sufficiently radical to disrupt with the humanist epistemological inaccuracies that impede the advancement of social science. For this, is necessary to take into account the character of dynamical unity, relational and autopoietic of biological, psychic and social systems, and, about the latte, its character fundamentally comunicative. For this methodological cut called anti-humanist seems that Luhmann requests some concepts of the leibnizian thought, like the \"closure\", the \" place d\'autruy\" (incorporated by cybernetics) and expressivity to do an elaboration of his functional-structuralist model of comprehension the complexity which permeates the modern society.

Many animals, especially flying insects are experts on reacting to approaching predators. For robots, the ability to avoiding collisions is also crucial. In locusts, a visual neuron called the Lobula Giant Movement Detector (LGMD) has been identified to be responsible for evoking collision avoidance behaviours. It has been modelled for collision avoidance on large robots or vehicles whose computational power are abundant. For micro robots, however, the limited computational capabilities on-board prevent the LGMD model to be accomplished on the robot by its own. Therefore in earlier researches, those micro robots serve only as image grabbers and motion actuators, leaving majority of the model processed on a host device connected. The unavoidable communication and consequent latency have become the bottlenecks that restrains the employment of this promising collision avoidance model in multi-agent research fields such as swarm robotics. This research focuses on the embedded modelling and realization of this bio-inspired collision sensitive model ELGMD. By carefully considering the required on-board resource, a novel micro robot Colias IV is designed to meet the requirements. Featured with the sufficient computing power, various of sensing modalities including a tiny camera, the modularized design and other specialities, this robot has become an advantageous platform to perform embedded vision tasks. The bio-inspired neural model Embedded-LGMD (ELGMD) is realized on the micro robot that can run autonomously without any off-board guidance. Optimization on the structure and timing has guaranteed its computational efficiency. The performance of the ELGMD and the effectiveness on triggering the robot's collision avoidance behaviour are tested via systematic experiments. To achieve more precise interactive behaviours with other kinds of moving obstacles, a compound motion detection system is realized within the robot to detect various of motion patterns by integrating several neural models at a higher level, in which those LGMD-like neural models are accomplished by an unified ELGMD model with minimum reconfiguration. Experiments have been conducted to validate the improved ELGMD model and the compound motion detection system. Results of this research have demonstrated the design goals of all the proposed modules, including the hardware platform, the bio-inspired model and the compound motion detection system, indicating the practicability of implementing these bio-inspired visual motion sensing systems for further robotic studies.

Current human-aware navigation approaches use a predominantly metric representation of the interaction which makes them susceptible to changes in the environment. In order to accomplish reliable navigation in ever-changing human populated environments, the presented work aims to abstract from the underlying metric representation by using Qualitative Spatial Relations (QSR), namely the Qualitative Trajectory Calculus (QTC), for Human-Robot Spatial Interaction (HRSI). So far, this form of representing HRSI has been used to analyse different types of interactions online. This work extends this representation to be able to classify the interaction type online using incrementally updated QTC state chains, create a belief about the state of the world, and transform this high-level descriptor into low-level movement commands. By using QSRs the system becomes invariant to change in the environment, which is essential for any form of long-term deployment of a robot, but most importantly also allows the transfer of knowledge between similar encounters in different environments to facilitate interaction learning. To create a robust qualitative representation of the interaction, the essence of the movement of the human in relation to the robot and vice-versa is encoded in two new variants of QTC especially designed for HRSI and evaluated in several user studies. To enable interaction learning and facilitate reasoning, they are employed in a probabilistic framework using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for online classiffication and evaluation of their appropriateness for the task of human-aware navigation. In order to create a system for an autonomous robot, a perception pipeline for the detection and tracking of humans in the vicinity of the robot is described which serves as an enabling technology to create incrementally updated QTC state chains in real-time using the robot's sensors. Using this framework, the abstraction and generalisability of the QTC based framework is tested by using data from a different study for the classiffication of automatically generated state chains which shows the benefits of using such a highlevel description language. The detriment of using qualitative states to encode interaction is the severe loss of information that would be necessary to generate behaviour from it. To overcome this issue, so-called Velocity Costmaps are introduced which restrict the sampling space of a reactive local planner to only allow the generation of trajectories that correspond to the desired QTC state. This results in a exible and agile behaviour I generation that is able to produce inherently safe paths. In order to classify the current interaction type online and predict the current state for action selection, the HMMs are evolved into a particle filter especially designed to work with QSRs of any kind. This online belief generation is the basis for a exible action selection process that is based on data acquired using Learning from Demonstration (LfD) to encode human judgement into the used model. Thereby, the generated behaviour is not only sociable but also legible and ensures a high experienced comfort as shown in the experiments conducted. LfD itself is a rather underused approach when it comes to human-aware navigation but is facilitated by the qualitative model and allows exploitation of expert knowledge for model generation. Hence, the presented work bridges the gap between the speed and exibility of a sampling based reactive approach by using the particle filter and fast action selection, and the legibility of deliberative planners by using high-level information based on expert knowledge about the unfolding of an interaction.

At the same time as we are seeing ever increasing numbers of people actively using social networking sites, and growing evidence of increased participation in campaigning and digital activism, we are seeing a decline in democratic participation in the UK at both a national and local level. This thesis examines these two contrasting effects within the context of Local Government in the UK and explores what the impact might be at the neighbourhood level. The work discusses the influence of place based online activity on democratic decision-making Local Government and the ways in which traditional processes of decision-making, democratic participation and community engagement practice may need to change to reflect the upward pressure that is being exerted by citizen use of new technologies and adjust the way in which Local Government facilitates citizen participation in decision-making. The work develops the concept of Digital civic space as an alternative to eParticipation platforms and discusses how such spaces are being used to connect online activity with democratic processes at present and how present experience may be used to inform future developments. Employing an Action Research method, the research analyses three projects in order to examine the nature of the pre-existing participation online and the impact of creating online civic spaces to connect the participants both to each other and to local decision-makers. Design criteria are proposed which describe the necessary qualities of public-ness, openness, co-production, definition of place and identity and the thesis reaches conclusions as to how these criteria might better connect local resident with the democratic decision-making processes for their communities.

Ecological Economics has emerged across disciplines, and has begun to disentangle, not only the relationship between biophysical earth systems and economic activity, but also, fundamental relationships between objectivity, power, value, ethics, perspective and purpose. In part, this thesis represents an effort to illustrate basic transdisciplinary concepts necessary for understanding the project of Ecological Economics. At present, Ecological Economics is challenged by a seemingly infinite number of available considerations, with a relatively narrow repertoire of impactful mechanisms of control. Given this, it is apparent that the application of Cybernetics to Ecological Economics might provide insights. Cybernetics can help to lend concise language to manners for implementing control and also help to navigate the paradoxes which arise for self- regulating systems. While Cybernetics played an early role in the formulation of the relationship between the economy and an environment with available energy, second- order cybernetics can help to formulate the autonomy of Ecological Economics as a self-regulating system and shed light on the epistemology and ethics of circularity. The first article of this thesis identifies occasions when Ecological Economics has confronted circularity, and explores options moving forward. Ultimately, confronting paradox and circularity provide the means for the substantiation of Ecological Economics. The food system is prominent within Ecological Economics discourse. It serves as a good example of the ‘emergence’ of coordinated activity. In Cybernetics jargon, we can think of the ‘Food System’ as a symbol for the redundancy found in linked characteristics of particular Ecological-Economic inquiry. For instance, when we consider the food system we can be sure that we are dealing with resources that are essential, both rival and non-rival, excludable and non-excludable, and also highly sensitive to boundaries in scope, and scale, and thus highly sensitive to political and social change. In this sense, the food system acts as a symbol for the coordination of activity, and produces an output which is an input to the Ecological Economic ‘boundary’ between the Economy and the Ecosystem. The second article of this thesis provides an analysis of GHG emissions within the Chittenden County Foodshed. We conclude that urban agriculture, dietary change and agro-ecological production in concert, provide emission reductions which are not achieved when these options are considered separately. Given these conditions, we see mitigation beyond 90% of current emissions.

This study investigated the application of six techniques from systemic family therapy. A review of the history of family therapy identified the major contributions from general psychiatry, communications theory and cybernetics which had combined to form the therapies known collectively as systemic family therapy. The theory was outlined and examined and the major assumptions which are the basis for specific techniques of therapy within this model were identified. Six of these techniques were examined and demonstrated in therapy. The outcome of each technique was assessed. A family was seen from initial contact to termination, using a two member team approach (Viaro and Leonardi, 1983) in which-one therapist observed the other through a one way video arrangement. The presenting problem was a suicide attempt by an adolescent, culminating in admission to hospital. Therapy using the model was concluded in four sessions. Follow-up at six months disclosed no further admissions to hospital and a report from the family that they were satisfied with the outcome of therapy. Distinctions between first and second order cybernetic therapy were made and the therapists were found to adhere to a first order model. Successful and unsuccessful use of the techniques is identified and discussed. Using as a measure the absence of further suicide attempts and the family's self reported reduction in the number of arguments between the parents and the identified patient, it was concluded that the use of the nominated techniques from systemic family therapy had enabled successful intervention.

Outcomes of innovative designing are frequently described as enabling us in achieving more desirable futures. How can we design and innovate so as to enable future processes of design and innovation? To investigate this question, this thesis probes the conditions, possibilities and limitations of toolmaking for novelty and knowledge generation, or in other words, it examines designing for designing. The focus of this thesis is on the development of digital design tools that support the reconciliation of conflicting criteria centred on architectural geometry. Of particular interest are the roles of methodological approaches and of biological analogies as guides in toolmaking for design, as well as the possibility of generalising design tools beyond the contexts from which they originate. The presented investigation consists of an applied toolmaking study and a subsequent reflective analysis using second- order cybernetics as a theoretical framework. Observations made during the toolmaking study suggest that biological analogies can, in informal ways, inspire designing, including the designing of design tools. Design tools seem to enable the generation of novelty and knowledge beyond the contexts in and for which they are developed only if their users apply them in ways unanticipated by the toolmaker. Abstract The reflective analysis offers theoretical explanations for these observations based on aspects of second-order cybernetics. These aspects include the modelling of designing as a conversation, different relationships between observers (such as designers) and systems (such as designers engaged in their projects), the distinction between coded and uncoded knowledge, as well as processes underlying the production and the restriction of meaning. Initially aimed at the development of generally applicable, prescriptive digital tools for designing, the presented work results in a personal descriptive model of novelty and knowledge generation in science and design. This shift indicates a perspective change from a positivist to a relativist outlook on designing, which was accomplished over the course of the study. Investigating theory and practice of designing and of science, this study establishes an epistemological model of designing that accommodates and extends a number of theoretical concepts others have previously proposed. According to this model, both design and science generate and encode new knowledge through conversational processes, in which open-minded perception appears to be of greater innovative power than efforts to exercise control. The presented work substantiates and exemplifies radical constructivist theory of knowledge and novelty production, establishes correspondences between systems theory and design research theory and implies that mainstream scientific theories and practices are insufficient to account for and to guide innovation. Keywords (separated by commas) Digital design tools, geometry rationalisation, second-order cybernetics, knowledge generation