Paul Wong - Reinventing cybernetics and composing a life

We find ourselves living in a time of great complexity and flux, where the very fabric of our societies is being rewoven by the rise of artificial intelligence and the interplay of complex systems. How do we make sense of a world that is undeniably interconnected, with increasingly porous boundaries between nature and culture, human and machine, science and art? Paul Wong is reshaping that conversation, drawing on science, philosophy, and art.

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Show Notes:

• Buckminster Fuller (07:40)
• Principia Mathematica by Russell and Whitehead (09:00)
• Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin (11:00)
• Commonwealth Grants Commission (13:10)
• Range by David Epstein (15:00)
• David Krakauer (15:20)
• Claude Shannon and information theory (17:10)
• Chaos by James Gleick (20:00)
• Duncan Watts, Barabási Albert-László , and network analysis (24:20)
• Networks the lingua franca of complex systems (25:20)
• Stephen Wolfram (25:30)
• Open Science (28:20)
• Australian National University School of Cybernetics (28:50)
• Australian Research Data Commons (29:50)
• Genevieve Bell (31:20)
• Ross Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (32:30)
• Sara Hendren on Origins and Sketch Model (36:30)
• What he tells his students (38:00)
• Alex McDowell on Origins (41:00)
• The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent and Fritjof Capra (47:30)
• Tao Te Ching (48:20)
• Morning routine (49:30)
• Lightning round (53:40)
  • Book: Special relativity and Dr. Seuss
  • Passion: Music
  • Heart sing: Stitching together cybernetics, complexity, and improvisation 
  • Screwed up: Many things
• Find Paul online: https://cybernetics.anu.edu.au/people/paul-wong/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Paul’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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