The second big trend is the gradual improvement of our models for understanding dynamic processes.

A very brief history.

The computing world comes out of first-order cybernetics. This way of looking at the world came from the 1950s and was all about controlling systems with loops and feedback. From that came the idea of sending messages, of systems responding to messages and sending more messages out. If we could structure the world into objects and information, all in messages, all nicely abstracted, that's all we'd need to do, we'd be sorted.

That's the worldview that produced the computer chip, programming, and cyberspace. It's all request and response, messages being sent between boxes.

We're now confronting issues already identified by the more mature second-order cybernetics which arose in the 1970s, but it was pretty vague so not so influential. It's all about human processes and instead of looking at individual objects and messages, talked about systems which self-created and changed. For this we need to allow fuzzier edges. There should be visibility of those messages being sent around so nearby objects can alter their behaviour and adapt. Systems should be able to complexify, simplify.

Now the reason this is so important, this second trend, is the constructivist nature of cyberspace I mentioned earlier. We use our mental models both to understand the world, and there's feedback too: we use our mental models to create it.

If we understand the world through the lens of first-order cybernetics, that means we model the world in terms of people being objects sending messages to one another. That's the world in which all we care about is that person A can send an email to person B.

On the other hand, if we understand the world in terms of dynamic processes, then we're more interested in how people band together into small groups. We're more interested in make email work better to send to people you're really close to. To help defuse arguments, help people save face.

And that's the world we're gradually moving into.