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The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind
Written by: Dan Davies
Narrated by: Peter Dickson
Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 2024-04-18
Language: English
Publisher: Profile Audio
'A corporation, or a government department isn't a conscious being, but it is an artificial intelligence. It has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it. And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad.'
When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.
Management cybernetics was Beer's science of applying self-regulation in organisational settings, but it was largely ignored - with the result being the political and economic crises that we see today. With his signature blend of cynicism and journalistic rigour, Davies looks at what's gone wrong, and what might have been, had the world listened to Stafford Beer when it had the chance.
Comments
This looks interesting
Need blinkist
Thanks
if I may ask: could you add "Cybernetics" as a tag?
The reason is because such a tag would be greatly helpful to conspiracy-minded folks.
Cybernetics is a fascinating topic of the 1950s that seems to percolate in unexpected places, under hidden names. We are talking about a field of study which was defined as the "Human Use of Human Beings" (Norbert Wiener 1950). Respected professors in many disciplines met and discussed in what became known as the "Macy Conferences". They saw everything in terms of communication systems, using feedback loops to keep their system working. This would include governance - kubernetes in Greek.
At that time computers - then often described as "artificial intelligence" became of prominent interest for them. For obvious reasons: it's all about the promise of communication and control. Some of that story is discussed in Lutz Dammbeck's "The Net: Unabomber, the LSD and the Internet" documentary (2003).
This is the kind of megalomaniac science that defined the world we're living in - including, in many ways, the cyberspace. This is absolutely needed for whoever feels we're "caught in a loop".
Sure, thanks for the comment
Sure, thanks for the comment - I added it to the tags. I sometimes forget to do tags here, but for audiobooks that are from Bibliotik, there is a list of tags from there I just cut and paste onto here. I have heard the word Cybernetics a lot, but never really knew the history behind it. Very interesting!
ETA: I have never tried the tags/search before, but I just tried a few from this torrent, and they appear to go to Mr. Bean! lol
TheCorsair00 wrote:
sorted that for you bud. tag added
Great. The tags system is
Great. The tags system is broken. Marvellous.
Can you remember the last
Can you remember the last time the tags system was working properly? I just noticed it recently...
ETA: I checked a few other torrents, and all of the tags that are all lower-case letters don't seem to work. One of the audiobooks I uploaded had tags with Upper Case Letters, and those all worked properly. When I try to edit the other torrents and force the tags to have Upper Case Letters, it automatically goes back to lower case. I am not sure how it worked for the other one though: https://concen.org/node/47608
Further analysis
I noticed the difference between the working tags and the non-working tags: the working tags have this URL on ConCen: /taxonomy/term/4693 Taxonomy etc. Whereas the non-working ones are like: /tags/cybernetics Not sure if that helps... (I couldn't post the full URLs without seeing Mr. Bean again! lolol)
I noticed the URL difference
I noticed the URL difference too. Thanks for helping out! That's the key to finding out why it isn't working.