QOTD

There is an evident risk in installing a model of the public in the computer, since the return loop might be misused by a despotic government or an unscrupulous management. In considering this however we need to bear in mind the cybernetic fact that no regulator can actually work unless it contains a model of whatever is to be regulated. Much of our institutional failure is due to the inadequacy of the contained models.

It is perhaps more alarming that private concerns are able to build systems of this type, without anyone's even knowing of their existence, than that democratically elected governments should build them in open view and with legal safeguards. —Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom, 1973

QOTD

There is an evident risk in installing a model of the public in the computer, since the return loop might be misused by a despotic government or an unscrupulous management. In considering this however we need to bear in mind the cybernetic fact that no regulator can actually work unless it contains a model of whatever is to be regulated. Much of our institutional failure is due to the inadequacy of the contained models.

It is perhaps more alarming that private concerns are able to build systems of this type, without anyone's even knowing of their existence, than that democratically elected governments should build them in open view and with legal safeguards. —Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom, 1973