Tuesday 9 December
8:30AM Haynes’ Keynote Lecture
32.101 LECTURE THEATRE
Edith Cowan University, Joondalup Campus, Perth, Western Australia
Claudia Ruitenberg
Education in a World of Broken Feedback Loops
https://www.pesaconference.org/speakers
In this paper I use “feedback” in the ecosystem sense of a flow of information, energy, or matter from a system’s output that, in a closed system, affects the input. For example, if I form a closed system with my houseplant, and that plant’s leaves start to droop, I regulate how much I water it. Most of the systems in which we live, especially if we are urban residents in postindustrial societies, are not closed-loop systems. For various reasons, many of the ways in which we use and discard water, food, fuel, building materials, and so on, have broken feedback loops. In other words, humans often do not receive the system’s signals and do not change their use of that system when signals suggest they should. This question is heightened because many of the material and immaterial systems in which we participate have become globalized, with feedback moved even further out of sight.