Cybernetics is the science of the polycrisis

Cybernetics doesn’t provide any very specific answer to that question, but it makes it much easier to see the problem. We don’t need to believe that Meta is deliberately tweaking the algorithms to silence its critics to be worried that Meta is able to dampen down vast swathes of the human conversation in pursuit of its business model. Equally, we need to recognize that if we are going to have to regulate vast swathes of the human conversation, we are going to face some messy and unhappy tradeoffs.

• Henry Farrell in a review of The Unaccountability Machine