First International Conference on Anticipation5-7 November 2015, Trento

The Strongness of Weak Signals: Self-Reference and Paradox in

Anticipatory Systems

Dr. Alberto Cevolini(University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)

alberto.cevolini@unimore.it

1. Introduction

• Social sciences are experiencing an anticipatory turn

• "Anticipations are ubiquitous" (Riegler 2001, p. 534)

• Anticipation is a "neglected concept"

2. The Idea of "Weak Signal"

• Weak signals are "the real foundation of the whole society" (Poli 2013, p. 32)

• mid-1970s: "strategic management" or "strategic surprise" (Ansoff 1975)

• In public opinion there is a surfeit of signals referring to social changes

• Stable reality everybody can refer to / signals of a reality that will never stabilize

• Revival in the 1990s

• "Wildcards", "seeds of change", "emerging issues"

• The definition of "weak signal" is now more ambiguous and unclear than before

• Weak / Strong

• Who handles this distinction? Who is the observer?

• Either the observer belongs to the world he is observing, or he is outside the world that is observed

• Observers are always inside,

• although they may observe the world as if they were outside

• Two reflexive uses of the distinction between inside and outside

3. The Strongness of Weak Signals

• Contradiction hidden behind the current debate on weak signals

• To worry about weak signals is reasonable only if you already know that they signalize strong changes

• Retrospective form

• Why nobody understood the strongness of weak signals?

• Weak / strong is used to symbolically bridge the temporal gap between signalized and signal,

• and only seemingly to solve the unsolvable problem of lacking information

• Weak / strong refers to the observer, not to the observed reality,

• it marks the ignorance the observer has to cope with when he tries to get his bearings in the darkness of the time-to-come

• Weak is not the signalized change, but the attention paid to the signal

• Operational closure of social systems

• Society can communicate on the environment, yet not with the environment

• In turn, the environment can not communicate with the system

• Environment behaves as irritation

in disruptive way

• The environment can not beget, nor specify the nature of systemic operations

• Environmental perturbations are never instructive for a system

• Structural coupling refers to any environmental condition which allows systemic self-irritation

• Every irritation is reproduced by the system through its own operations,

• and arises against the background of those structures of expectation which do coincide with the system’s current state

• Irritations are "purely internal constructs" (Luhmann 1992, p. 1432)

• Perturbations, deviations, surprises

• Irritation / indifference

• Distinction: —— 8 meters

• The observer can oscillate between over and under

• Signal is a difference for information processing

• Information is never transmitted by the environment,

• rather it is "generated by observers" (Glanville 1984, p. 658)

• Technology and computer hugely increased the irritability of social systems

• Nowadays they help –if not even substitute– perception in many fields

• Increase of "structural uncertainties"

• "Social signalling"

• While actually living in a safer society, we feel that we live in a society that is much more vulnerable than before

• It is not the signal that informs the system,

• but the system that informs itself through the signal

• Simultaneousness of system and environment / problem of synchronization

• Anticipation is possible just because environment can not be anticipated

4. The Culture of Alertness

• Semantics of "vulnerability"

• Disaster as interruption of organizational routines

• The system doesn’t know that it doesn’t know

• Second-order ignorance, or "superignorance" (Wildavsky 1988, p. 23)

• Why did you not know that you didn't know that you didn't know?

• "Weak signal" symbolically invisibilizes the paradox of (lacking) information about the lack of information

• Blindness of management routines compensated by "routinely suspecting" that organizational expectations are incomplete

• "Chronic fear", "mindfulness"

• "Strong responses to weak signals" (Weick/Sutcliffe 2001)

• "Chronic lack of redundancy"

• In social systems any signal is actually weak, never strong

• this jeopardizes the validity of the difference between weak and strong