Metaphorum 2026 · Emerging Methods and Tools, and Contemporary Practice

Autonomy and cohesion

The viability and welfare of socio-technical systems depend on their ability to balance autonomy and cohesion. The universality of this balance is remarkable. It is not restricted to socio-technical systems such as organizations, but also applies to biological and purely technical systems. This chapter explores the balance from its roots in Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model to its broader interpretation and application. It traces how information technologies – from the invention of writing and the printing press to the Internet and Large Language Models (LLMs) – have transformed, and continue to transform, how social systems negotiate autonomy and cohesion. After examining a spectrum of cohesion forces, technologies, and regimes, the chapter analyses in more detail one widely used cohesion mechanism: rules. This exploration end with an experiment comparing systems of inter-independent inference rules. The results demonstrate relationships between the autonomy–cohesion balance and system characteristics such as efficiency, resilience, and adaptability. Using the contemporary social media landscape as a case study, the chapter argues that autonomy–cohesion is a superior analytical lens to centralization–decentralization. The latter is a flat topological description that fails to account for emergent social power asymmetries. Finally, the chapter shows that some cohesion technologies achieve coordination with minimal loss of autonomy. The use and refinement of such technologies can improve the autonomy–cohesion balance. However, systemic forces such as path dependency and preferential attachment naturally produce choke points, power asymmetries, and reduced agency for the majority of participants. Understanding this balance can help in evolving social systems that are more resistant to these tendencies. Speaker: Ivo Velitchkov

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