Metaphorum 2026 · Barefoot Cybernetics

Gameful Experiences for Hopeful Futures: CyberNations

'If that Cybernetics stuff is so valuable, why don’t you teach it in primary school?'' This provocation started the Gameful Experiences for Hopeful Futures program at the Australian National University School of Cybernetics. How do we teach organisational cybernetics to broader and younger audiences, using creative pedagogies? How do we build practices that embed into our ways of thinking and doing what Stafford called the 'holistic message [of cybernetics]: a science of the regulation of large, complex, probabilistic systems actually exists that is interdisciplinary in approach and consequently inclusive in its world view.' This (ideally 2-hour but adaptable) interactive workshop offers three gameful steps into these questions. First, a short choose-your-own-adventure presentation, in which the audience steers the speaker through an introductory exploration of cybernetics, games, and culture. Second, a facilitated playthrough of CyberNations: an experiment in teaching cybernetic futures in classrooms and board rooms through a semi-cooperative, persistent board game. Inspired by Stafford’s work and Australian First Nations ways of knowing and being, CyberNations teaches core concepts of systems dynamics, requisite variety, intergenerational responsibility, and the fundamental structural coupling between societies and environments. Third, a facilitated debriefing reflecting on the experience, inviting the audience to challenge and contribute to the model. This workshop and its components have been iteratively developed through deliveries in Australian classrooms, playrooms and team-building exercises, espousing Metaphorum’s values of critical, creative and collaborative re-invention. It may interest researchers, educators and practitioners interested in the contribution that game-based learning could make to the Barefoot Cybernetics agenda. Speaker: Thomas Biedermann — Australian National University (ANU)

Schedule to be confirmed