Barry Clemson

I discovered Stafford Beer’s management cybernetics during my MA (1967) and spent one whole year doing little other than studying Stafford and Ross Ashby. I then became very active in both the systems theory and the cybernetics societies (and served as president of the American Society for Cybernetics for two years).

Key Experiences

• Grew up in rural Alaska (Anchor Point and Moose Pass)
• Political Activism (1. Anti-Vietnam War, 2. Mississippi Freedom Summer, 3. Community Development in India).
• Varied work career including custom manufacturing, automated software development, university teaching and research (Colleges of Education and an Engineering School), and owner of a construction company (carpenter and tree monkey)

Current Projects

• Administrator for a small community church
• Planning and design for a viable post collapse village in Alaska, with a focus on a library of how to do things
• Earth Viability Center: Monitoring the health of the world’s riverine systems to help heal our planet

Education:

• BA in Science, MA in Political Science, PD in Organization Theory (all from Penn State U), Theological study as a Fellow of the Ecumenical Institute for three years, Black belt in aikido

Key Publications

• Cybernetics. 1986. An introduction to Stafford Beer’s works. Includes a chapter on laws of cybernetics co-authored with Allenna Leonard
• Denmark Rising. 2009. A novel that imagines 1940s Denmark used strategic nonviolence for a campaign of total resistance to the Nazis. The common reaction of readers is “I didn’t realize that nonviolence could be so effective against a Hitler”.