Systems and the Information Society: Requisite Organisations and Problem Solving Raúl Espejo University of Lincoln, UK October 2002 “Nature uses the limiting resource as regulator, and we – institutionally- do not, because we erroneously think that the limiting resource is cash…. The regulator is the limiting resource.” (Stafford Beer) “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” (Alfred North Whitehead) Foreword This paper offers my personal construction of the communications and interactions that happened in the context of the Systems and Information Society Network (SISN), from November 2000 to October 2002. Details of the network’s operation are included in its Final Report. As for the paper’s content, its shortcomings are all of my exclusive responsibility, however, I cannot claim credit for whatever insights it might offer; they are the outcome of co-operation with all SISN members in a shared communication space. Summary Meanings emerge from our interactions reflecting the quality of the tacit organisations underpinning their creation and production. These organisations are by and large the outcome of self-organisation, suggesting that meanings emerge beyond our control, something that often is inadequate. However I take the view that there is room for their design and offer epistemological and methodological clarifications for this purpose. To start with, I explore the idea of problem situations and relate them to the gap between the pace of social and ecological events and our individual and collective capacities to deal with them. This gap puts pressure on us to communicate and as we do so we contribute to producing social systems and organisations. In this discussion effective organisations are seen as media for competent communications among stakeholders sharing a policy issue. Communications require crossing the boundaries of autonomous individuals and organisations and for this collectives need to develop communicative competencies. In the end I hypothesise that the design of requisite organisations for particular policy issues is a catalyst for self-organisation to produce desirable social meanings and it is argued that this design can be enabled by ICTs.