Across the systems and cybernetics community, individuals have accumulated remarkable collections: shelves of out-of-print proceedings, boxes of correspondence, personal libraries spanning decades, websites preserving the work of pioneers, digitised manuscripts, and annotated copies of foundational texts.
Many of these custodians never set out to be archivists. They kept what mattered, and over time became the only people who knew where certain knowledge lived.
Event song https://suno.com/s/TlbZLnTechD9H1P7
Opening the Cask is a week of discovery. 5 -14 June 2026. We invitedanyone who holds — or knows of — significant personal or private collections of systems and cybernetics material to join us. The purpose was not to deliver polished presentations but to share: what do you have, how did you come to have it, what condition is it in, and what would help you preserve it?
Why NowTwo forces make this work urgent.
The first is time. The generation that built systems science and cybernetics — the students and colleagues of Ashby, Beer, Pask, von Foerster, Bateson, and their contemporaries — is ageing. Personal collections are being cleared out, downsized, or discarded. When a custodian dies or moves house, decades of accumulated knowledge can vanish in a week. Materials that exist nowhere else — annotated manuscripts, unpublished correspondence, conference proceedings from organisations that no longer exist — are quietly disappearing.
The second is opportunity. The rapid development of AI and large language models has created tools that could transform archival work: automated transcription of handwritten notes and correspondence, intelligent indexing and cataloguing, knowledge graph construction that maps relationships between people, ideas, and publications, and searchable digitisation that makes previously inaccessible collections available to researchers worldwide. For the first time, a small community with limited resources could realistically process and preserve collections that would previously have required institutional-scale effort.
But these tools are useless if the source materials vanish first. The window is both open and closing — technological capacity is growing while the physical materials are at risk. CASK2026 sits at that crossroads.
A Search ConferenceThis was also search conference — an event designed to discover what exists, who cares about it, and whether there is energy for ongoing collaboration. We are not assuming that future phases will happen. Instead, we are creating the conditions to find out: Is there a community here? What does it need? Is there appetite for a sustained effort to preserve and share systems knowledge?
If you wish to see the recordings please register. If you want to joint the project please register. If you fit any of these categories please join us.
- Institutional librarians and archivists
- Individuals with personal libraries or collections of systems and cybernetics materials
- Maintainers of websites, online repositories, or digital archives (e.g. ashby.info, lentroncale.com,)
- Family members or colleagues who have inherited or care for a collection
- Anyone who knows of collections at risk — due to age, illness, house moves, or neglect
- People exploring how AI and LLM tools can be applied to archival cataloguing, transcription, or preservation
- People interested in systems heritage who want to help
Systems Community Alliance
Rob Young
College of Exploration
Peter Tuddenham
System Modeling Institute
Luke Friendshuh
