IN MEMORIAM
Bela H. Banathy
1919-2003
In Memoriam: Bela H. Banathy 1919-2003
Dear Readers!
I have to apologise for having been unable to produce a Newsletter in 2002. There were many reasons, important ones and less important ones, some served only as an excuse to postpone the next Newsletter – until it was too late for 2002.
I think the saddest information is the passing away of our mentor, advisor, guide and human conscience, he
fatherly figure of Bela H. Banathy. He was the person who brought me to systems thinking in the true sense, not only in the technical sense. Computer people also think about systems, but Bela meant it in the true sense of seeing the big picture of the world, the people therein and the generations still
to come. During the Fuschl Conversations there was always an empty chair standing in front of the
audience to remind us of the future generations for whom we build – or destroy – a beautiful world. Although he did not attend the last two Fuschl meetings in person – he was there. Now we only can live in our memory, but this is an honour for us.
But now to a more mundane topic: After discussing the pros and cons, especially in view of the available
Internet services, the Executive Committee of the IFSR decided to stop printing the Newsletter in large
quantities for our member societies.
Modern technology has made the Newsletter less useful – we will continue to produce it, but we will put it ‘only’ on the IFSR website. For documentation purposes we still will print a few Newsletters, two for each member society, a few additional ones for our VIPs, and some for official use.
From now on we invite you to visit IFSR’s homepage http://www.ifsr.org to read the Newsletters. This means a considerable reduction of IFSR’s expenses, which we will use for other more effective activities.
This Newsletter is devoted to the preparation of the next Fuschl Conversation (April 18 to 23, 2004) – a key IFSR activities.
Table of Contents
- Fuschl Conversation 2004 (April 18 – 23, 2002) …3
- Call for Participation Twelfth Fuschl Conversation…5
- Team 1: New Agoras for the 21st Century: Conscious Self-Guided Evolution …5
- Team 2: Designing Systems for Human Betterment …6
- Team 3: Foundations of Information Science: What comes after Enlightenment Rationality? …6
- Team 4: “Being” Social Systems: Awareness and Enactment …7
- Team 5: Y3K and a Meta-System Design Field …8
- Rules for the Fuschl Conversations …9
- Application Form …10