APRIL 2024 MAGAZINE

“Feedback” is a hugely important phenomenon.  It plays a key role in all goal-oriented, dynamic systems, from living organisms to self-driving cars.  Feedback is information that tells a system how it is doing in relation to its goals and guides its behavior over time.  (Feedback systems are often referred to as being “cybernetic”, after the Greek word for “helmsman” – kybernetes.)  Positive feedback tells the system to continue doing what it is doing, or even to do more of it.  And negative feedback tells the system to change its behavior. 

Today, LACMA and roughly 70 other art institutions across Southern California are brimming with works by Latino artists as part of the groundbreaking Getty-led initiative, “PST: LA/LA.” Ironically it includes numerous works by Asco members.

A democratic political system can survive only if it is embedded in a society that allows it to thrive.  Rather like the three essentials for nurturing healthy plants (good soil, adequate water and sunlight), there are at least three nurturing elements that a society must provide, in order for democracy to prosper -- beyond the foundation of a healthy economy.  These elements are (1) the rule of law, (2) elections that are perceived as fair (and where the outcomes are respected), and (3) a political discourse that honors veracity and condemns lying and liars.