Metaphorum Archive

In 2006 the Metaphorum community began using the Listserv technology to communicate between members. The service was kindly hosted by the University College Dublin (UCD).

Known as the UCD-STAFFORDBEER ARCHIVES, the Forum was dedicated to the work of Stafford Beer and operated between May 2006 – November 2016.  Although still technically active, the Listserv is now rarely used and contemporary discussions have migrated to other forms such as Linkedin.

One of the limitations of the Listserv entailed the large variations of member IT platforms which resulted in difficulties controlling the format and trailing contents of some postings as they were emailed out to the distribution list. For this reason many postings may seem cluttered with repetitive trailing messages. Nonetheless, the material on the Listserv, archived by month/year, can be easily read and searched via the Listserv search feature.

As can be seen from the  statistics, the Listserv grew in use for a number of years with a wide variety of topics and discussions ranging from simple announcements to selected topics and news items of the day which often facilitated discussions concerning the deeper and more subtle points surrounding management cybernetics.

Members can still use the Listserv although today it is considered largely as an archive and possible fallback backup service should other internet systems become unavailable. Discussions relating to the works of Stafford Beer today may progress on more modern platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and this Blog.

Entering a conversation is dependent on the various platform administration requirements. For this site and the Listserv (to post) please see the contact details in About.