Great thoughts and insights
Reminds me of an article by Megson in which he espoused ten
characteristics of a system. One of the characteristics was something
he called "negative feedback". The idea was there was a form of
feedback that comes implicit in a system and it does relate to control.
I am not in my office so cannot review the paper, but I remember he used
driving a car as an example. As we drive a car, we react to feedback
implicit in the system associated with driving a car. A point was made
that if we do not have means to detect and react to such feedback, we
can suffer serious consequences.
Thanks for this very stimulating post.
Ed
Drive On!
<<< Doug Gjerde <
gjerded@GBMS01.UWGB.EDU> 1/ 8 11:57a >>>
I may have missed it in my quick read of this discussion but from my
past
life as an electrical engineer I remember one of the main purposes of
feedback is control.
Control systems are a large area of study and one of the things
necessary
for a proper control system is the proper kind of feedback. In these
cases
feedback serves the purpose of sending a sample of the output back to a
control circuit that compares the output to the desired output (goal)
and
then modifies the appropriate part of the system to achieve the desired
output.
Feedback without the proper control system just adds cost, complexity,
and
confusion. Unless we have a plan of what to do with the feedback so that
we
can use it to achieve the desired output or goal we are adding cost
without
adding value and making the system unecessarily complicated.
Doug Gjerde