What can cybernetics contribute to the conscious evolution of organizations and society?

This contribution is based on the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Lecture delivered by the author at the 47th Conference of the International Society for the System Sciences (ISSS) in Crete, 7 July 2003. The conference was organized around the issue Conscious Evolution of Humanity: Using Systems Thinking to Construct Agoras of the Global Village. This article explores the potential and actual contributions of cybernetics to organizational and societal evolution. The focus is on the models and conceptual tools of managerial cybernetics. When properly used these can become powerful pivots of an evolution by design, as opposed to an evolution at the mercy of mere chance.