Making a Difference by Making Sense - Tobias Goeschel

In the early 1970s, professor Niklas Luhmann was given a monumental task: To formulate nothing less than a comprehensive sociological theory of society - as a whole, and for all of its major functional subsystems, such as the law, mass media, arts, etc. - within 30 years.
Leaning on prior systems theories, he developed a unique take on what makes human society special: Not psychology, not individual humans, but what's in between them - communication! And that this communication has a dual form; it makes a difference by making sense: It carries within itself both the information of what is part of the system (included) and what is not (excluded), thereby defining and reinforcing the system boundary.
Over the course of 15 years, Luhmann developed this framework into the "Theory of Social Systems", a revolutionary way of understanding the fabric and operations of how these systems appear, stabilize, evolve and differentiate, and of the structural couplings that tie them to their environment. It would help him to finish his work in time, and publish "The Society of Society" in 1997, a year before he died.
25 years after Luhmann's death, we as a community have established our own ways to analyze, model and support the socio-technical systems of modern society, outside of the realm of sociology. But our ways still align remarkably with his work: In the way we use language to find system (domain!) boundaries. In how we use maps and adapters to manifest structural coupling between different contexts. In how teams and organizations are doomed to recreate the structure of their communication. And in how a system that is not used and evolved will fade, and cease to exist.
If "culture is the ultimate context" (Avraham Poupko), then society is the ultimate system. And the domains we observe and model are the residue of (sub)system operations.
Let's explore what that means.