Systems theory first emerged in the late 1920's and the 1930's. Scientists from many disciplines were becoming frustrated with disciplinary boundaries, and coming to realize that similar kinds of problems were being confronted, and dealt with, in similar kinds of ways in otherwise separate and independent spheres of activity. The Second World War both interrupted attempts to form cross-disciplinary Systems based frameworks, and at the same time provided big boosts to the development of systems frameworks in a number of fields. Aspects of general systems frameworks emerged after the war and in the 1950's through the 1960's. Systems frameworks have been known by many different names, and applied in different ways to different kinds of problem sets. It was in the early sixties that Systems approaches were beginning to be advanced and to have revolutionary implications in many fields of science. Noteworthy during this time was the impact the Louis Binford made in Archaeology by the application of systems based principles to archaeological theory and method, effectively ending over a century of paradigmatic dominance by the Culture Historical approach in American archaeology. It was in the later half of the 1960's that Ludwig Von Bertalanffy published his most concise and definitive statements on a fully self-conscious general systems framework. He had worked out many of the implications for this framework for various areas of science, most notably I believe for the human sciences.

Since that time, there have been various developments under the guise of Chaos theory, non-linear dynamics, Complexity, Cybernetics. Overall, since the sixties, it has been advances in computing and supercomputing architectures that have perhaps most dramatically influenced Systems based approaches and perspectives. Progress in computing has been steady, relentless and itself non-linear in its development. Half way through the first decade of the 21st Century, we find ourselves in the midst of a full-blown Information revolution and a continuation of steady advances in computing. At the same time, within the last decade we have made revolutionary advances in biological work with genetics and the structure, composition and dynamics of the large molecules that constitute living systems on a very basic level. There has been a more quiet revolution going on in Astronomy with the introduction of digital imagining techniques and the use of interferometry in telescopes. 

Systems have not yet come of age in the world. Indeed, resistance to and ignorance systems based frameworks continues to be the norm here in the US, particularly among Academic scholars and researchers. Systems based frameworks have been more readily received I think in big business and in some sectors of government due in part to the organizational nature of problems involved, but I think more importantly due to the applied and functional nature of these areas of involvement.

I think at this time we are on the verge of a General Systems revolution in the larger world, as the idea is slowly sinking in, perhaps at many places at the same time, that we might be able to finally dispense with some out-dated and out-moded ways of thinking and doing things, and that we can work in far more productive and efficient ways without all the extra symbolic baggage attached to things. This realization is becoming increasingly common in the world, and I think the information revolution is having a similar effect upon people's thinking everywhere.

How long this revolution will take to occur, or its exact pattern of development, is impossible to tell. It will undoubtedly happen at an accelerating pace of development. The full implications of such a revolution are yet to be ascertained. It seems to be a process largely in the background--like the working of the stage props while the actors strut and banter. I think we will ultimately know it by its results, by the things made available to more and more people, by the convergence of thinking on common meta-cultural ground. It is certainly a revolution in which the resort to violence and the threat of violence will become less and less necessary--"obviated" is the word--as the means to peacefully resolve issues through the application of appropriate advanced technology becomes not only feasible, but available. Availability of course, and appropriateness are big words in problems of International development. We must recognize a dangerous trend in the world toward escalating violence and increasing frequency of warfare, and I attribute this in the main to authoritarian power structures seeking to monopolize and hold on to their little resource hierarchies as long as they are able, in the fact of an accelerating rate of global change.

Mainland China is a perfect case in point, as well as its cousin, North Korea. The Chinese communist regime is savvy enough to know that if they do not change, do not allow the Chinese people to change, then the members of their little totalitarian party would have been strung up about a decade ago. China moves forward with a controlled plan of acculturative development, orchestrated from above, and motivated from below. North Korea is an example of an archaic form of human system that is attempting at all costs to maintain its one-man totalitarian organization--it can only do so by maintaining a completely closed society. The trouble is, all systems leak, especially human systems. So change even in a nightmare land like North Korea is inevitable in the structure of the long run.

The primary rate determining factors of the on-going Systems Revolution at this point are not technical, but human factors at all levels of behavior and organization. The human variables also are perhaps the least predictable about it all. The realization is also being made at the same time that the human factor is central to the formula and no system can factor the human element out completely. Systems frameworks that fail to take into central account the challenges of human sized and human kind problems are frameworks that are doomed to fail. There is no system advanced by people that is not first and foremost, and in the final analysis, a human system.

There is a principle in modern development. Simply put, technologically based development  is inevitable, given time. Social development always lags behind, and often far behind. There is also a recurrent historical pattern we must deal with--development is uneven, and it is the case that over-development of some regions may be tied by interdependency to underdevelopment of other regions.