The roundtables on WOSC 2021 themes: Technology and humanity: co-developing a hybrid reality and Transdisciplinarity of systems sciences and cybernetics: developing areas of knowledg

Important world institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are publicly recognizing the highly interconnected nature of our world and therefore the relevance of systemic thinking and cybernetics as leading knowledge foundations to deal with the complexity of economic, social and environmental issues. This recognition by major international agencies of the CyberSystemic nature of policy issues makes apparent that in the context of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics more than ever we need to debate and develop current ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches to understanding the future of humanity. WOSC is honored that the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) has agreed to be the venue for its 18th Congress (WOSC 2020). Consistent with its scope scientists of this Academy have made important contributions to key issues of human society over the past decades. They have contributed to problems of nuclear disarmament, space exploration, the fight against terrorism, self-organization for strategic projects and many more. More recently, they have been developing aspects of socio-humanitarian cybernetics and of self-developing reflexive-active environments. Indeed, the RAS is a most valuable setting to support further developments of these and other issues. Our aim in WOSC 2020 is to bring CyberSystemic scientists, and in particular younger researchers, together with politicians and practitioners to debate pressing economic, social and ecological problems of humanity, at all levels from local communities to global societies. For this purpose, we propose to focus the discussions on the following four themes: philosophical and methodological foundations for the development of the systems approach and cybernetics, the cybernetics of democracy, the cybernetics of hybrid reality, and governance in an increasingly interconnected, ecologically sensitive, world. Short summaries of these themes are introduced below.