Dear RC51 members,

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Felix Geyer, the great forerunner of our research field and honorary president of RC51. It is an honor to share contributions from authors who had long and close relationships with Felix. The world is still in turmoil, but Felix’s work will be our lasting source of insights and encouragement to deal with the challenges we are facing.

In July we held the first virtual conference, the 16th International Conference of Sociocybernetics: “The Pandemic Era: Observations and Reflections from a Sociocybernetics Perspective”.  A thread of contributions related to the conference is another feature of this issue. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about all kinds of trouble to our research activities. But the efforts made for the conference and vibrant discussion we had showed that the pandemic cannot stop our progress. You can get both an overview of the conference and in-depth views from contributors’ reports and essays. We appreciate all contributions from the organizers, moderators, presenters, and active participants!

We also include an interesting book review by Bernd Hornung about social theories. Social theories encourage us to rethink our society from different, using a word from the book, “alternative” views. The pandemic forced us to adopt “alternative” ways in various dimensions of society. Social theories in the pandemic era will be a thought-provoking topic also in sociocybernetics. Thank you, Bernd!

As ISA announced, the 4th Forum of Sociology in Porto Alegre was postponed to February 2021 and will now be held online. So, while we will not have chance to see each other in 2021 in Brazil, we are looking forward to meeting with you all online once again.

Best regards,

Toru Takahashi and Andrew Mitchell
RC51 Newsletter Editors
rc51newsletter@sociocybernetics.org