Resources, topics:

Cybernetics: Introduced well in books by W. Ross Ashby. In particular, his Design for a brain goes a long way in helping us appreciate a design-oriented, almost mechanistic viewpoint of organism survival and adaptability.

Synergetics: A term coined by Bucky Fuller, referred to as “nature’s own coordinate system” in his books Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, Vol I & II

People:

R. Buckminster Fuller: Did his own thinking for 50 years; to produce some of the most astounding artefacts. A Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist by his own description. His book Critical path  journeys across all of human evolution and technological progress till date, and sheds a powerful light upon future trends and possibilities.

Jacque Frescoe: In his late 90’s now; has been a prolific inventor; followed on the footsteps of Bucky Fuller as far as I can see.. Has spent several decades on what is now the Venus Project, which is a specific realization from a more generic framework of possible alternative socio-economic models.. (and a pretty good one too, I feel)

Peter Joseph.. my honest opinion? He nails it every time. Mock the system with his ‘Culture in Decline’.

For a well-consolidated account, check out his movie: Zeitgeist:  Moving Forward ..which proceeds from the very roots of understanding what the causality of the environment enforces upon human behaviour and nature, to our present-day socio-economic framework that has so departed from coherence with the underlying physical basis.