Juan David Campolargo

Heinz von Foerster

Heinz von Foerster was a magician.

No, no. Actually.

Sure, he was a cybernetics pioneer, a polymath, and a professor at UIUC who founded the Biological Computer Laboratory.

But, first and foremost, he was a magician.

At 16, Heinz and his cousin Martin were so annoyed when grown-ups called their tricks “cute” that they sat for the professional magician’s exam at Vienna’s grand, 2,000-seat Apollo Theater. With 180 seconds to impress a jury of dancers, actors, and circus performers, they passed. The reward was membership cards that offered first-class trains at half-price and theatre tickets at 90% off—plus the right to identify themselves as professional magicians. The card read: “Heinz von Foerster, Magician.”

To Heinz, however, the real discovery was learning that a magician’s job is not sleight-of-hand: it’s the artful creation of an ambiance, a context, a vivid world in which the audience itself becomes the co-creator. The magician sets conditions and constraints, but it's the viewer's imagination that completes the magic.

You don’t actually watch the elephant vanish. The elephant casually strolls off stage, but you're too wrapped up in the story to even notice or care. One moment the elephant’s there, and the next it’s gone. Your mind fills in the blanks, and boom, magic just happened.

Magic, he realized, was the art of making reality a shared production.

And that idea stuck with him forever.

Childhood

This understanding of the interactive nature of perception began early in a childhood shaped by constant social and intellectual motion.

Born in November 1911, Heinz was barely three when his father left to fight in World War I. He grew up in the large, lively house of his grandmother Marie Lang, which functioned as both family home and intellectual salon. Marie herself had led the very first European women’s-rights magazine Dokumente der Frauen. She was known for defiantly walking through Vienna's markets in a loose, proto-mini “muumuu,” cheerfully dodging occasional rotten eggs hurled by critics. To her grandson, she repeated a simple refrain: “Everything is here and now.”

Heinz’s childhood world was further enriched by his mother, Lilith, a costume designer for the legendary free-dance icon Grete Wiesenthal. Without babysitters, Heinz spent hours backstage beneath makeup tables, watching costume changes, listening to waltz rhythms, and absorbing the mechanics of movement and timing. His earliest lessons about life's intricate choreography came naturally, backstage and hidden away from adult eyes.

One of his earliest lessons came from the apartment caretaker, Mrs. Grill, after catching him gleefully launching stink bombs: “Everything you do comes back upon you.” Decades later, he still cited it as the seed of feedback loops and second-order ethics.

Heinz’s intellectual training took place largely in secret beneath his grandmother’s enormous desk. Hidden in makeshift pillow-forts, he listened to debates among Scandinavian reformers, socialist journalists, poets, suffragettes, and even his teenage cousin, who would later marry into the Wittgenstein family. When discovered, he was invited to join the discussions. He learned to answer questions that had no settled answers. Often, they were questions he would spend his lifetime exploring.

Carnival

As he grew older, the same playful curiosity carried into adolescence, sometimes leading to surprising opportunities. During Vienna’s carnival season, Heinz and his cousin Martin would go all-out in clown gear at the Künstlerhaus ball, spontaneously transforming elegant hallways into impromptu circuses. One memorable night, a broad-shouldered American followed them around, roaring with laughter. This enthusiastic stranger turned out to be William Bullitt, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. In true cybernetic fashion, the friendship born over card tricks would later save Heinz’s American dream.

World War II

World War II disrupted everything. Classified as “Jüdisch versippt” (related by marriage to Jews), Heinz found it impossible to work in Vienna. The Foersters were known to be related by marriage, and employers avoided him. Faced with that reality, Heinz chose an improbable alternative: he ran straight into the lion’s jaws—Berlin.

With his background in electro-acoustics and strong references, Heinz bluffed his way into becoming the research director at a major company developing radar and electromechanical systems. Party inspectors regularly demanded his Aryan certificate, but Heinz always deflected smoothly: “Proof? But gentlemen, I am a von Foerster—surely that suffices?” He promised documents he never intended to request, and the inspectors never pressed too hard.

From the roof of his radar lab in Köpenick, Heinz watched helplessly as over 2,000 Allied planes unleashed devastating raids on Berlin, turning the city into clouds of fire and smoke. After one especially brutal attack, he headed north, picking his way through streets packed with refugees and charred railcars, determined to find elderly friends somewhere in the wreckage.

As the war ended, Heinz’s radar lab was relocated to Silesia. But when it became clear the Red Army was approaching fast, he turned down official transport. Instead, he convinced ten coworkers to flee with him and attempt the 600 kilometers back to Berlin by bicycle. They didn’t get far. After just half a day on the snow-packed Autobahn, hardened by tank treads, most gave up. Only Heinz and his mechanic friend, Ali Brenner, kept going.

They rode through villages already abandoned. Meals sat untouched on tables, as if people had left in the middle of eating. With no food of their own, Heinz and Ali took what they could find. As they rode on through the freezing dark, the eastern sky flashed with distant fire. The ground shook with the rumble of tanks and the thunder of artillery. The front was close. For hours, they rode like this, surrounded by silence, except for the low growl of war closing in behind them.

By dawn, they had covered most of the distance. Exhausted and half-frozen, they managed to hitch a ride for the last 100 kilometers in the trunk of a commandeered BMW. The driver had been stopped by military police, who spotted Heinz and Ali standing aghast by the road with their bikes. “What are you doing here?” one of the officers asked. Heinz answered without flinching: “We’re under orders. We have to get to Berlin.” The officer nodded toward the BMW. “Take them,” he told the driver. “Open your trunk.” They tossed in their bikes, climbed into the back seat, and rode the rest of the way to Berlin. Thus, Heinz arrived in bombed-out Berlin with surreal elegance, seated comfortably in a plush sedan.

In Berlin, Heinz quietly resisted Nazi directives. He encouraged colleagues to choose research problems that were technically impressive but practically useless for the war effort. It was a quiet, effective form of sabotage. When a bombing raid destroyed the castle where Heinz and his friends sheltered, he escaped with a single suitcase miraculously retrieved from a burning freight car. Inside were evening tails, his wife Mai’s gold-lamé gown, and a rebound copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

The war ended for Heinz in early May 1945, in the Alpine village of Oberndorf, where he and his family had taken refuge. From a park bench beneath perfect blue skies and snow-capped mountains, they watched the final armored clash of the war unfold just meters away. The American Rainbow Division’s tanks faced off against German panzer forces in a four-hour battle right before their eyes—some fifty meters apart, neither side paying any attention to the small group of civilians sitting quietly nearby.

All the farmers had fled, leaving the village deserted. People often asked Heinz, “Why didn’t you run?” He would say, “They weren’t shooting at us; they were shooting at each other. They couldn’t even see us.”

After hours of fighting, the German tanks finally withdrew east along the valley, and the Rainbow Division took control. An hour later, Heinz, his wife Mai, and their children walked onto the battlefield. American soldiers had abandoned their rations: jars of marmalade, cans of Spam and liver pâté, biscuits, Nescafé, and tea scattered across the fields. The Germans had thrown away their uniforms and rucksacks too, changing into civilian clothing to avoid capture.

Heinz and Mai gathered the discarded food, happily filling their own rucksacks with the spoils of victory. Among the leftovers, they saw the evidence of soldiers' meals, remnants of digestion unlike anything they’d seen before. Heinz remarked, “They must win the war if they can produce such things.”

Looking down at the scattered rations, Heinz’s two-year-old son Andy looked up thoughtfully and said, “The Germans lost the war. They left it lying on the street.”

Postwar Years

When the Americans arrived in Oberndorf, Heinz found himself immediately appointed as mayor, largely because he knew a few words of English. The newly arrived soldiers, many from the Midwest, found the surrounding Alpine terrain unsettling. Accustomed to flat landscapes, they described the mountains as “claustrophobic.” Heinz found the contrast amusing. To him, the peaks signaled calm and continuity; to the soldiers, they felt enclosing and unfamiliar.

For about two weeks, Heinz navigated this cultural divide with humor and gentle diplomacy, serving as the impromptu mayor of Ebbs-Oberndorf.

Returning to liberated Vienna, Heinz threw himself into a demanding double life.

By day, he worked to rebuild the family telephone factory, which had been badly damaged during the war. By night, under the alias “Dr. Heinrich,” he moderated the radio roundtable Es ist streitbar (“It Is Debatable”) on Radio Rot-Weiß-Rot. Holding multiple jobs was illegal, so Heinz moved constantly between commitments, riding a small motorcycle across the city. More than once, he excused himself mid-meeting—“Excuse me, five minutes”—and disappeared to his next obligation.

The program became a prominent forum for public debate. Guests included Viktor Frankl, the concentration-camp survivor and future author of Man’s Search for Meaning, as well as clergy, psychologists, and graphologists. On several occasions, Soviet authorities interrupted broadcasts by cutting telephone lines to stifle open discourse. Despite these disruptions, Heinz’s dialogues with Frankl resonated deeply, helping a shattered post-war city rediscover meaning. Their discussions about suffering, freedom, and radical responsibility profoundly influenced Frankl’s writings and shaped Heinz’s own lifelong ethical philosophy.

Despite his success in Vienna, Heinz did not intend to stay. Rebuilding factories and hosting radio debates felt provisional. He wanted work that would allow sustained inquiry. In early 1949, Heinz von Foerster decided to leave for New York.

USA

When the University of Illinois invited Heinz to run its electron-tube laboratory, he eagerly accepted. He quickly found himself entangled in bureaucratic chaos. U.S. immigration officials bounced him from room to room: “room 17, room 220, room 125,” each time demanding yet another required stamp. In desperation, Heinz recalled someone unlikely: William Bullitt, the former U.S. ambassador he amused years earlier with clown antics at a Vienna artists’ ball. Bullitt immediately dispatched two impeccably dressed agents, who returned just 48 hours later, handing Heinz a passport and work permit. “Go back to room 17,” they instructed confidently. Five seconds and one swift pamm! Later, Heinz’s American dream became real.

From Champaign, Illinois, Heinz immediately phoned Mai in Vienna. Because international calls were expensive, he begged the operator to cut the call after ten minutes. But after nine months apart, hearing each other's voices overwhelmed any practical concern. They spoke for an hour and a half without noticing. Only afterward did Heinz realize the bill was $150—more than his entire monthly paycheck. Sheepishly, he explained the situation to the local phone company, whose compassionate representative simply shrugged: “Send whatever you can each month until it’s gone.” Heinz cleared the debt in six payments.

Mai’s own immigration adventure was even more chaotic. Just two days before her ship to America sailed, the previously open German quota abruptly closed. Consular staff simply shrugged, offering no hope. Mai, nearly frantic, burst into tears, protesting passionately that her entire wardrobe had already been shipped to the United States. Moved by her distress—or perhaps stunned by the audacity of her claim—an official quietly handed over the last visa in the drawer. Her passage secured, Mai soon boarded Queen Elizabeth with their three small boys, bound at last for a new life in America.

When she arrived, immigration officials detained her and the children, handcuffed them, and ferried the family to Ellis Island. The German quota had officially closed by the time the ship docked. Heinz was frantic. Fortunately, a sympathetic dean in Illinois posted a $1,000 bond, which enabled Heinz to reunite his family.

University of Illinois

Arriving in Illinois in 1949 with little more than a Viennese accent, barely passable English, and a head brimming with equations, Heinz charmed the Office of Naval Research into funding a dream laboratory. Within a decade, he had transformed Illinois’s small Electron-Tube Lab into the legendary Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL). The lab attracted researchers working on cybernetics and related problems: Gordon Pask experimenting with robotic devices in one corner, Ross Ashby building a home-made computing machine in another, all held together by Heinz’s infectious enthusiasm and almost childlike trust. “Trust,” he liked to say, “is contagious.”

BCL became a major center for cybernetics, self-organization, adaptive systems, and related ideas that later echoed through computing, artificial intelligence, systems theory, and communication technologies. It was equally known for its radically playful atmosphere. Visiting scientists had no fixed schedules, only an invitation to join extended discussions, improvised demonstrations, and experiments that often continued late into the night. Heinz referred to this pace of work as “the seriousness of children at play.”

He and cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener even convinced colleagues to abandon cumbersome phrases like "feedback mechanisms," opting instead for the snappier "Cybernetics," a decision that resonated widely and shaped a field.

Heinz’s teaching was as revolutionary as his research. He loved to say that a lecturer is “still a magician, but now the trick is collective world-building.” Students swore Heinz could walk into any hall, hear “Heinz, talk about X!” and within minutes have the crowd spellbound, a skill he traced directly back to those intense 180-second Apollo trials.

One day at a campus street fair called "Illioskee," a student stopped Heinz and asked whether he would teach a course on heuristics, a term unfamiliar to many administrators at the time. “In what sense heuristics?” Heinz asked. “Mathematical problem-solving, or a system where students find their own solutions?” The student replied, “Both!” Heinz turned to his collaborator, the composer Herbert Brün, who agreed: “Every course suggested by students, I will teach—for we are here for the students, not the students for us.”

By the time the student spoke with Heinz again the next day, he had gone door to door trying to get the course officially approved, meeting resistance at every step. “We don’t do that,” he was told. The Dean of Research dismissed it outright: “I don’t know anything about heuristics. We don’t need that at this university.” After recounting all of this, the student looked at Heinz and said, almost incredulous, “And then you said, ‘Yes—why not?’”

Heinz smiled.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do the course. I’ll be responsible for the content, and you take care of the students.”

Why call it heuristics? Heinz explained the name by pinning a green card to the board and retelling the story of Archimedes shouting “Heureka!” in his bathtub. The point, he said, was not the answer itself but the invention of the path toward it. The course had one rule: the next question had to come from students, not professors.

Whole University Catalog

In the fall of 1969, on the first day of "Heuristics III," Heinz arrived to find hallways barricaded by chanting students demanding better courses. They shouted slogans: “We are against the administration!” “We don’t have the right courses!” “The teachers are too lazy!” “The testing system is lousy!” Everything was a scandal. More often than not, these students spent more time on the street than in the classroom.

Discovering all 160 protesters were there for his class, scheduled in a room with only 30 seats, he smoothly persuaded administrators to open the main auditorium instead. Inside, Heinz abandoned the planned syllabus. Noticing the students’ frustration with university structures, he said, “Let’s write the university we wish existed.”

At the time, the Whole Earth Catalog, a magazine produced in California by Stewart Brand, was widely read among students. It circulated practical information, from outdoor equipment and printing tools to small-scale cooking and communication devices. It was a revolutionary’s field manual. The catalog was packed with knowledge for anyone who wanted to change the world.

So Heinz had a simple thought: “Since this catalog is so popular—each student seems to have one—why not create a Whole University Catalog?”

Students wrote their names, majors, and interests on index cards, assembling a Directory of Heuristics in a single day. About half the entries were serious, half were joking. One student, shocked to see her listed interest—“trying to get laid all the time”—reproduced exactly as written, ran into Heinz’s office in tears. Heinz said, “Say what you mean—or write something else.” First lesson delivered: your words count, because someone was genuinely listening.

Teams scattered across campus, mapping wheelchair accessibility and spoofing marijuana-cultivation guides. When a thousand copies were printed and sold for $1 each, the proceeds were used to fund the Illinois' Special Educational Opportunities Program.

After The Whole University Catalog came out, administrators panicked. Senators subpoenaed Heinz, accusing him of publishing illicit handbooks. Heinz laughed, calmly responding at the hearing, “Did you even test the marijuana recipe? If you had, you'd have discovered it doesn't work.”

The Whole University Catalog was my first introduction to Heinz von Foerster, and a huge inspiration to what you’re reading right now.

Yet even Heinz’s imaginative spirit had its limits in the face of institutional pressures. When military funding eventually ceased, the university—focused more on budgets and bureaucratic order—distanced itself.

Without funding or official backing, Heinz’s beloved Biological Computer Laboratory gradually closed its doors, ending an era of collaborative experimentation.

Despite this institutional retreat, Heinz’s ideas lived on, continuing to inspire generations who recognized that education, like magic, was fundamentally about collective world-building.

Dance in the undecidable

Heinz von Foerster was not confined to theory or the classroom. Long before he built the Biological Computer Laboratory or articulated the “ethical imperative,” he was already encountering the patterns that would later shape his work.

As a child, he learned about circular causality firsthand—after setting off stink bombs, he was caught by Mrs. Grill, who told him, “Everything you do comes back upon you.” He absorbed the idea of multiple descriptions while hiding beneath a desk, listening to philosophers argue past one another and noticing how the same question produced incompatible answers. His sense of perception took shape backstage, where mirrors fractured appearances, and at home, watching his grandmother Marie’s patterned muumuus swirl and shift as she moved.

He also learned stability under pressure. During the Nazi period, officials demanded proof of Aryan ancestry; Heinz stalled, promised documents, and avoided confrontation long enough to pass through the moment. In other situations, he showed a similar instinct for adaptation—turning a freezing bicycle journey into a ride in a borrowed BMW, or navigating visa obstacles through improvisation rather than force.

These experiences did not remain anecdotes. They trained him to act within feedback loops, adjusting, responding, and revising in real time rather than seeking fixed solutions.

In the end, Heinz’s greatest trick was this: to treat the world not as something fully given, but as something made in participation. It waits for someone to step forward and say, without certainty but with commitment, “Come, dance in the undecidable with me.”

Favorite Quote

The world, as we perceive it, is our own invention.

—Heinz von Foerster

What we experience as reality is shaped by how we interpret it.

Heinz von Foerster had this really interesting idea: “Always act to increase the number of choices.” To me, that always meant creating a life filled with more entropy, chaos, randomness, and complexity.

He believed that we create our sense of reality through ongoing interactions with the world around us. Each interaction helps us form little mental tags or "tokens," which are very similar to how artificial intelligence learns. AI systems process vast amounts of data and create tokens that represent pieces of information, allowing these models to recall, identify, and interact smoothly with the world around them.

AI builds meaning from patterns and data; we build meaning from experiences and memories. The more varied and interesting our experiences, the richer our "database" becomes, giving us more ways to see, think, and create. Just like AI gets smarter with more diverse data, we also get better at imagining and creating when we collect varied experiences.

The more we do, see, and try, the bigger our world becomes, and the more freedom we have to invent our own reality.

That's exactly why the idea behind The Jailbroken Guide to the University matters so much: because your life isn't meant to be a standardized curriculum, a neatly defined course that leads precisely where everyone else is heading. It’s not only boring, it's untruthful because the truth about life is that it's messy, unexplored, and completely individual.

The more faithfully you follow the pre-made path—the same expectations, the same routines, the same “safe” routes—the fewer opportunities you have to find out who you really are or what unique truths you can uncover.

At its core, The Jailbroken Guide To The University shows that the stranger, riskier, and more authentically varied experiences you chase, the more deeply you understand reality.

Every new, unpredictable step you take creates another token—another doorway to possibilities you can't yet imagine. It’s those tokens, collected from moments you can't script or predict, that unlock connections no one else sees.

Life is richer and truer when you're brave enough to stray from the path everyone else thinks is correct. The ultimate freedom is to realize there never was a path at all, only the one you invent with each step forward.

What I Took Away

From Heinz von Foerster, I learned this: to live fully is to stay curious.

People will think you’re distracted, confused, or even lost. I can’t tell you how many professors, counselors, and so-called adults tried to “help” me—genuinely concerned, but completely misunderstanding what I was doing. But I hope you remember this: the moments that feel chaotic, random, or meaningless now will someday reveal themselves as scattered dots, connecting into something far greater than you can currently imagine.

Life becomes meaningful when we forget these artificial boundaries between fields, between ideas, and between people, and let creativity create unpredictable and exciting collisions.

Heinz would say his expertise was “no disciplines” because he moved effortlessly across so many fields. He was a physicist, but that label didn’t limit him from also becoming a biologist, musician, photographer, or anything else he chose to explore.

Heinz von Foerster was a polymath. When people struggle to master one thing well, he could master many things effortlessly. And what’s more, he didn’t give a shit about mastery! Some people found that insulting.

He was an amateur pianist—accompanied Hotter on Schubert lieder sometime in the 1930s. Also a photographer.

—Jamie Hutchinson, Notes from Glenn Kowack interview, from Cybernetics of Cybernetics interview note (slightly edited for clarity)

Heinz demonstrated this principle with his heuristic seminars. Bring people from different worlds into the same room, give them permission to ask real questions, and the categories start misbehaving. All the random variables come alive, such as the unexpected collisions, surprising conversations, and ideas nobody saw coming. Like that time when my friends and I had the conversation with Paul Schroeder and his friends, one of many similar stories in this book.

Ultimately, Heinz von Foerster’s greatest strength was his ability to bring people together and open their minds. When you genuinely connect with others, you create a shared reality, and within that shared space, magic happens. Recall the time Heinz became a professional magician. His biggest realization was understanding that the true magic was the atmosphere you could create together with people.

Talk to everyone, learn everything, and pursue your curiosity without hesitation.

Taken together, Heinz von Foerster builds a world grounded in confidence, trust, and openness, a world of genuine partnership. In that world, reality is not imposed upon us; it is shaped between us, through our choices and our care. Learning from Heinz von Foerster means taking part in creating new realities together with people.

Master of the Invisible Game: Understanding Systems

To jailbreak your reality, you first have to truly understand the systems you’re already part of. Most of these are invisible social constructs—rules, conventions, and assumptions that we’ve accepted so deeply we hardly question them. Think about money: we exchange pieces of paper or digital numbers on a screen for food, shelter, and labor. There’s no inherent value in these symbols; their worth is entirely dependent on our collective belief. Or consider university prerequisites—when you’re told you can’t enroll in a class because you lack certain qualifications. There’s no fundamental truth making it impossible; it’s simply a rule someone once invented, now followed without question.

Heinz von Foerster understood this. He knew that most barriers in life aren’t entirely imaginary. They often come with tangible signs, explicit rules, and clear consequences, but they’re sustained primarily through collective acceptance and unquestioned belief. Just because something is written down or widely accepted doesn’t mean it holds absolute power.

Rules persist not because they’re unbreakable, but because people agree to follow them. Whether it's standing in line, speaking only when called on, or dressing a certain way for an event—these behaviors are upheld by collective belief, not by natural law. Humberto Maturana recounts a story that illustrates Heinz’s intuitive mastery of these invisible systems:

In 1968-69 I visited Heinz in Urbana, Illinois for almost a year. Every day I would arrive at his home at about midday, and from there Heinz would drive us to the BCL. On one occasion he had to do some errand downtown, and he drove down and parked his car exactly in front of the police station, where it said "Parking with permit only".

Heinz got out of the car with absolute confidence and as I followed him I asked him whether he had a permit.

He answered "No."

Then I asked "Then how can you park there?"

And told me "No-one would park there unless they had a special permit.

If the police saw me parking there, they would think I have a special permit, and do nothing."

I said "My goodness, if I were to park there they would immediately stop me!"

And he answered to me "That is because you think you do not have the right to park in that place."

For me this was an interesting conversation. On the one hand it revealed Heinz' understanding of the systemic situation involved with the police station, the police and the parking permit, and how one could behave in these circumstances.

On the other hand it revealed to me that my lack of confidence in my doing would be immediately apparent to the policeman. The police would immediately recognize me as a person who did not have the right to be doing what he was doing. So I thought, you must not only understand a system, but also be able to move through it in full trust of your knowledge and understanding.

—Humberto Maturana, Remembrances. Human Becoming. Becoming Human, the online Festschrift for Heinz von Foerster (2001)

Rules exist primarily because people believe they exist. His approach wasn’t reckless but deeply informed by understanding how people enforce and respect social conventions. Confidence, he discovered, is often enough to make an invisible barrier disappear.

Heinz demonstrated this principle repeatedly. After World War II, desperate to reach his family in Vienna, Heinz boarded the Mozart Express—a train explicitly reserved for American soldiers. Denied entry, he didn’t argue; instead, he climbed onto the external buffer of the moving train. Eventually, at Enns station, he calmly entered and convinced the Americans, through sheer confidence, that he belonged inside, despite clearly stated rules. They reluctantly accepted him.

“You must not only understand a system, but also be able to move through it in full trust of your knowledge and understanding.”

Heinz understood that even strict rules often bend when someone challenges them with calm certainty.

Another crucial insight Heinz discovered was that truly jailbreaking your reality involves not just challenging assumptions, but continually revisiting familiar ideas with genuine curiosity and humility, no matter how deeply you believe you understand them. Heinz vividly experienced this lesson during a prestigious physics event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first law of thermodynamics. He wasn’t invited, but Heinz, never one to be deterred by mere rules, snuck into the lecture anyway. Here’s the story:

When I lived in Berlin, the famous law of energy, first stated by Robert Mayer, turned 100 years old. The Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft [German Society of Physics], naturally, organized a big event: “We celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first law of thermodynamics.” It is the law of the conservation of energy: energy is neither lost nor created. Energy always remains constant.

So Robert Mayer was celebrated in Berlin, and all the great physicists went there. That was very interesting for me. I desperately wanted to participate in that conference. That was impossible, of course—only invited guests could attend. But I don’t let myself be deterred by something like that.

And so I arrive there in the evening. “How do I get in now?” Then I see a side door labeled “Stage Only.” I immediately go in through that side door and climb up a couple of dark steps. Suddenly, I find myself on stage, looking out at all the spectators sitting there. I’m right at the back of the stage, where everyone can see me. “Well, now I have to act as if I were officially on the stage.”

I grab any old chair, crawl through the curtain, place the chair in front of a rear curtain, and sit down at the back of the stage. At that moment, Professor von Laue steps onto the podium. In the audience—I look down—all the great physicists are sitting in the first row. Max Planck is among them.

Von Laue begins to speak about the energy principle—things every physicist learns in the first semester at university. So I sit there and think: “Why, what he’s telling us is terribly boring.” I look down at the first row of great physicists. And what do I see? Max Planck is sitting on the edge of his seat, listening with great attention, making sure he doesn’t miss a single word of what Laue is saying.

He’s talking about the oldest stuff I know—stuff that usually puts you to sleep. But Max Planck doesn’t fall asleep. And he knows all of it much better than I do. In spite of that, he listens with complete attention.

“Dear Heinz,” I say to myself, “take this man as an example—someone who, although he knows everything, still thinks it all through once more, as if he had never heard it before. That is what makes a great human being: someone who thinks it all through again and says, ‘I still don’t know it.’ Take that as an example!”

That was a very important experience for me: that these great people think it all through once more, without ever getting bored. Being bored has to do with the person who gets bored, not with the situation. If you are a bore, you get bored. If you are an amusing person, you draw new and interesting stimuli from every occasion.

—Heinz Von Foerster and Monika Silvia Broecker, Part of the World: Fractals of Ethics - A Drama in Three Acts

In that moment, Heinz learned an important lesson about jailbreaking: it isn’t merely about the courage to break rules or understand hidden assumptions. It’s also the humility and curiosity to revisit what you already know, constantly finding new meaning and insight, no matter how familiar or simple it seems.

That’s what The Jailbroken Guide To The University is about: constantly questioning and confidently reinterpreting assumptions about reality at every level. I want you to master the invisible game that shapes our shared reality by learning how systems of expectation, incentive, and permission actually operate.

Badass Moment

In the fall of 1969, Heinz von Foerster reluctantly agreed to lead the Heuristics III seminar at the University of Illinois, bowing to persistent student demand. The seminar produced the irreverent yet seemingly harmless Whole University Catalog, which we have talked a lot about already.

Up until then, Heinz had navigated smoothly through turbulent political climates. He charmed corporate sponsors, managed to survive both the Third Reich and the Allied occupation in Austria without making enemies, eased his way into American academia, and skillfully secured research funding from the Air Force and Navy—all without compromising his unconventional thinking.

But the Whole University Catalog changed all that.

Once the university administration found out, they were scandalized. Quickly, they distanced themselves from the project and insisted that the catalog not bear the university’s name to make it very clear they had nothing to do with it. Originally, it featured “University of Illinois” at the top and “Biological Computer Lab” and “Department of Electrical Engineering” at the bottom. Administrators demanded that these identifiers be obscured, and students had to paste black strips over them.

The publication immediately sparked controversy and drew intense criticism. But, of course, as you know, every story needs that one person who ruins the plot. In this case, that person was a politician. Classic!

Illinois state senator William Horsley loathed the Whole University Catalog—so much so that he called it "dirty, filthy material." Personally, I think it’s the best thing in the world, but Horsley didn't see it that way at all. He chaired a legislative commission investigating campus unrest, which meant he took this very seriously. He was determined enough to summon Heinz von Foerster to testify before his commission.

One particularly contentious entry was a satirical guide on cultivating and smoking marijuana. Though intended as a joke—deliberately describing incorrect methods—it was taken at face value by critics.

Heinz recounted the incident with his characteristic humor:

One student, for instance, had taken a whole page to describe how to cultivate marijuana, how to cut it, how to make cigarettes out of it and how to smoke it.

What was great about it was that since every student knew how to do that, he could afford to make a joke about it, and described everything the way it is not done.

And of course we included it as a joke in the Catalog.

The good professors fell for it and said, ‘Now Foerster publishes how to turn people into drug freaks. In the name of the university, in the name of teaching, Foerster teaches these nice blue‐blooded young citizens of the state of Illinois in the use of drugs.’

The senator from Illinois then cited me to attend a hearing. That was incredibly funny, since they didn’t know that the whole thing was a joke. Mai was also there.

The senator was totally crazed. I sat there and laughed myself silly. I only gave funny answers.

—Heinz Von Foerster and Monika Silvia Broecker, Part of the World: Fractals of Ethics - A Drama in Three Acts

During the hearing, Heinz maintained his composure and wit. When questioned about the marijuana article, he said:

Heinz: “Did you study the marijuana contribution?”

Commission: “Of course! Scandalous!”

Heinz: “Well, did you try whether it works?”

Commission: “We wouldn’t do something like that!”

Heinz: “Well, why didn’t you try it? Then you would have seen that it doesn’t work, that the whole thing is a hoax.”

—Heinz Von Foerster and Monika Silvia Broecker, Part of the World: Fractals of Ethics - A Drama in Three Acts. Adapted from the original for readability.

Despite the levity, the situation had serious repercussions. Reflecting on these events years later, Heinz remarked dryly that tenure alone had saved him from dismissal: "The Whole University Catalog was a thorn in their eye."

The backlash was severe enough that it ultimately undermined the future of his research center. While von Foerster managed to keep his professorship, the consequences were lasting.

By 1975, the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL), once generously funded by military contracts, found its support evaporating. The laboratory closed, and Heinz, only 63, faced an early and unwanted retirement.

BCL had become less a reliable source of prestige and funding—a "milking cow" for the university, as Heinz once called it—and more of a space for the free-spirited, countercultural impulses of its students.

It was never explicitly oppositional, yet it had become controversial. As Heinz’s supporters in the Pentagon retired or were reassigned, and as university administrators withdrew their backing, BCL faded into obscurity. And just like that, America's most important cybernetics lab quietly vanished.

The story of Heinz von Foerster and the Whole University Catalog serves as a reminder that some of the projects you'll work on may face backlash, rejection, and resistance.

But even more unsettling, it reveals the greatest nightmare for any creator, the unintended consequences that follow their creation.

How Heinz von Foerster Met His Wife

One of my favorite questions to ask people is how they met their partner because it reveals a side they usually keep hidden.

The way someone answers shows so much about their true character, their creativity, their fears, and the small quirks that make them unique. But, if I’m being honest, part of why I love asking this question is precisely because it’s awkward. People often hesitate. They’re unsure if they should share, yet deep down, they desperately want to. When they finally do, you see their eyes light up, reliving memories that are precious, or hilarious, and sometimes both.

With Heinz von Foerster, this is so true. His account of how he met his wife offers a glimpse into how he moved through the world: confident, playful, and largely indifferent to convention.

Once you hear it, you think, “Of course—that’s exactly how Heinz would meet the love of his life.” It simply couldn’t have happened any other way.

Here is Heinz’s own account:

THE MOST WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE

And so a few days before Christmas I arrived in Vienna and met my cousin Martin again. And Martin, who got around in the world, played in the great theaters, wrote plays, associated with journalists, said: “Every year I get this wonderful invitation from a charming actress, who usually celebrates with a New Year’s Eve party, and I may succeed in convincing her to also invite a physicist. It is, of course, too bad that you are so uncultured. But I will try to convince her that you are still a nice and decent human being.”

And two days later: “Yes, she invited you as well to come along to the New Year’s Eve party. Please try to act properly.”

Well then, on New Year’s Eve, we arrive by elevator on the third floor, where this beautiful actress organizing a New Year’s Eve party lives.

Martin says: “OK, I’m ringing the bell now, and you Heinz, stand on your hands, so that I can introduce you as someone who knows how to do something.” And so I stand on my hands—we had both been acrobats as young men.

He rings the bell. A charming lady opens the door. Martin says: “May I introduce my cousin Heinz?” pointing down to where my head looked out from in between my arms. She says: “Of course. Please come in.” And so I wander into the room of this charming actress on my hands, and Martin says to me: “OK, Heinz, now you may get up.” And so I get back up and stand across from the hostess. The first thing she says is: “I am not impressed.”

Well, I thought, there is nothing I can do, but said “hello” and spent a beautiful evening at this beautiful actress’s with the name of Mai Stürmer.

A few months later we were married.

The decision to lead a life together with this other human being, with this woman, led to the development of a totally new life for me. Once I knew, “Now I’m no longer alone, now we are two, now I am with Mai, now we are a new unity,” it was a crucial decision for me. That is a solid decision. It will never end. “I am simply a different human being. I am a double being. I am one person with Mai.”

That has guided me throughout my entire life up until now: that I am simply not alone, but together with another. “I am responsible for the life of the other, just as I am responsible for my own life, for myself.“

—Heinz Von Foerster and Monika Silvia Broecker, Part of the World: Fractals of Ethics - A Drama in Three Acts

Out of all of Heinz von Foerster’s stories, it’s hard to imagine one that more perfectly captures his essence: the fearless spontaneity, the playful defiance of convention, and, ultimately, the profound seriousness with which he approached the decision to share his life.

Learn more

Front cover for The Jailbroken Guide to the University
Use the appendixThe back of the book is part of the book.

The appendix keeps the examples, guides, profiles, and source trails close. The book gives them sequence, context, and a way to turn curiosity into action.