Toronto, Ontario; Mississauga, Ontario; London, Ontario
The Rex: Not yet CD for @mikedownesmusic @TedQuinlan @Larnell_Lewis @robibotos, still working towards release with original compositions. Audience rather full for a Thursday night, as jazz lovers anticipate some of the top players in town. (The Rex, Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20170202Avonwick: Superbowl big screen, switched to U.S. tv station to watch commercials from original broadcast instead of Canadian simulcast. Annual event has most of us spending more time on visiting with friends, we’re not really football spectators. (Avonwick, Mississauga, Ontario) 20170205Luen Hop: Passport photo studio at back of dry goods store in Chinatown East, getting recent shot for visa for Shanghai visit in April. Studio no longer does photo processing, and only takes portraits three times per week. Weather was clear today for a quick bike ride over. (Luen Hop, Broadview Avenue, Riverdale district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170206China Visa: Drop-off visa application only 20 minutes with appointment. Fewer customers than last year, almost all Asian faces. Turnaround in 3 days as non-express, maybe a post-Chinese New Year trough. Freezing rain outside, slid on sidewalk to bang left knee. (China Visa Application Service, University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20170207The Grad Club: Leisurely roast beef with Yorkshire pudding lunch in university pub. Snowy walk across campus, weather is more wintery in this region than back home. (The Grad Pub, Middlesex Center, Western University, London, Ontario) 20170210Anestis Taverna: Attracted to resto by friendly wave from the grill at the front window. Impromptu dinner scheduled in a newer resto in Greektown, good moussaka and souvlaki Winter storm redirected driving route away from crossing 401, through to downtown and then uptown again. (Anestis Taverna, Danforth Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20170210Willcocks Street: Temperature swing up over 10 degrees C in mid February a new record for Toronto. Wore sunglasses on bike ride to U. Toronto and Chinatown. Campus may be quieter than usual, at start of reading week. (Willcocks Street, University of Toronto) 20160218Seor Ak San: Family Day leisure for Korean cuisine. Decided on Chinatown district, first restaurant choice was queued up, went to strong alternative for a change of pace. Sons assessed quality as better than equivalents in Beijing, where they ate a lot of food in this style. (Seor Ak San, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20160120Ted Rogers School: Intro to R Programming @BigDataU with @polonglin lecturing. welcome by @regionomics. Free meetup for beginners to data science, most attendees in room are novices. Attending to see how class is taught, will discuss variants for different target audiences afterwards. (Ted Rogers School of Management, Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20170222Betty’s: After @DrupalTO meetup, social @BettysOnKing. Large group accommodated on a Monday night, casual time discussing common technical experiences. Some familiar faces from previous events. (Betty’s, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20170227
Dundas Street W at St. Patrick Street: Eastbound slight jog south formerly called Anderson Street in the 1910s was rerouted with alignments for the Toronto Railway Company before 1921, west of University Avenue. Further west from McCaul Street, the previously named St. Patrick Street became Dundas Street, leaving the label for north-south Dummer Street to became the new St. Patrick Street. Older cities pieced together throughways in modernity. (Dundas Street West at St. Patrick Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20160228
The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program. As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]
The International Society for General Systems Research formed circa 1956 became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988. In 1985, Bela H. Banathy organized the annual meeting on the theme of “Systems Inquiring”. Proceedings normally are published in the year following. In 1987, John A. Dillon summarized Banathy’s perspective in the yearbook, General […]
For five immersive days, a team of six researchers had the opporunity to collaborate on ideas on rhythmic shifts (mostly based on Systems Changes Learning) and anticipatory systems (in the legacy of Robert Rosen). The 2024 Banathy Conversation was organized by the Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute, facilitated by Susu Nousala, Gary S. Metcalf, and […]
Systems Processes Theory has been under development for many decades, led by Len Troncale, a past president of the International Society for the Ssytems Sciences. Many have found getting a grip on the science to be a demanding task, both in scope and in depth. Over many decades, Lynn Rasmussen was a collaborator, refining and […]
The Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspective, dating back to the studies of Eric L. Trist and Fred E. Emery, was on the reading list of organizational behaviour classes in my undergraduate and master’s degree programs. It wasn’t until 15 years later, when I got involved with the systems sciences and David L. Hawk, that the Socio-Ecological […]
Civic Tech can be described as projects using technology “for the public good“. Civic Tech may be related to, but different from Gov Tech. For the May 2024 Systems Thinking Onrtario, we had two knowledgeable guests in conversation. Dorothy Eng, executive director of Code for Canada since 2021, related her professional journey from engineering to […]
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
