Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC.
Planters East York Civic Centre. With frost coming, does the city put cabbages into its planters? I’m not a gardener, so I don’t recognize flora well. (East York Civic Centre) 20111112 1549Pantages fixture. Bentwood hanging electrical light in the Rehearsal Hall of the Pantages Hotel. While the venue name suggests entertainment, the Canon Theatre is down the street. Today’s meeting is technical briefings with the usual PowerPoint. Long room, good sound reinforcement for presenters. (Toronto) 20111115 1540Red eggs for 100-day birthday party. Traditional Chinese symbol and celebration that baby will live. Our sons had one-month haircut parties, a little longer gives new mom an opportunity to catch up more on sleep. Ten course meal followed. (Markham) 20111119 2003Vancouver Chinatown gate on Pender Street. Dusk comes early in Vancouver, on walk from west to east Pender Street. Noticed more Chinese herbalists in 2 block radius than we have in Toronto. Encountered one of East Side Cultural Crawl sites, artist live/work space on third floor of Main Street building. (Vancouver) 20111120 16:36Container cranes, Port of Vancouver. Eastward view from Seabus headed south to Vancouver. Illustrates city as a working port on the Pacific Rim. Ferry route uses Port as landmark, then turns slightly west for Waterfront Station. Rainy morning had short respite before participation continued for rest of day. (Vancouver, BC) 20111121 1054Vancouver Art Gallery, 2nd floor landing. Collection leans towards the conceptual at Vancouver Art Gallery, lots of phenomenology in contemporary and last century works. Tuesday night admission by donation, visited with DY. Photographing art is not permitted, but some building features are scenic (Vancouver, BC) 20111122 1956Stainless steel text, Burrard St. and Cordova St. Public art installation on west face of Vancouver building tower at Canada Place. Liam Gillick (2009) “Lying on top of a building the clouds / looked no near than when / I was lying on the street”. With no spaces between the words, reading the text would be better on a non-rainy day to decipher the meaning. City of Vancouver Public Art Program, presumably in cooperation with the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, where it’s installed. (Vancouver, BC) 20111124 1258
YVR, mountains to north. A clear day in Vancouver, after a week of steady rain. There was snow on the ground when I arrived. (Vancouver, BC) 20111125 1208
The February 2019 Systems Thinking Ontario meeting was an opportunity to bring those unfamiliar with the work of Christopher Alexander on methods revealed in the Eishin School and Multi-Service Centers projects.
The wholeness generated through pattern language may be influenced by stronger foundations from advances in the systems sciences, not just in built environments, but also in other domains.
An invitation to give a talk at IBM Research Almaden presented an opportunity to trace the history of science of pattern language, as it developed inside the company, and with the external community.
An invitation as a keynote presenter at the 2018 International Conference on Smart Cities and Urban Design (SCUD) was initiated on a recommendation by Susu Nousala to the program chair WU Jing. Blending the conference theme with my recent doctoral research, I proposed the topic “Innovation Learning for Sustainability: What’s smarter for urban systems”? For […]
The March 2018 lecture on Architecting for Wicked Messes for the OCAD SFI Understanding Systems and Systemic Design course was influenced having just taught Systems Methods at UToronto, and launching the Open Innovation Learning book.
The idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Concerns on #personaldata should be reframed as interpersonal, says @sheldrake , less the nodes and more the edge connections. “I want to take back control” superficial, @hartzog says control doesn’t scale. Agency is about negotiation in the world, more rhizomatic…Read more ›
Doing science should be wayfinding (pathfinding), says #TimIngold , gaining grounding in the art of paying attention, towards research as the pursuit of truth. Truth is more than objective facts, where science and art are embraced with materials, so that we can see the quality inside the natural world as it forms, rather than as […]
We should be more vigourous, says @MazzucatoM , in debating differences between value extraction and value creation, and between profits and rents. Lecture at Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford U., January 2019Read more ›
Most destructive analogy last 100 years @DavidGelernter @econtalker : Post-Turing thinkers decided that brains were organic computers, that computation was a perfect model of what minds do ... and that mind relates to brain as software relates to computer Read more ›
Before judging democratic systems over authoritarian, examine the functioning of governments through its diplomats, where plutocracy has an alternative in meritocracy, says @mahbubani_k @longnow @asiasocietysfx. [1:19:30] … when people compare the American government with the Chinese government, they say: “This…Read more ›
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
Satire can be an antidote, says Prof. #PaulBabbitt @muleriders , to #bullshit (c.f. rhetoric; hypocrisy; crocodile tears; propaganda; intellectual dishonesty; politeness, etiquette and civility; commonsense and conventional wisdom; symbolic votes; platitudes and valence issues).
If we don’t first know “what is system is”, how do we approach an intervention? #MichaelCJackson OBE and Dr. #LuisGSambo appreciate the difference between “systems thinking” (plural) and “system dynamics” (singular), and suggest expanding theory with Critical #SystemThinking in Health Systems Research. An ignorance of history is, if anything, even more pronounced among those authors […]
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
Many who cite #KurtLewin haven't read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the "refreezing" part of "unfreezing → changing → refreezing" emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.
Human organizations may learn from wolves, with groups of 2 to 6 taking down elk, and cooperative expert groups of 9 to 13+ taking down larger bison. #DanielMacNulty, #AimeeTallian #DanielRStahler #DouglasWSmith (2014).
