Toronto, Ontario; London, UK; Keimolanportti, Finland; Espoo, Finland; Helsinki, Finland; Oslo, Norway; Nottingham, UK; Coventry, UK; Hull, UK.
Jazz Bistro. Classy family night, jazz piano with @wmatsushita. Rare to have all four sons at home at the same time. (Toronto) 20141001AC856 new 787-8 . New config, see USB, still looking for AC power outlet. Sad goodbye to DY, she had traveled with me since July. Will wake up in London early. (Toronto Pearson Airport) 20141005LHR T2 early. Tuesday morning Heathrow check-in opens at 5 a.m., but passengers not yet going to gates. Automobile sculpture would be interesting, but T2 too mammoth, and B gates 15 minute walk away. (London, UK) 20141007Bus transfer at Keimolanportti. Second time taking bus from Helsinki Vantaa airport to Hämeenlinna. After 15 minutes west then north on highway, first bus parks at truck stop, and waits for second bus to arrive and face other direction. Luggage is moved, then passengers board. No platform or signs. Pragmatic, but strange in total darkness when it’s cold outside. Major route towards Tampere. (Keimolanportti) 20141007Used books for free. At Häme University of Applied Science, bookshelf had old technical manuals, a few research reports published by Finnish institutes. Nothing inspiring, a few familiar titles obsolete for the immersed. (Hameenlinna) 20141008Plush blue catfish. Life sized mascot of lake fish now extinct in Häme region. Hidden in second floor corridor. (Hameenlinna) 20141009Kitchen at Aalto Design Factory. Drawers with “free to use food” and fridge where “unlabelled food can be used freely” illustrate Finnish cooperative design culture, simple and clear. Real time video feed of Tongji Design Factory in Shanghai shows how small the world has become. (Espoo) 20141010White suits on parliament steps. Saturday night in Helsinki, this group isn’t the only one dressed up for night out. Black is more popular for women with long eyelashes. (Helsinki) 20141011Art Week Helsinki at the Cable Factory on Flickr. Slow Sunday on west side of a Helsinki. Free art exhibition less interesting than cavernous building, finished roughly. Grey day outside, but mild the enough for walking and talking. (Helsinki) 20141012Trash art, Jari Miranda. Exhibition at Aalto Arts: The Flying Car, The Bubble, Desk, El Cello, all 2014 works. Creativity on display in industrial setting. (Helsinki) 20141013Oslo Lufthavn platform 4. Can see breath on cold Oslo mid-October morning, cooler than Helsinki earlier in the dark. Waiting for local train to Sentrum, sign says Delay. Reality is train only a few minutes wait, so, Norwegian precision? (Oslo) 20141014Myra Lokka Park by Vøyenbrua. Dusk walk from U. Oslo to Grunerlokka includes scenic path south on east bank of Akerselva River. Instead of 40 minute commute in and put off city centre, 70 minute downhill stroll was relaxing. (Oslo) 20141015Akerselva River at Vulkan. Rainy morning 10 minute walk north to AHO includes crossing scenic Akerselva River at Vulkan complex. Calming start to the day. (Oslo) 20141016Peter Jones presenting at #RSD3. @redesign on Flourishing Business in Oslo, while @aupward in Cleveland. Living up to Relating Systems Thinking and Design title for symposium. (Oslo) 20141017To French and English Gardens. Henrik Wergelands Garden Pavilion at the Norwegian Folk Museum. Drizzly day will get worse, go outdoors first. (Oslo) 20141018Astrup Fearnley permanent collection on Flickr. Disappointing Europe Europe show in Oslo immediately lightened by seeing Damien Hurst 1993 Mother and Child Divided, walking into front door. The curator makes the difference. (Oslo) 20141018Passport check, OSL. Ways to create stress in air travel. Gate from Oslo, Norway to Manchester, UK is beyond unexpected passport control. A case for not waiting for the very last moment to board. (Oslo) 20141019Well stocked Chinese mart on Flickr. Over lunch in Nottingham, Martin asked what fermented black beans look like. Around the corner, the store has them both in small plastic bags, and cylindrical paper cartons. No need for the jars with pre-made sauce. A signal of cultural diversity in a university town. (Nottingham) 20141020Fountains at U. Warwick on Flickr. Cool fall day in Warwickshire, wind blowing the fountains. Visiting IIPSI, at WMG, enjoying stroll from conference centre through campus. (University of Warwick) 20141021Two heads, tourists. After lecture, waiting for taxi, asked to pose with Chinese tourists by statues outside Hull Business School. The man seemed to like my winter hat. How many cameras, smartphones and tablets used for one good digital photo? (Hull) 20141022Art installation in progress. Large assembly at the Tate Britain requires construction crew to make an artist’s work presentable to the public. in the atrium of 500 Years of British Art, between the 1540 and present day periods. New display by Philip King opens Dec. 8, still 6 weeks away. (London) 20141023Premonition: Ukrainian Art Now. Anna Sorokovaya 2013 “Illusory Body” illuminated hanging clothes is lit blue by the neon installation on the other side of the room. Some Saatchi galleries reserved for the Wine Experience London, so visitors are directed to upper floor exhibitions. (London) 20141024Terminal 2 – The Queen’s Terminal. Check in concourse to Heathrow Terminal 2 spacious, which means super-human scale from Piccadilly Underground through security. Gate in T3 (London) 20141025LHR T2 play area. Crawling space for baby area on the ground, climbing space for juniors above. (London) 20141025Used book sale on Flickr. Last day at annual Trinity College book sale. Shelves less dense, but still found treasure: Boulding’s Ecodynamics, a systems theory work that I’ve never found before. (Toronto) 20141027
New streetcar tracks. Leslie Street south of Queen Street still under construction, but east-west blockage is now clear. In a few months, will have screeching turns on rails, as streetcars come and go to new barns. (Toronto) 20141030
Towards a general theory of living systems, we should be looking beyond the singletons of a hierarchical level, i.e. (i) cell, (ii) organ, (iii) organism, (iv) group, (v) organization, (vi) community, (vii) society, and (viii) supranational level. In a scientific approach, James Grier Miller created a list of hypotheses. In the 1100+ page book, the […]
When exploring the meaning of Living Systems, it’s pretty hard to ignore the major works of James Grier Miller (1916–2002) with a book thus titled. In addition to the 1978 book Living Systems (of 1168 pages!) some additions were published in 1992 in Behavioral Science, the Journal of the Society for General Systems Research. Miller […]
For their community of systems practitioners, Systems and Complexity in Organisation (SCiO) UK invited a presentation at their Virtual Open Meeting in July. Presenting in a 45-minute slot, the slides at http://coevolving.com/commons/2022-07-11-doing-thinking-making-systems-changes were covered in 38 minutes, leaving time for a few questions and comments. The agenda mainly focused on “Doing”, with “Thinking” and “Making” […]
On the path towards a publication in 2023, this plenary talk for the International Society for the Systems Sciences 66th Annual Meeting came with a preamble. Slides were provided in advance at http://coevolving.com/commons/2022-07-08-appreciating-systems-changes, so that details might be later perused at leisure. Here is the agenda for the presentation: A. Rising interest in System(s) Change(s) […]
In which ways are systems changes different from changes? Extending the deep body of knowledge in the systems sciences, rhythmic shifts serve as a gateway for exploration. In a rigourous coevolving of inquiries into (i) doing (praxis), (ii) thinking (theoria), and (iii) making (theoria), a coherent systems approach is being recast and reified. An article […]
System thinking, starting from graduate studies, can be a continuing (if not lifelong) journey. In parallel to a professional career in strategic communications, Zaid Khan has the distinction having studyied systemic design in the OCADU SFI program (2016-2020), under the supervision of Peter Jones. He became a cofounder of the Systems Changes Learning Circle in […]
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 ›
For the @ArchFoundation, #TimIngold distinguishes outcome-oriented making from process-oriented growing, revisiting #MartinHeidegger “Building Dwelling Thinking”. Organisms are made; artefacts grow. The distinction seems obvious, until you stop to ask what assumptions it contains, about the inside and outside of things…Read more ›
In web conference, #HermanDaly says #EcologicalEconomics used to get attacked from the right, now it's from the left. Panel @revkin @jon_d_erickson @ktkish @sophiesanniti #TimCrowshaw #KatieHorner livestreamed #sustainwhat .Read more ›
Complementing the idea of a @longnow , @nfergus provokes the challenge of a #shortthen as the online social media platforms distract the larger perspectives on history.Read more ›
In the history of science of systems thinking, Debora Hammond related the backgrounds and connections of the founder of the Society for General Systems Research, that is now the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Boulding (1956) plays a large role in framing two orientations towards “general systems theory”. Kenneth Boulding used to distinguish between […]
Geoffrey Vickers saw human systems as different, with moral character distinguishing from natural and manmade systems. Gregory Bateson, in a more general view of systems, saw morality as entering in systems processes.
In this review of a philosophical work written in Chinese, a comparison is made between Chinese philosophy centering on the body, in comparison to Western philosopy centered on the mind. (I found a reference to this book, tracing back from Keekok Lee (2017) Chapter 9, footnote 8.
The translation from English "systems thinking" to French "la pensée systémique" misses meaning. "Approche systémique" has lineage to "Conférences Macy", "General System Theory (Bertalanffy)" and "Gregory Bateson"
When one chooses a guiding philosophy of life -- and the modern world has chosen humanism -- one becomes responsible for all the consequences that flow from that choice. (David W. Ehrenfeld, 1981)
