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
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).
