Toronto, Ontario, Tokyo (Haneda, Kiba, Ookayama), Osaka (Fushimi), Tokyo (Harajuku, Shinjuku, Toyama, Waseda)
Pearson gate E77. Short escape from chilly Toronto for rainy Tokyo. No courtesy upgrade today, so will sleep vertically against the window wall. Enjoyed chicken pho with vegetarian broth in Maple Leaf Lounge, multiple refills die to small bowls. (Toronto Pearson Airport Terminal 1) 20150224Haneda arrival gate corridor. Speedwalk fronted by windows in makes the long trek in daylight from international arrivals to the immigration hall less tedious. Airline terminal formerly just domestic fights, now includes Air Canada from Toronto. Easy walk to monorail, much closer to central Tokyo than Narita airport way out east (Tokyo Haneda Airport) 20150225Kiba Park Bridge and fountain plaza. Rainy walk to Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo on a different route from past trips. Path from Kiba station north through park leads to landmark Kiba Koen Ohashi bridge, over Kasaibashi Street and the Sendaiborigawa River. (Kiba Park, Tokyo) 20150226Scholarly after-lunch discussion. Beyond formal presentations, privilege of relaxed time for conversation of speculative ideas about the future. Wide variety of perspectives and backgrounds add to a rich dialogue. (7th floor, 9 West building, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama, Japan) 20150227Symposium on Service Systems Science. @JimSpohrer saying Moore’s Law for Service Systems may be found in Smart Service Systems with Cognitive Assistants, at the 8th annual symposium hosted at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Full day of lectures by experts, some regular participants in the invited workshops. (Tokyo Institute of Technology, 9 West Building) 20150228Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum. Learning about varieties of rice used, and how sake is made. Small samples at end of tour still more alcohol than I’ve consumed in a year. Rainy day deterred outdoor sightseeing. Rode shinkasen bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, day of touring, then continuing route by car to Osaka. (Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum, Fushimi, Japan). 20150301
Fushimi Inari Shrine. Beginning of ascent through thousands of vermilion torii gates at Shinto shrine, on a rainy late afternoon in early March. Brief sightseeing opportunity on routing from Tokyo to Kyoto on shinkasen, continuing on to Osaka in the car of a colleague. (Fushimi Inari Shrine) 20150301Fox Capture Plan, Club Metro. Jazz fusion trio in Kyoto basement music venue. Stood for an hour on concrete floor for band to start, our group double the age of the target audience. Japanese music lovers appreciative but enthusiasm restrained as compared to western audiences. Fox Capture Plan opened, we stayed halfway though set by Jizue before jet lag suggested leaving early. (Club Metro, Kyoto, Japan) 20150301Coleading systems workshop. Graduate students for systems-inspired leaders in material science immersed in learning. Started with self-introductions of participants with narrow specialities, then exercise for pairs and trios to find a synthesis of their expertise. Lecture on systems concepts will be followed by more exercises. (Osaka Prefecture University) 20150303Osaka Castle. Wandered into park when contemporary art at Osaka Prefecture Government doesn’t exist anymore, then Museum of History closed today. Loose schedule, so riding subway around town not quite randomly. (Osaka Castle Park) 20150303Takeshita Dori. Quick trip to Harajuku to visit the Daiso dollar store, since couldn’t find the one in Shinjuku. After 8 p.m., still some young people hanging on Takeshita Dori, but Wednesday isn’t the most popular night out. (Takeshita Dori, Harajuku, Tokyo, Japan) 20150304Toyama Park. Mountain biker hopping up steps in forested ravine between apartment buildings at dusk. On walk from Okubo district to Waseda University, got turned around on descent then ascent into green space. Large map signs every few city blocks combined with compass clarified navigation on confused mobile phone. (Toyama district, Tokyo, Japan) 20150305Pit Inn Shinjuku. Jazz duo with masters Fumio Karashima on piano and Yoshio Suzuki on bass. Repertoire of jazz standards, with creative variations far from the originals. Strings ringing, two musicians, nowhere to hide. Great acoustics in historic basement venue, maybe one-quarter full for the second set on a Thursday night, 9:30 to 10:40 p.m. so that patrons can get the subway home and go to work on the next day. (Pit Inn Shinjuku, Tokyo) 20150305Temple at Kikuicho. Carp in pond at temple, one of six pauses extending the 30-minute morning walk to an hour. Water trough here had toothbrushes and facecloths out, perhaps for people who don’t have a home. Temple is partially behind a 7-11 store, no English labeling for less fame than the Honshoji temple a little further south, and the Seigenji temple a little further west. (Kikuicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo) 20150306AsianPLoP 2015 introduction. Experienced pattern language shepherds start off the conference by demonstrating how a writer’s workshop works. The AsianPLoP style can have a more interactive dialogue with author, than the rigourous PLoP style where the author remains outside the discussion. (4th Asian Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, Waseda University, Tokyo) 20150306AsianPLoP Day 1 plenary. Hiroshi Nakano, “Japanese Spirituality and Pattern Language”, insight into Christopher Alexander’s pursuit of: “What is beauty? What is good?”. Described some history of the past 50 years, now suggesting “project language” for specific works that might accumulate to a “pattern language” over time. A “manual for a centering process” has episodes that connect with and enhance the prior episodes, repeating endlessly to become the timeless way. (4th Asian Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, Waseda University, Tokyo) 20150306Mebius Yotsuya. JinoMasaJay Fusion Rock live music with Kenji Jino Hino (bass) Masa Obama (guitar), Jay Stixx (drums) in small basement club. Complimented by band for finding the venue, as even locals have problems finding it. I was probably the only person in the room not understanding Japanese language. Trio seemed to enjoy show, with jams rolling through tunes by Pat Metheny, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, plus others. (Mebius Yotsuya, Tokyo) 20150306
Hoshoji temple, Tokyo. Bright orange torii gates looking west from Waseda station mark stairs for long climb up to orange gate for Buddhist temple, with statues inside windows on both sides. In the main building, a bride, groom and two parents seemed to be in the midst of a private marriage ceremony with a monk. Just one of the many temples just off the Waseda University campus. (Hoshoji temple, Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku, Tokyo) 20150307
As the book on Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 was taking shape in March 2023, I was invited not only to serve as an editor, but also to contribute as an author. The edited volume is the final deliverable for the In4act project centered at the KTU School of Economics and Business in Kaunas, Lithuania […]
Beyond city-building as urban planning is the idea of a Music City. This sees development of cultural life across a wide variety of arts, alongside economic benefits brought to the region. At the 119th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario in March 2024, socio-cultural designer Adam Hogan and musician-designer Ziyan Hossain joined moderator Zaid Khan in conversation. […]
Having reached year 6 of an espoused 10-year journey, the Systems Changes Learning Circle is (again) convening monthly Dialogues on Social Innovation at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto. Starting up in 2019, the Circle was convening regularly in the Climate Ventures space at 192 Spadina Avenue. The pandemic interrupted in-person meetings, and the […]
EQ Lab runs Dialogic Drinks, “the kind of philosophical discussion you have in a coffee shop or bar”, twice per week. Wtih this group interested loosely in questions on leadership, I was invited to host an online session on March 12 (evening in Hong Kong and Singapore, really early in Toronto) and on March 14-15 […]
At the 118th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario in February 2024, behavioral scientist Cameron D. Norman and design strategist Tara Campbell were invitied for a conversation guided by Zaid Khan. The panelists are both alumni of the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program at OCADU. Some time ago, they had conducted a research project on evaluation […]
An article on “sciencing and philosophizing”, coauthored by Gary S. Metcalf and myself, has been published in the Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, following the ISSS 2023 Kruger Park conference in South Africa, last July. There’s a version cacned on the Coevolving Commons. This article started in a series of conversations […]
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 ›
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 […]
In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
