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
For those who haven’t read the 1965 Emery and Trist article, its seems as though my colleague Doug McDavid was foresighted enough to blog a summary in 2016! His words have always welcomed here, as Doug was a cofounder of this web site. At the time of writing, the target audience for this piece was […]
In the famous 1965 Emery and Trist article, the terms “causal texture” and “contextual environment” haven’t been entirely clear to me. With specific meanings in the systems thinking literature, looking up definitions in the dictionary generally isn’t helpful. Diving into the history of the uses of the words provides some insight. 1. Causal texture 2. […]
Towards appreciating “action learning”, the history of open systems thinking and pioneering work in organization science, the influence of Action Learning Group — in the Faculty of Environment Studies founded in 1968 at York University (Toronto) — deserves to be resurfaced. 1. Trist in Canada 2. Environmental studies, and contextualism in organizational-change 3. Action learning, […]
The news that Doug McDavid — my friend, colleague, and one of the original cofounders of the Coevolving Innovations web site in 2006 — had passed, first came through mutual IBM contacts. More details subsequently showed up on LinkedIn from Mike McClintock. Doug left us on May 9, while working at his desk, likely in […]
One of the challenges with the development of pattern languages is the cross-appropriation of approaches of techniques from one domain (i.e. built physical environments) into others (e.g. software development, social change). The distinction between pattern language and form language is made by Nikos Salingaros. Design in architecture and urbanism is guided by two distinct complementary […]
The 1995 article by Spinosa, Flores & Dreyfus on “Disclosing New Worlds” was assigned reading preceding the fourth of four lectures for the Systemic Design course in the Master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University. In previous years, this topic was a detail practically undiscussed, as digging into social theory and the phenomenology […]
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 ›
Social ecology and environmental psychology described @dstokols @Social_Ecology , interviewed by @katiepatrick . References #WilliamsJames on attention. Book on Social Ecology in the Digital Age released in 2018.Read more ›
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 ›
Proponents of #SystemsThinking often espouse holism to counter over-emphasis on reductionism. Reading some definitions from an encyclopedia positions one in the context of the other (François 2004).
Saying “it doesn’t matter” or “it matters” is a common expression in everyday English. For scholarly work, I want to “keep using that word“, while ensuring it means what I want it to mean. The Oxford English Dictionary (third edition, March 2001) has three entries for “matter”. The first two entries for a noun. The […]
It's been challenging to find sources that specifically define two-word phrases -- i.e. "systemic change", "systematic change", "systems change" -- as opposed to loosely inferring reductively from one-word definitions in recombination. MartinReynolds @OpenUniversity clarifies uses of the phrases, with a critical eye into motives for choosing a specific label, as well as associated risks and […]
The term "environmental" can be mixed up with "ecological", when the meanings are different. We can look at the encyclopedia definitions (François 2004), and then compare the two in terms of applied science (i.e. engineering with (#TimothyFHAllen @MarioGiampietro and #AmandaMLittle, 2003).
While many outside of the field of architecture like the #ChristopherAlexander #PatternLanguage approach, it's not so well accepted by his peers. A summary of criticisms by #MichaelJDawes and #MichaelJOstwald @UNSWBuiltEnv is helpful in appreciating when the use of pattern language might be appropriate or not appropriate.
Systems thinking should include not only thinking about the system, but also its environment. Using the term "field" as the system of interest plus its influences leaves a lot of the world uncovered. From the multiple definitions in the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics , there is variety of ways of understanding "field".
