Toronto, Ontario; Detroit, Michigan; Iowa City, Iowa; Fairfield, Iowa; Muscatine, Iowa; Port Huron, Michigan
English River lake freighter. Great Lakes water seem clear of ice, with small bulk carrier moored by Lafarge terminal in the Polson slip of the Toronto PortLands. In early spring, the vegetation doesn’t obscure visibility, over the fence from the Chinese supermarket. (Cherry Street, Toronto) 20150406Toronto IBM Club Retirees. Update on IBM Canada R&D Centre by @AllenLalonde, meeting the challenges of big data with collaborative innovation centres across universities, industry and government. CARET, SOSIP, CHIA, Ocean Networks Canada. Among retirees, seeing a few familiar faces. (St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Scarborough, Ontario) 20150407Design with Dialogue, April 2015. Special session for SSHRC question, six parallel streams, video capture and live sketching. Pulled together on short notice by SFI masters students. (Lambert Lounge, OCAD U) 20150408DBC Trio. Early Thursday set of @LuisDenizSax Rich Brown @ErnestoCervini in @RexHotelToronto relaxed and casual. No festival crowds, just another workday on a city where the arts thrive. (The Rex, Toronto) 20150416Detroit Greektown. Saturday night busy in popular nightlife district downtown. Most of family visiting #1 son in Michigan. Last time I was here could have been in the 1970s, when the Greek presence was stronger. (Detroit Greektown, Michigan) 20150418MOCAD. Normal Shift by Coco Bruner at Art X Detroit , 10.5×15 foot Baltic Birch Plywood floor, invites viewers to walk on it at their own risk. Kresge Arts Foundation sponsors show in Midtown. (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) 20150419DIA. Alexander Calder 1970 La jeune filles et sa suites, on the lawn outside the Detroit Institute of the Arts, towers over local visitors. Family touring on a Sunday afternoon. (Detroit, Michigan) 20150419
Iowa Ave., Iowa City. Old Capitol Museum at west end, and U. Iowa biology buildings across the street from Japanese resto lunch downtown. Birthday girl is daughter of friend, they all grow up from high schoolers to serious university students. (Iowa City, Iowa) 20150423Herd of cattle. “I am an individual”? On the farm, cows are initially skittish of strangers, but then come to see what’s up out of boredom. Not a lot happens in the country. Few distractions. (Fairfield, Iowa) 20150426Riverside Park, Muscatine, Iowa. The Pearl Button riverboat, docked on the west side of the Mississippi River. Area famous for shells made into buttons, in the era before synthetic materials became popular. Brief rest stop before leaving the state. (Riverside Park, Muscatine, Iowa) 20150429
Refineries on the St. Clair River. Driving Gratiot Blvd in Port Huron on U.S. side of river, sign said scenic turnout. Small parking lot had view of industry on Sarnia waterfront, less than flattering impression of Canada. Short distance across water suggests proximity for smuggling, but expect that area is patrolled, and currents would make swimming treacherous. (Port Huron, Michigan) 20150430
While the term “theory of change” is often used by funders expecting an outcome of systems change for their investment, is there really a theory there? The November 2020 Systems Thinking Ontario session was an opportunity for Peter H. Jones (OCADU) and Ryan J. A. Murphy (Memorial U. of Newfoundland) to extend talks that they […]
For the third of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, Kelly Okamura, Dan Eng and Joanne Dong led a Beacon Event for Global Change Days. This session was one in a series for global changemakers. Our expectation was that they would be hands-on practitioners, with relatively low familiarity with systems […]
For the second of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, we convened a session for the monthly Systems Thinking Ontario meeting. The focus of this workshop was a review of progress to date on methods by the scholarly team, informed by the adoption and use by the field team. The […]
For the first of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, Zaid Khan led a session for the Relating Systems Thinking and Design RSD9 Symposium. Our team had developed a set of reference slides for the three workshops, from which content that would most resonate with the audience could be selected. […]
Two Major Research Projects (MRPs) — they might be called master’s theses elsewhere — by Zaid Khan and David Akermanis reflect the Systemic Design agenda within the OCADU program on Strategic Foresight and Innovation (SFI). To graduate, all SFI students complete an MRP. With many subjects and techniques covered during SFI studies, only a […]
While it’s important to appreciate the systems thinking foundations laid down by the Tavistock Institute and U. Pennsylvania Social Systems Science (S3, called S-cubed) program, practically all of the original researchers are no longer with us. Luminaries who have passed include Eric L. Trist (-1993), Fred E. Emery (-1997), and Russell L. Ackoff (-2009). This […]
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 ›
Understanding Process-Function Ecology by Ashwani Vasishth leads to luminaries in the systems sciences, including C. West Churchman, Eugene P. Odum and Timothy F.H. Allen.
As an irony, the 2020 book, The Innovation Delusion by #LeeVinsel @STS_News + #AndrewLRussell @RussellProf shouldn’t be seen as an innovation, but an encouragement to join @The_Maintainers where an ongoing thought network can continue. The subtitle “How Our Obsession with the New has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most” recognizes actual innovation, as distinct from […]
An online social network reproduces content partially based on algorithms, and partially based on the judgements made by human beings. Either may be viewed as positive or negative. > The trade-offs came into focus this month [November 2020], when Facebook engineers and data scientists posted the results of a series of experiments called “P(Bad for […]
Social Systems Science graduate students in 1970s-1980s with #RussellAckoff, #EricTrist + #HasanOzbehkhan at U. Pennsylvania Wharton School were assigned the Penguin paperback #SystemsThinking reader edited by #FredEEmery, with updated editions evolving contents.
Resurfacing 1968 Buckley, “Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook” for interests in #SystemsThinking #SocioCybernetics #GeneralSystemsTheory #OrganizationScience . Republication in 2017 hardcopy may be more complete.
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).
