London, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario; Mountain View, California; San Jose, California; Oakland, California; Alameda, California; Vancouver, British Columbia; Boston, Massachusetts
Restaurant solarium: Pendant lights above booths, in Greek restaurant for lunch. Comfortable, casual space on a grey, rainy day. Music from the 1970s sets mood for baby boomers. On the way home from Michigan, venue chosen serendipitously. (Four Seasons Restaurant, London, Ontario) 20151201Armenian lunch: Zataar, beef manakeesh, kishek with sujuk, moutabbal, tabbouleh, then a half order of mixed BBQ platter. Extraordinary flavour when the food arrived hot to the table, declining as it cooled in the approaching winter. Celebration of DY’s birthday deferred to weekend when family could be together. (Paramount Fine Foods, Yonge Street, Toronto) 20151206Terminal 1 Christmas: December not yet cold, so holiday cue is a reminder of family times to come at end of month. Departing on flight to California, so thoughts of snowflakes even farther away. (Toronto Pearson Airport Terminal 1, U.S. gates, Toronto, Ontario) 20151208The Milk Pail Market: Grocery shopping at an institution with a history of local produce back into the 1970s. Found Comice pears, plus many other fruits and vegetables to stock up nephew’s refrigerator. They’re known for their cheese selection, which isn’t an attraction for me. (The Milk Pail Market, Mountain View, CA) 20151208Santa Teresa County Park: Facing east, the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton is far away in the distance. Walked out from IBM Almaden towards summit, along road where cars are blocked from water reservoirs and power transformer stations. (Santa Teresa County Park, San Jose, CA) 20151209Julian Street Inn: Designed by Christopher Alexander in 1988 in the style of a country inn, a shelter for the homeless demonstrates the practical side of a Berkeley professors known as an architectural theorist. Down the street from San Jose Arena (now SAP Center) that was completed in 1993. (Julian Street Inn, San Jose, California) 20151209Deepening systems knowledge: Lunch with Ian Mitroff @MitroffCrisis discussing complexity vs. complicatedness, and ways of teaching systems thinking to students. Ian had a copy of “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter on his shelf, and said that he would read it on my recommendation. (Oakland, CA) 20151210San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art: With Jack Park @gardenfelder, viewing Jim Campbell (2011) “Exploded View (details)” of 1152 LEDs hanging by wire, electronics showing low resolution images from various perspectives in a 360-degree walkaround. Artist had former career as a Silicon Valley engineer, now designs pieces where lights are programmed and often constructed in three dimensions. (San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, California) 20151111East Ocean Restaurant: In line for Sunday dim sum, sampling Chinese restaurants for future nuptial festivities. In California East Bay, have to drive across multiple cities to reach authentic banquet scale venues. (East Coast Seafood Restaurant, Alameda, California) 20151213Cows near the summit: IBM leases some of its land to cattle ranchers near Santa Teresa County Park. Early morning arrival for meetings had greeting of mooing, just across from the parking lot. (IBM Almaden, San Jose, California) 20151215Accelerated Discovery Lab: Former library space has been repurposed so that researchers and industry practitioners can collaborate in a central, open space. Workshop on Mycroft Cognitive Mediator moved out of windowless meeting room for an hour, in a change on scenery. Presentation includes Labbook prototype currently under research. (IBM Almaden, San Jose, California) 20151215Rainy Vancouver waypoint: Direct SanFran-Toronto flight cancelled, so earlier flight via Vancouver makes up some time. Luggage missing, should eventually be delivered to house. Domestic security inspected zhong rice dumpling wrapped in banana leaves, recognised by ethnic Chinese screener. (Vancouver International Airport, British Columbia) 20151217Queen Street Viaduct: Dusk on Christmas Eve, biking westward to see how much the city is shutting down for the holidays. Unusually warm for December, prospects for snow anytime soon seem far away. (Queen Street Viaduct, Riverside, Toronto, Ontario) 20151224Serano Bakery: Family-run Greek neighbourhood bakery, for crusty whole wheat bread and taramasalata. An exercise destination, biking uphill in below-freezing weather, past two artisanal bakeries who offer products at twice the price. Large store with sweets for dessert. Will sample with family at dinner tonight, and judge whether we’ll become repeat customers. (Serano Bakery, East York, Ontario) 20151228MIT Sloan School of Management: In 1982, I was #2 on a list of 1 for a PhD program in Management Information Systems at the MIT Sloan School, applying with a Masters degree from Northwestern U. with high recommendations. Went to UCLA PhD program, dropped out first day, then to U. British Columbia for 2 years before dropping out. Really need to finish this PhD at Aalto U. in 2016, as have been around graduate schools for so long. The MIT decision going another way would have been a completely different life. (Siteman Dining Room, MIT Building E-62, Cambridge, Massachusetts) 20151231
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston: Tara Donovan (2003) “Untitled (Pins)” is a precise cube of size 17 straight pins. Behind, right, is Philip Taaffe (1983) “Untitled III”, a linoprint collage on muslin on canvas. On left is Shannon Ebber (2011) “XIS” archival pigment prints. Exhibits on 4th floor of gallery, quick stop of Silver Line bus from downtown to airport. (Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston) 20151231
Digging into philosophies underlying the systems sciences, pragmatism seems to have been a strong historical foundation for some research streams. In ongoing discussions, Gary Metcalf and I have been approaching pragmatism from two directions. Gary has been tracking from mid-1800s forward, listening to the audiobook The Metaphysical Club, with a history of figures living through […]
The ties between systems thinking and pragmatism are apparently strong, but the breadth in the philosophy of pragmatism can be confusing. Within the tradition, one of the threads is called nonrelativistic pragmatism, proposed by systems luminaries C. West Churchman with Russell L. Ackoff, descending from the work of philosopher Edgar A. Singer, Jr. A concise […]
A luminary in the systems movement, C. West Churchman, showed some respect for Chinese philosophy, with the I Ching (Yi Jing) in particular. Deborah Hammond was encouraged by West Churchman into joining and becoming a historian of the systems movement. In her 2003 book, Hammond wrote of her conversations with Churchman, back into his days […]
The 1969 publication of Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by Fred E. Emery as a Penguin Modern Management paperback, can be regarded as a milestone. The articles date from the 1940s to the 1960s, when the first wave of systems thinking was on the rise. For the June session of Systems Thinking Ontario, we stepped […]
Within the Systems Thinking Ontario community, we were fortunate to have Nenad Rava step up to explain how the Sustainable Development Goals came to be, and relate them to systems change. This May session of Systems Thinking Ontario was a quick follow-on for the March edition on Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the SDGs. […]
The book Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals, published in 2002 by Routledge, was released as open access in 2023 by Taylor-Francis for readers who don’t have access to a university library. For the March edition of Systems Thinking Ontario, we were honoured to celebrate the release with editor-coauthors Kaitlin Kish […]
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 ›
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 ›
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) […]
How might the quality of an action research initiative be evaluated? — begin paste — We have linked our five validity criteria (outcome, process, democratic, catalytic, and dialogic) to the goals of action research. Most traditions of action research agree on the following goals: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b) the achievement of action-oriented […]
After 90 minutes on phone and online chat with WesternUnion, the existence of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland is denied, so I can’t send money from Canada. TicinoTurismo should be unhappy. The IT developers at Western Union should be dissatisfied that customer support agents aren’t sending them legitimate bug reports I initially tried the […]
