Toronto, Ontario; Richmond Hill, Ontario; Don Mills, Ontario; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Jose, California; Mountain View, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Gatos, California
David Crombie Park: Two hours before @nuitblancheTO starts, still preparing for public art installation at many locations across the city. Set up and teardown for outdoor venues are easier in daylight, with most visitors attracted in the darkness of night. (Nuit Blanche Toronto, David Crombie Park, The Esplanade, Toronto, Ontario) 20161001
Kevin Cooley 2016 Fallen Water – Niagara Escarpment:
Video installation @BrookfieldPLTO @nuitblancheTO Kevin Cooley 2016 “Fallen Water – Niagara Escarpment” closing tonight. Biking around downtown at dusk, an hour before official start of the event after night falls. (Allen Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place, Financial District, Toronto, Ontario) 20161001
2 St. Clair Avenue West: View northward on Yonge Street from shows trees of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and the towers along Eglinton Avenue and beyond. Before 1973, the subway only ran to Eglinton Avenue, called North Toronto, and Rosedale up to St. Clair Avenue was the affluent residential area. This intersection isn’t the destination that it used to be. (2. St. Clair Avenue West, Deer Park, Toronto, Ontario) 20161005Darling Building: Fireside @TorontoJS with @mhartington @devgirlFL @macdonst @tazsingh hosted by @cfndrs has large screen version of flames. Answered questions on Ionic and Phonegap/Cordova, much of the audience was new to mobile development. Session started with attendees rearranging the room from computer working spaces to a seats facing the stage. (Ci. Strategy+Design, Darling Building, 96 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20161005Premiere Banquet Centre: Not a banquet, instead reservation of dinner for 12 in the extended family calling for a larger table. West coast visitors and rest of family were uptown, so opportunity for a leisurely dinner to catch up on news. Our children have moved away, so we’re bridging information across ties. (Premier Banquet Centre, Leslie Street, Richmond Hill, Ontario) 20161009UToronto iSchool: Exploring polydisciplinary interests @ischool_TO @prof_lyons @duffwm @snousala, @daviding, with @jpovaska behind the lens. Lots of coincidental threads that could be tied together from Toronto to Shanghai and Europe. (University of Toronto Faculty of Information, St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20161012OCADU RSD5: Workshop @RSDSymposium @OCAD U Toronto led by @snousala on Design X and Systemic Design precedes Emerging Practices meeting at Tongji U Shanghai by only a day, can’t be in two places at one time. Organic approach to discussing led to five groups with different perspectives on the future of design. Further digesting into findings is taking more time offline. (Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium, OCAD U, Toronto, Ontario) 20161013
Riverside laneway: Commute to @RSDSymposium for @snousala @jpovaska from east side has been 25 minutes west over Don River bridge early in day, then back with headlights in the dark later. Warm and sunny weather on first and last day makes seeing the city near sidewalk scale enjoyable. The terrain had been mostly flat. (Laneway between Booth Avenue and Logan Avenue, south of Queen Street East, Riverside neighbourhood. Toronto, Ontario) 20161015Osaka Restaurant: All you can eat sushi, closing out 4 days of conference, universities and incubator visits. Flights tomorrow morning. will probably fall asleep en route. An exceptionally busy month of intensive collaboration. (Osaka Restaurant, Don Mills, Ontario) 20161015SFIA BART Station: Morning arrival at SFO, unexpectedly rainy. Beating traffic through San Fran and over bridges via easy public transportation. Will have experience of Bay Area north for the next few days. (San Francisco International Airport BART station, California) 20161016Italian Colors: Relaxed dinner at initiation of a new joint writing project. Deep thinking needs unpacking time to contemplate ideas approached from multiple angles. Arrived on early flight from east to west, were should be sharper after a good night’s rest. (Italian Colors, Montclair Village, Oakland. California) 20161016Oakland Hills: Dinner including 2 babies and 1 toddler, adults served lactose-free, dairy-free and vegetarian diets. Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, dessert of gluten-free cheesecake, vegan chocolate cake and limoncello reflects California variety and quality of food. Network of researchers, but little talk of day jobs, more about visiting and living in the Bay Area. (Oakland Hills, California) 20161017Campanile Tower: Campus tour by an alumnus who attended Berkeley when tuition was token. View over campus to the southeast. (Campanile Sather Tower, U.C. Berkeley, California) 20161018NextEV: Leisure + recreation area on second floor, to give a break from Silicon Valley thinking. Tour of new offices, ribbon cutting was last week. Academics coming up the curve on technologies to be released over next few years. (NextEV. N. First Street, San Jose, California) 20161020Rengstorff: Gratitude to nephew for providing temporary home for researchers, and venue for dinner with local family and friend. Menu included poached fish because farmed Canadian salmon because cheaper than at home, and yam noodles with fresh oyster mushrooms and woods ears. Evening scheduled a little early, full day meeting tomorrow. (Rengstorff, Mountain View, California) 20161020Santa Teresa County Park: Afternoon walk to clear minds from conversation on cognitive systems and service systems. Singing chairs art installation past small gate on trail outside IBM Research Almaden building. Mary Edson, Gary Metcalf, Stuart Kauffman, Susu Nousala, Stephen Kwan, David Ing, Jim Spohrer. (Santa Teresa County Park, San Jose, California) 20161021Fremont Street: Doing cultural anthropology in Las Vegas on a Saturday night. First registered for World of Watson conference, then Viet dinner, fire-breathing praying mantis at Downtown Container Park, and joined the crowds watching zipliners overhead and street performers on the ground. With many people dressed for partying, sometimes hard to separate visitors from vendors. (Fremont Street, Las Vegas, Nevada) 20161022St. Mark’s Square: Dinner on the plaza next to the stage with musical trio that appeared three times in the course of a leisurely meal. Escaped from conference at Four Seasons, when concentration lost after 9.5 hours of sessions. Walked from The Linq to The Wynn Resort, noting the signature scents at each property. (Mercato Della Pescheria, St. Mark’s Square, Venetian Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada) 20161023McCarran Airport Concourse D: Unusually rainy day in Las Vegas, lightning had been striking ground at a distance. Morning flight delayed into afternoon. Continuing hop back to the Bay Area, will still change beds a few more times before going home. (McCarran Airport, Concourse D, Las Vegas, Nevada) 20161024Doppio Zero Pizzeria: After strolling Castro Street, decided on a non-Asian dinner. Three thin crust Neapolitan style pizzas plus an order of spaghetti, spinach salad and fries with truffle oil meant both eating too much and still taking leftovers home. Opportunity for newsy conversation, although hard surfaces make for a noisy restaurant. (Doppio Zero Pizzeria, Castro Street, Mountain View, California) 20161024Accelerated Discovery Lab: Discussing @rarar @snousala trajectories of design and research, appreciating generational evolution as interactive technologies have risen. Puzzle includes design at user interface level, and in enterprise systems. (Accelerated Discovery Lab, IBM Almaden Research Centre, San Jose, California) 20161025IBM Almaden Research Center: Service science @snousala @cher95112 evolving with rise of data science. How do communities of practice in design relate to innovation? (IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California) 20161025Los Gatos: Outlining @The_ISSIP perspective @yassimoghaddam @snousala beyond technology platforms and business model platforms, service ecosystems connected through APIs. Finding some common themes with other conversations today. (Los Gatos, California) 20161025Barrows Hall: Talk @SocSciMatrix Tove Frymker visiting from Lund U. at CCRM Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. On “From collective improvisation to collective problem solving”. Existing definitions are unclear, taken for granted. At beginning of field research, looking for feedback. (CCRM, Social Science Matrix, University of California Berkeley) 20161026Faculty Club: Lunch elevated to salad bar at Faculty Club, as appointment with niece intersected with follow-up from morning meeting. It’s okay to have meals there, just don’t sit at the Nobel Laureate table. Enough time to catch up on news before she had to go to class. (Faculty Club, University of California Berkeley) 20161026School of Information: Drop-in @snoussala on @rjglushko in office, the day before he’s leaving for Hawaii. Shirt to match the mood. Last time we met in person was at the dawn of service science. (School of Information, South Hall, University of California Berkeley) 20161026Hotel Kabuki: Corner suite with balcony wrapped around, view north into Japantown. West of city centre, walking distance to conference at USF over weekend. Dropped off colleague at SFO airport after 17 days of traveling together, she does it with carry-on luggage. Hotel is on Japan Plaza. (Hotel Kabuki, Post Road, Japantown, San Francisco, California) 20161028USF McLaren Center: Opening #puarl2016 @hajoneis Seth Wachter @pbaumgartner theme of The Regenerative City. Multiple sessions on pattern language, more emphasis on urban planning and architecture this year than Purplsoc 2015. (McLaren Conference Centre, University of San Francisco, California) 20161028USF Cowell Hall: : Presented paper at #puarl2016 conference in one of four parallel tracks. Audience ranged from newcomers to the body of work, through to a coauthor with Christopher Alexander of the original 1971 A Pattern Language book. About 100 attendees at this conference. USF is still lively on a Saturday with singing and music competing in the main room through a thin room partition wall. (Cowell Hall, University of San Francisco, California) 20161029USF Kalmanovitz Hall: Context on Max Jacobson #puarl2016 paper on @EdRobertsCampus, saying architect recognised experts are the vision-impaired and wheelchair users of the facility. no pattern language for them. More important than beauty is the collective space welcoming interaction between parties in the facility. Jacobson was a coauthor with Christopher Alexander of 1977 A Pattern Language, then practicising architect with Murray Silverstein for 35 years. Had been teaching at USF as adjunct for past few years. (Kalmanovitz Hall, University of San Francisco, California) 20161030USF Kalmanovitz Hall: Pattern language on federated wiki @michaelwmehaffy #puarl2016, not frozen in text inside book. Search hits for pattern language in architecture is one-tenth that in software development. Proposes extending the 1977 A Pattern Language content online in the living form originally described in the work itself. Mehaffy dissertation including real-time updating of charts with federated wiki was defended at TU Delft in November 2015. (Kalmanovitz Hall, University of San Francisco, California) 20161030Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: Tom Sachs (2007) Apollo LEM as part of YBCA Space Program Europa exhibition. A short distraction late on Sunday afternoon, before walk and dinner in Chinatown. Tomorrow making the jump back into Eastern Time at home. (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Mission Street, Dan Francisco, California) 20161030SFO Gate G98: Rigo 23 (1999) “Thinking of Balmy Alley” is a 378×240 inch ceramic type mosaic hanging in the atrium on the wall above the doors to Gate G98. The artist, residing in San Fran, was inspired by a mural (since destroyed) painted in 1993 by the artist and local youth in Balmy Alley, located in San Francisco’s Mission District. This work is lit by daylight through a window to its right. It is part of the collection of the SFO Museum, if travellers will take a moment to look up from their destination-oriented travel. (Gate G98, San Francisco International Airport, California) 20161031
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".
