Toronto, Ontario; Indianapolis, Indiana; Peoria, Illinois; Salina, Iowa; Madison, Wisconsin; Lake Forest, Illinois; Chicago, Illinois
AGO: Resting spot @agotoronto Pablo Picasso (1928) “Seated Woman” in permanent collection since 1964. Free admission on Wednesday nights means larger crowds, and summer tourists fill the whole facility. (Art Gallery of Ontario, Dundas Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20170801Robarts Library: South-facing view of city, as I’m reading history of science during a slow holiday weekend. “In 1982, [Eric Trist] wanted to create at York University a Centre for Action Learning but faced resistance from the University Senate”. Richard Trahair, (2017) “Behavior, Technology, and Organizational Development: Eric Trist and the Tavistock Institute” p. 289. (Robarts Library, 11th floor, University of Toronto). 20180805Congee Queen: Family from Vancouver visiting in town, so got generations together for lunch to catch up on news. Restaurant name underscopes the extent of the menu, as the table filled up with food. Hungry sons, no leftovers. (Congee Queen, Agincourt Mall, Scarborough, Ontario) 20180806Yen Ching: Mixed research agenda with social, at intercept dinner after driving 11 protracted hours from Toronto. Discussed release of paper on “Calvin Pava’s Legacy: Sociotechnical Systems Design for the ‘Digital Coal Mines’”, and histories leading up to its writing. Spouses had parallel conversation on less academic pursuits. (Yen Ching Restaurant, E. Washington Street, Indianapolis, IN) 20180808Peoria Riverfront Museum: Seward Johnson (2014) “Return Visit” 31-foot painted bronze dwarfs spouse referring to her own book. A contemporary common man receives the 1854 Gettysburg Address delivered by Abraham Lincoln in Peoria in 1854, relevant still today. We only had a short visit around the grounds, and the Caterpillar Visitor Center next door, en route from Indianapolis IN to Fairfield IA, not enough time to see the exhibits inside. (Peoria Riverfront Museum, Washington Street, Peoria, Illinois) 20180809Salina: Twilight dinner around the fire, visiting with extended family representing three generations of farmers. The meal featured home grown beef, tomatoes, cantaloupe, plus dessert of marshmallows heated over open flames to make smores. Stories of the house where today’s elders grew up, and the multiple barns nearby eventually knocked down by storms. (Salina, Iowa) 20180810
Salina: Finishing up construction of the ramp to the deck that wraps around the house. Slope of the terrain means platform on pillars driven into the ground. Potential for parties to watch the sunset, with western exposure. DLH says physical activity helps the thinking for writing. (Salina, Iowa) 20180811James Madison Park: Sunset on Lake Mendota, just north of state capital building. Further along the shore, U. Wisconsin Madison campus, where i attended in an ISSS meeting in 2008. Only a short visit on this routing, to deepen some intuitions on systems knowledge with a retired professor. (James Madison Park, E. Gorham Street, Madison, WI) 20180814Lake Forest: Shown the 9-foot Bosendorfer grand piano in the home of my master’s degree advisor. One of the last instruments built by the Austrian instrument-maker, before the company was acquired by the Japanese. The couple downscaled to an empty-nester home, I had forgotten that DY had seen the big house for 4 kids in 1984, on our original migration driving from Vancouver to Toronto. (Lake Forest, Illinois) 20180815Cybernetics in Chicago: The Role of Multiple Levels by Timothy F.H. Allen @ASC_Cybernetics keynote speaker. Described systems sciences colleagues often as naive realists. Complexity is the way you look at a system. Funtowicz & Ravetz (1992) see quality in postmodern production as internal, within the process of doing science or creating art. Modern science is hostile to postmodernism. (American Society for Cybernetics, University Center, Chicago, Illinois) 20180816.Pritzker Pavilion: Free @TheSeaAndCake show, walking with @redesign around @Millennium_Park after dinner. Families relaxing on blankets on the lawn in back, serious listeners up at the front. A flashback to graduate school days, when I was living carefree in the Chicago area. Natives are friendly. (Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois) 20180816Cybernetics in Chicago: Systems research and backstories with Timothy FH Allen + @snousala sharing contexts. Discussion in quiet room beside the main conference meeting. Often the best conversations aren’t scheduled formally on the program. (ASC Cybernetics, University Center, State Street, Chicago, Illinois) 20180817Cybernetics in Chicago: Systems sciences discussion @redesign@snousala, with Timothy FH Allen extending the previous day’s keynote presentation at greater depth. All of us are ISSS members who coincided at this venue, oriented more towards open systems theory based in biology, and less in cybernetics. Catching everyone while we can. (ASC Cybernetics, University Center, State Street, Chicago, Illinois) 20180818Cybernetics in Chicago: Temporal Variety of Horizon Bias @redesign at ASC Cybernetics annual meeting. When we think about requisite variety, we don’t always think about time. (American Society of Cybernetics, University Center, Chicago, Illinois) 20180818Alice and Friends: Saved room for vegan chocolate mousse pie, raw key lime cheesecake, mint chocolate soy ice cream. Splurged on satay skewers and dumplings, before main dishes pan-Asian. Catching up on news since last year’s visit, Northwestern U. put us together as family in 1980. (Alice and Friends Vegan Kitchen, N. Broadway Street, Chicago, Illinois) 20180819Maple Leaf Square: Bass booms from Drake concert shook the 24th floor apartment in building next door to the Scotiabank Arena. Our host hasn’t heard a concert that loud, before. Brief torrential downpours earlier in the evening subsided, I wished I had biked over instead of taking the streetcar and subway. (Maple Leaf Square, Bremner Boulevard, Toronto, Ontario) 20180821Costco Thorncliffe: Bicycle racks outside big box store suggests buying as much as a person can carry, rather than loading up a truck. Formerly the Coca-Cola headquarters built in 1964, the architecturally historic building was transformed and renovated for 2018. The neighbourhood included other modernist industrial buildings in the garden suburb. In 1966, the Don Valley Parkway ended at Lawrence Avenue, and wasn’t yet connected to Highway 401. (Costco Wholesale, Overlea Boulevard, Thorncliffe Park, East York, Ontario) 20180822SystemsThinkingTO: August session as games night, based on success of June episode that scored highly. Learned that participants enjoy participating, rather than just watching slide presentations and talking heads. Getting up from rows-and-columns tables a good move. (SystemsThinkingTO, LoyaltyOne, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20180823Edward Gardens: The 33rd time we’ve reconvened at the fountain to renew our marital commitment. CL was thoughtful in giving us flowers to celebrate the occasion. This year, the weather was cool and the fountain was drained. (Edward Gardens, Lawrence Avenue East, Don Mills, Ontario) 20180824Edward Gardens: Willet Creek flows south into the Don River West, after the bridges over the lower walks of the park. Absences of one son in California and another on an airplane is okay, they know the course well. (Edward Gardens, Lawrence Avenue East, Don Mills, Ontario) 20180824475 Unwin Ave.: Circular turnout is Outer Harbour Recreational Node, surmised from sign outlining waterfront fish from Lake Ontario safe to eat. Officially opened in 2015, I hadn’t noticed it before. Also discovered pave bicycle path through the bushes eastbound to Tommy Thompson Park. (Outer Harbour Recreational Node, Unwin Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20180827Dead End Studio: Opening night paintings @playthink installations @PTSDalchemy “It’s All in Your Head” show in artists’ space in one of the city’s last original industrial warehouses. Sun setting outside south-facing windows, view of billboards seen from the Gardiner Expressway. (Dead End Studio, 7 Fraser Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20180830
Dead End Studio: Opening reception installation @PTSDalchemy paintings @playthink “It’s All in Your Head”. Crystals shaped naturally, responding to emotional impressions focused on raw shapes. Cubism on canvases, exploring brain-body connections. (Dead End Studio, 7 Fraser Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20180830
Douglas Austrom and Carolyn Ordowich shared some reflections developed jointly with Bert Painter (Vancouver, BC) on some draft humanistic principles, the three Tavistock perspectives, and a meta-methodology with Systems Thinking Ontario. Proponents of Socio-Technical Systems design refer back to the 1960s-1980s research of Fred Emery and Eric Trist of the Tavistock Institute. Calls to reinvent […]
Doug Schuler joined the monthly Systems Thinking Ontario meeting for a conversation about the potential for patterns and pattern languages to help address wicked problems on a large scale, via technology, loose coordination, and social commitments. Doug was exposed to the original A Pattern Language in the mid-1970s. It aimed to generate towns and buildings […]
Literacy has been proposed as an understanding of a small number of pervasive principles appropriate to making informed personal and societal decisions. Systems literacy includes an understanding of systems that influence you, and your influence on systems. Peter Tuddenham has been leading an initiative on Systems Literacy across a variety of systems organizations, particularly with […]
The Creative Systemic Research Platform (CSRP) Institute, led by Susu Nousala and Jelena Sucic, is distinctive in approaching systemic design from a bottom-up, longitudinal perspective. The co-presidents were able to join us in conversation at a Systems Thinking Ontario session, remotely from Finland and Switzerland, at a significant time disadvantage. Many approaches to systemic design […]
To appreciate how systemicists worldwide collaborate, Gary S. Metcalf joined Systems Thinking Ontario for a conversation. Gary served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences 2007-2008, and of the International Federation for Sysrtems Research 2010-2016. From 2003 to 2018, he was a graduate instructor in Organizational Systems and Research on the faculty […]
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 […]
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 ›
In his system of system concepts, Russell Ackoff made the distinction between reformation and transformation in many of his lectures. Here are two written sources. From Redesigining Society (2003) … Systemic Transformation A system is transformed, as contrasted with reformed, when its structure or functions are changed fundamentally. Such changes are discontinuous and qualitative, quantum […]
While Ackoff’s definitions of goals, objectives and ideals have been republished (and rewritten) multiple times, the 1972 definitions were derived from his original dissertation work. Accordingly, in addition to the human-readable definitions, some mathematical notation is introduced. — begin paste — OUTCOMES 2.30. End (an immediate intended outcome) of a subject A in a particular […]
The fifth way of knowing, as described by West Churchman, is a Singerian inquiring system. (This fifth way of knowing is more colloquially called Unbounded Systems Thinking in Mitroff and Linstone (1993)). The book On Purposeful Systems (Ackoff and Emery, 1972) was derived by Ackoff’s dissertation that was controversially coauthored with West Churchman. Purpose can […]
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 […]
