Toronto, Ontario
OCADU Great Hall: Figure @OCAD assembled from many materials by Sarah Juliet Nadler, part of the Frutti exhibition, Florence off-campus program. Sheet to the left either fell down due to poor adhesive, or the figure rose in the night to pull it down. (OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20181103Congee Queen: Sisters-in-law on both sides of our family on short visits through town, we voted for Sunday lunch with greater variety than dim sum. Discussions included where and who to visit on the upcoming holiday season. I over-ordered by a few dishes, so we had leftovers to take home. (Congee Queen, Sheppard Avenue East, Scarborough, Ontario) 20181104Spoke Club: Design ladder @hallahelga@honnunarmidstod with DesignTOFest promoting @IcelandNatural. Step 1 No design; Step 2 Design as a style; Step 3 Design as a process; Step 4 Design as innovation; as illustrated by @designcentret . Design March @honnunarmars cited as the biggest design festival in the work per capita. With population of 330,000, everyone in Iceland knows @bjork or her mother. (The Spoke Club, King Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20181105 Regis College: Lawren Harris (1968) Abstraction A, shows a sun-like form emitting light. This painting hangs in theological school of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) at the University of Toronto. The room is within line-of-sight of the receptionist, and most passing through the college probably have never taken a second look. (Regis College, Wellesley Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20181107 Power Plant Gallery: Vivian Suter “La Canicula” exhibition @ThePowerPlantTO of canvases created with nature. Works were moved both indoors and outdoors her home in Panajachel, Guatemala, marked by insects and weather. Visitors appreciating the installation, walking around the hangings. (Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Harbourfront, Queen Quay’s West, Toronto, Ontario) 20181108Climate Ventures: Systems thinking peer circle @csiTO, on @longnow history, @stewartbrand How Buildings Learn pacing layers. Fast gets all the attention; Slow has all the power. Also covered James March ambidextrous organization, and Pierre Bourdieu Algeria 1960. Second session, trying to meet every 3 weeks. (Climate Ventures, Centre for Social Innovation, 192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181112Renaissance Basecamp: Welcome by @chriskutarna to Renaissance Basecamp @Basecamp3 #rebase #basecampTO . Full day of teams working Rethinking in tables, having prepared with online discussions in weeks preceding. Most people meeting each other for the first time face-to-face. (Artscape Sandbox, Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 2018114Books on Pattern Language: Selecting from bookshelf for #WickedProblems #SystemsApproach #PatternLanguage show-and-tell at #SystemsThinking Ontario session at #ClimateVentures @csiTO tonight. Publications cross architecture, software development, social change. https://wiki.st-on.org/2018-11-21 (Centre for Social Innovation, 192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181121 Bissell Building: Understanding #Tablets in Early Childhood Education @rhondamcewen@KDMI Semaphore speaker series @UofTInfoFaculty. Research based on communication theory by #NiklasLuhmann. Attentional deficits in children are already there, but tablets make it worse. Not much better than flash cards, as developers don’t encourage instructing or exploring concepts, mostly tap and drag, dumbing down rather than featuring other modes (e.g. blowing into a device). Gestures can change the way that knowledge is conceptually understood, not just on working memory, but long term memory. (Knowledge Media Design Institute and Semaphore Labs, Bissell Building, University of Toronto School of Information) 20181121Systems Thinking Ontario: Books to browse at #SystemsThinking Ontario #ClimateVentures @csiTO. Discussion on #WickedProblems, #SystemsApproach, #Pattern Language tracked through history with #HorstRittel, #CWestChurchman, #ChristopherAlexander. Focus from 1964 Notes on the Synthesis of Form through to October 2018 @PLoPCon and #PUARL#Purplsoc meetings. (Climate Ventures, Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181121Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Medal and trophy for Professor David Lam, recognition of “Outstanding Doctor” by the Chinese Government, including founding the oldest acupuncture school in Canada. He declined to travel to China for the ceremony, so the honours were shipped to him. I haven’t visited in 5 years, and wanted a more systemic diagnosis combined with experiences in both Chinese and western medicine. Prescribed not a single herb, but a complex combination. (Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Dupont Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20181123 Systems Thinking TO: Champagne toast for #SystemsThinkingTO second anniversary, led by @DerailleurAgile. Played Triangles game from the #SystemsThinkingPlaybook, emphasizing system behaviors and conceptual errors in (i) autonomous behavior and (ii) magnification. (Systems Thinking TO, LoyaltyOne, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20181127 Unify Toronto: Panel on #UnifyToronto Land Use Summit @DrawdownProject meeting #6 of 7 sectors. @lmiresk, @AndrewJamesKnox for @transitionTO, #KevinBest, #RyanNess for @TRCA_News, #SeanThomas for @UofTForestry. Sketching by @playthink , emphasis on relevance from global study to action in Greater Toronto (Unify Toronto, Drawdown Toronto, Friends House, Lowther Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181128
Olga Korper Gallery: Steel letterforms of #RustGarden by @DonovanSiegel are 707,349 characters from the 1945 #TwoSolitudes novel by #HughMacLellan on the perceived lack of communication between Anglophone and Francophone communities. Sign @OlgaKorper Gallery encourages walking on the artwork that fills the main space. Ephemeral art has some people spelling out words on the bench backs. (Olga Korper Gallery, Morrow Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181130
The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program. As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]
The International Society for General Systems Research formed circa 1956 became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988. In 1985, Bela H. Banathy organized the annual meeting on the theme of “Systems Inquiring”. Proceedings normally are published in the year following. In 1987, John A. Dillon summarized Banathy’s perspective in the yearbook, General […]
For five immersive days, a team of six researchers had the opporunity to collaborate on ideas on rhythmic shifts (mostly based on Systems Changes Learning) and anticipatory systems (in the legacy of Robert Rosen). The 2024 Banathy Conversation was organized by the Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute, facilitated by Susu Nousala, Gary S. Metcalf, and […]
Systems Processes Theory has been under development for many decades, led by Len Troncale, a past president of the International Society for the Ssytems Sciences. Many have found getting a grip on the science to be a demanding task, both in scope and in depth. Over many decades, Lynn Rasmussen was a collaborator, refining and […]
The Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspective, dating back to the studies of Eric L. Trist and Fred E. Emery, was on the reading list of organizational behaviour classes in my undergraduate and master’s degree programs. It wasn’t until 15 years later, when I got involved with the systems sciences and David L. Hawk, that the Socio-Ecological […]
Civic Tech can be described as projects using technology “for the public good“. Civic Tech may be related to, but different from Gov Tech. For the May 2024 Systems Thinking Onrtario, we had two knowledgeable guests in conversation. Dorothy Eng, executive director of Code for Canada since 2021, related her professional journey from engineering to […]
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
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 ›
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
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 […]
