Toronto, Ontario
Centennial Park Conservatory: Carp in pool inside greenhouse enjoy a peaceful existence, while the winter temperature outside is colder than seasonal average. The flora and fauna are available 365 days per year to the citizens of the city. This venue is physically smaller than the location downtown, but the scent of flowers is noticed here. (Centennial Park Conservatory, Elmcrest Road, Etobicoke, Ontario) 20190101Atlantic Avenue: Bent guard rail is ugly, cars won’t pass. There’s a set of stairs for pedestrians eastbound down into the ravine, behind the backyards on houses on Hertle Avenue. This height differential is probably associated with the lost Ashbridges Creek, that became buried as the Midway Sewer circa 1913-1915. This residential street runs just 1-½ short blocks east of Greenwood Avenue before the big drop. (Atlantic Avenue, Greenwood-Coxwell neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20190105Dumpling House: Long overdue lunch to catch up on news of family and friends, both positive and negative. Discussed wellbeing, responsibilities, and current priorities on personal projects. Good variety of choices on the menu, a challenge sharing across vegan, keto and low-carb diets. (Dumpling House, Gerrard Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20190107Systems Thinking Ontario: Wrapped up meeting @OCADsLab on chartering a #SystemsChanges program with multi-year horizons, as a change from previous #SystemsThinking Ontario meetings that were episodic. General agreement towards moving forward, lots of details to be worked out. (OCADU Strategic Innovation Lab, 205 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20190114Rotman School: It’s always about the apps, more than better architecture or technology, says @JohnChen with @KelleherJc @PubPolicy_Munk @RotmanEvents on the success of turnaround at Sybase. Four part interview, on moving from Hong Kong to American universities, rise in Silicon Valley, coming into Blackberry, and the technology industry today. (Rotman School of Management, St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190115Bahen Centre: Graduate seminar by Adrian K. Yee on The Rise of Nazi Mathematics 1893-1945. A guest at the Department of Mathematics, visiting cross-campus from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Disclaimer on critical perspective of Germans espousing theories as superior to Jewish and French thought, well-documented by credible researchers. First indications with Felix Klein 1893 lecture at Northwestern University in USA, through to influence over journal Deutsche Mathematik that now may be in university libraries only in censored form. (Department of Mathematics, Bahen Centre, St. George Street, University of Toronto) 20190117Onsite Gallery: Panel @LisaDeanneSmith #DaveandJenn @hermeticferns @maryannecasasanta @rouzbeh92 #FelixKalmenson on Collaboration as Process @ONSITEatOCADU for winter How to Breathe Forever exhibition. Reflections on listening to each other and world in today’s Internet noise, working with material. Learning to slow down, getting away from production driven by commerce or grants. Symbiogenesis in shifting landsacpes of socio-political contexts. Allowing conscious attention, laughing at the irony of disruptions. (Onsite Gallery, OCADU, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20190119Onsite Gallery: Polymer clay pieces @ONSITEatOCADU #DaveandJenn @hermeticferns (2017) The Wellspring, (2017) No Horizons, (2017) For Actaeon The Flower, (2017) The House Guest. Dimmed interior feels warm, in contrast to the severe cold temperature warning outside. (Onsite Gallery, OCADU, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20190119World Sew Centre: Had zipper heads replaced while I watched, as my winter coat was opening up on walks during the severe cold temperature warning. Previously had brought in wife’s coat to buy an exact match for a broken zipper, and was advised by the clerk that the teeth were fine, so just the zipper heads would be a cheaper and immediate fix. Trust the judgement of the shopkeeper. (World Sew Centre, Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20190119Xpace Cultural Centre: In solo show @arezustudio (2019) Fortune Flavors the Bold @xpacecc, artist fills room with good luck symbols inspired by growing up with a mother who immigrated from Hong Kong. Second generation children typically lose their heritage language, so the appreciation of the distant culture comes only indirectly. Sign at the door welcomes visitors in, provided shoes are removed, which mirrors a custom in Chinese homes. (Xpace Cultural Centre, Lansdowne Avenue, Brockton Village, Toronto, Ontario) 20190126CSI 192: In era of big data, semantic web gives meaning @andrewiliadis @DecimalUOIT @UOITCDMS speaker series. From seminal work of #JohnSowa and #DougLenat, semantics solves many varieties of data described in heterogeneous ways, with controlled vocabularies of preferred tags. Schemas, graphs, ontologies now in the age of social media and search engines. (Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20190128CSI 192: Despite campaigns to disconnect from Facebook, @karppi @DecimalUOIT @UOITCDMS speaker series says that most people are still online. Facebook is still the most popular social platform, and continues to grow in less developed countries. Community now framed in terms of engagement, continuing to encourage bonds that dissuade users from leaving. (Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20190128Bissell Building: Vision by @smgrimes for prior @SemaphoreTO research cluster launched in 2012, amalgamating into @kmdi established 1996 @UofTInfoFaculty. Renewed energy for design-oriented research and research-oriented design with more public discussion on people’s issues with technology, including the marginalized. This generation of researchers share philosophical roots in critical theory. (Bissell Building, Faculty of Information, St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190129
SystemsThinkingTO: New Year, New Direction, after two years with looser agenda, @DerailleurAgile seeking more defined path. Reviewing quantitative statistics for SystemssThinkingTO meetup over past year, didn’t give much insight. Facilitated attendees, building up responses first by individuals, then in pairs, and then fours. Responses mapped out with a dialogue map generated discussion towards converging a program for the rest of the year. (SystemsThinkingTO, LoyaltyOne, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20190130
Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon. The […]
The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person. The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers. Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking. Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 […]
The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU. For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008. While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished […]
In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind. Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses […]
For readers with an interest deeper than the 15-minute presentation given in August, the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in Information Systems (STPIS 2024) have now been formally publishied. The invited paper on “Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms” was reviewed by the […]
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 […]
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 ›
In 2024, WordPress Studio was released, making installation on a local computer simpler. The instructions were modified from MacOS to Ubuntu Linux, by Daniel Kossmann, “How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux” | Jun 15, 2024 at https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-install-wordpress-studio-ubuntu-linux/ I already had NVM installed, but in Terminal, with the result “command not found”. In the […]
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 […]
