Toronto, Ontario; Markham, Ontario; Gravenhurst, Ontario; North York, Ontario
Harbourfront Centre: Cycle of heating glass in furnace, shaping with pliers and then applying torch @HarbourfrontTO Craft and Design studios. Curves might have been for the neck of a bird in glass, I didn’t observe any blowing. Watching artists at work always a warm venue, particularly on the first day clocks return to standard time, and darkness comes earlier. (Harbourfront Centre, Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario) 20191103CASCONxEvoke 2019: Workshop #CASCONxEvoke led by @RohanAlexander @prof_lyons on Barriers to Data Science Adoption: What Existing Frameworks Aren’t Working, with industry panelists providing perspectives. Definitions for #ArtificialIntelligence , #MachineLearning, #DataScience blurred under misconceptions and unfounded expectations. Session served as kickoff towards a research proposal that might be executed over the next 5 years. (CASCONxEvoke conference, Hilton Conference Centre, Markham, Ontario) 20191105Riverside neighbourhood: Removing gazebo cover in the backyard, as chances of warm weather diminish. The sprinkle of snow didn’t stay last week, but frost in the evenings is coming. We might have chosen a warmer day, but the fall has been unusually busy. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20191110Systems Thinking Ontario: Update at #SystemsThinking Ontario https://wiki.st-on.org/2019-11-11 on http://systemschanges.com research progress, making distinctions between ecological and behavioral perspectives, on #GeoffreyVickers #AppreciativeSystems reality judgment, value judgment and instrumental judgment. Introduced basics on #ObjectProcessMethodology used to improve the rigour in our modelling. Agenda change announced just 3 hours before scheduled start, topic changed with our original speaker unexpected still in Europe. (Lambert Lounge, OCADU, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20191111Sharpe Street West: Last visit to the family buildings, picking up photographic slide carousels that wouldn’t fit on our prior (presumed last) visit. Came and left in less than an hour, routing around the snowbank to load into the car. We already had a meeting in Orillia, so the extended drive north for personal effects was based on expecting that future generations might appreciate these artifacts when elders can’t explain them. (Sharpe Street West, Gravenhurst, Ontario) 20191114Pycon 2019: What @CBCNews knows about Canadians @robroc #PyData @pyconca, analyzing text with #word2vec on corpus of 6 years of news stories. Looking for similarities, didn’t find biases reported in American research. Using gensim and spacy, cosine similarity training took hours, but then model allowed audience to interactively ask questions. Montreal is to poutine, as Vancouver is to sushi. (Python Canada 2019, The Carlu, College Park, Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20191116Pycon 2019: Data Insights from Linked Data #JordanPedersen @UofTLibraries @pyconca @rwangca @swcarpentry in #PyData track http://shorturl.at/rtJOV . Described RDF, into notebook with RDFLib and SPARQL, now exploring graph databases. Alternative ways of cataloguing records in library. (Python Canada 2019, The Carlu, College Park, Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20191117St. Michael’s Hospital: Looking over shoulder of lab technician for carotid ultrasound, unofficially read as normal. Precautionary diagnostic in assessing risk associated with high blood pressure, since my family practice doctor wants to prescribe medication, and my Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor assesses me as normal. Ultrasound is non-invasive, seemly more common in Asia, as the technician says that those patients arrive with previous histories in hand. (St. Michael’s Hospital, Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20191118Toronto Biennial of Art: At @TorontoBiennial, approaching the neon sign #LaurentGrasso 2012/2019 Visibility Is a Trap refers to #MichelFoucault #panopticon, as the viewer becomes illuminated by the installation. The exhibition question of what does it mean to be in relation, so viewers become part of the show. Venue is large, a former automobile dealership with repair bays, this temporary space will likely be replaced as with the tower next door. (Toronto Biennial of Art, 259 Lake Shore Boulevard East, Toronto, Ontario) 20191123
Forest Lawn Crematorium: Japanese handbell on path to becoming a family heirloom, handed down from grandfather, now through father to daughters. Celebration of life for an artist who led a quiet life, remembered by spouse as a square who became a hippie. Our children played together in the parenting centre, when we first moved downtown. (Forest Lawn Crematorium, Yonge Street, North York, Ontario) 20191129
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 […]
For the third of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, Kelly Okamura, Dan Eng and Joanne Dong led a Beacon Event for Global Change Days. This session was one in a series for global changemakers. Our expectation was that they would be hands-on practitioners, with relatively low familiarity with systems […]
For the second of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, we convened a session for the monthly Systems Thinking Ontario meeting. The focus of this workshop was a review of progress to date on methods by the scholarly team, informed by the adoption and use by the field team. The […]
For the first of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, Zaid Khan led a session for the Relating Systems Thinking and Design RSD9 Symposium. Our team had developed a set of reference slides for the three workshops, from which content that would most resonate with the audience could be selected. […]
Two Major Research Projects (MRPs) — they might be called master’s theses elsewhere — by Zaid Khan and David Akermanis reflect the Systemic Design agenda within the OCADU program on Strategic Foresight and Innovation (SFI). To graduate, all SFI students complete an MRP. With many subjects and techniques covered during SFI studies, only a […]
While it’s important to appreciate the systems thinking foundations laid down by the Tavistock Institute and U. Pennsylvania Social Systems Science (S3, called S-cubed) program, practically all of the original researchers are no longer with us. Luminaries who have passed include Eric L. Trist (-1993), Fred E. Emery (-1997), and Russell L. Ackoff (-2009). This […]
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 ›
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 ›
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 […]
Social Systems Science graduate students in 1970s-1980s with #RussellAckoff, #EricTrist + #HasanOzbehkhan at U. Pennsylvania Wharton School were assigned the Penguin paperback #SystemsThinking reader edited by #FredEEmery, with updated editions evolving contents.
Resurfacing 1968 Buckley, “Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook” for interests in #SystemsThinking #SocioCybernetics #GeneralSystemsTheory #OrganizationScience . Republication in 2017 hardcopy may be more complete.
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 […]
