Toronto, Ontario
Scrap Metal Gallery: Installation @ernatmack (2019) Wither, billow, waist? hanging at #ScrapMetalGallery has a feeling of lightness, with translucent fabrics. Some other pieces in the show are made of heavy moving blankets. Dark, rainy day outside, art lovers come as individuals or duos for a destination visit. (Scrap Metal Gallery, Dublin Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190111OCADU Graduate Programs: Overview of #SystemicDesign toolkit by @redesign @OCADU_SFI class. Second lecture of term started with current thinking from the #SystemsChanges Learning Circle http://coevolving.com/commons/20200115-ocadu-systems-changes-different-from . Immersive approach to recasting language and reifying #SystemsThinking leads students to get more comfortable with ambiguity. Group had collectively decided to reschedule evening class to afternoon, so weeks following shouldn’t be dark outside. (OCADU Graduate Programs, 205 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200115OCADU Graduate Programs: Friday morning class on #SystemsThinking @OCADU_SFI runs in parallel with late Wednesday session. Presented same slides http://coevolving.com/commons/20200115-ocadu-systems-changes-different-from , pacing content in synch. Larger group, larger room, interactions with part-time graduate students is a little different from full-time colleagues. These students have a long day, likely before homework over the weekend. (OCADU Graduate Programs, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200117Systems Thinking Ontario: Topic of “Inferring Systems Thinking” at the 75th monthly meeting of #SystemsThinking Ontario, reviewing and reflecting on the titles, readings and discussions beginning in 2013. https://wiki.st-on.org/2020-01-20 If we’ve met that many times, what could we surmise that we’ve discussed, and what might be missing? Not everyone attended every session, but we shared collective wisdom. Some input gathered for future sessions. (Systems Thinking Ontario, Strategic Innovation Lab, OCADU, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200120Climate Ventures: Tight queuing for podium for 16 Earth Tech companies @ClimateCSI inauguration social. Accelerator https://climateventures.org/earthtech/ have an intensive 6 months. #BarnabeGeis posed if the darkness currently perceived is a womb, where there’s light in the birth ahead. Not-yet-elevator stories about each startup, introducing to partners, advisors and allies. (Climate Ventures, Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20190121Koffler Centre of the Arts: Exhibiting “the chrysanthemum has opened twelve times”, @artkarentam, conversing with #ShellieZhang @KofflerArts. Talk began with inspiration of formal photograph of grandfather, leading to exploration of history of staged images sent back to families in Toisan. In addition to photos, installation of portrait studio settings and backgrounds.constructed in collaboration with father and mother. (Koffler Centre of the Arts, Shaw Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190126
PyData PyLadies Toronto: Joint @PyDataTO @PyLadiesToronto meeting including @sereprz on Improving Law Interpretability with NLP. Unsupervised Machine Learning, using spaCy on Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act data. Extract burdens (obligations), identify subjects, cluster subject (looking for homogenous groups in vector space. Used GLoVe (global vectors for word representation), with dimensionality reduction for sparse data. K-means clustering and evaluation through TD-IDF. Understood presentation, as a result of taking Big Data classes at Ryerson Chang School. (PyData Toronto, PyLadies Toronto, Intelliware, Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200129
Within the Systems Thinking Ontario community, we were fortunate to have Nenad Rava step up to explain how the Sustainable Development Goals came to be, and relate them to systems change. This May session of Systems Thinking Ontario was a quick follow-on for the March edition on Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the SDGs. […]
The book Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals, published in 2002 by Routledge, was released as open access in 2023 by Taylor-Francis for readers who don’t have access to a university library. For the March edition of Systems Thinking Ontario, we were honoured to celebrate the release with editor-coauthors Kaitlin Kish […]
A special issue on “Sustainable, Smart and Systemic Design Post-Anthropocene: Through a Transdisciplinary Lens” in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics edited by Marie Davidová, Susu Nousala, and Thomas J. Marlowe has been released. In that issue, the journey of the Systems Changes Learning Circle from 2019 through 2022 is reviewed. The editorial team, […]
In the ISSS 2022 Plenary talk, the first 25 minutes were a blast through (a) the rising interest in system(s) change(s); (b) appreciative systems (Vickers); (c1) the philosophy of architectural design; (c2) the philosophy of ecological anthropology; (c3) the philosophy of Classical Chinese Medicine; (c4) the philosophy of rhythms; and (d) methods of multiparadigm inquiry, […]
The theme for the February online meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was sparked from the discussion from the January session on Root Metaphor and World Hypotheses. What does it mean to have a theory? How does sensemaking contribute to this? Gary Metcalf volunteered to guide a conversation on these topics. Two prereadings were to serve […]
Philosophy underlies the distinction in the three volumes of the Tavistock Anthology: founded on the World Hypotheses of Stephen C. Pepper, the Socio-Psychological Systems Perspective and the Socio-Technical Systems Perspectives are based on Organicism, while the Socio-Ecological Systems Perspective is based on Contextualism. This thread on contextualism can be traced from the association between E.C. […]
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 ›
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 ›
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 […]
In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
How might the quality of an action research initiative be evaluated? — begin paste — We have linked our five validity criteria (outcome, process, democratic, catalytic, and dialogic) to the goals of action research. Most traditions of action research agree on the following goals: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b) the achievement of action-oriented […]
After 90 minutes on phone and online chat with WesternUnion, the existence of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland is denied, so I can’t send money from Canada. TicinoTurismo should be unhappy. The IT developers at Western Union should be dissatisfied that customer support agents aren’t sending them legitimate bug reports I initially tried the […]
