Toronto, Ontario; Orillia, Ontario
Ontario Place Cinesphere: Exited IMAX theatre at dusk, after enjoying Top Gun Maverick in a sold-out show. This cinema was the first permanent 70mm projector in 1971 when I saw “North of Superior”, compared to seeing my first commercial film here, tonight. We left home early to drive to the venue, not anticipating the crowd at the east gate going to see Young Money and Drake, as we crossed over to the west gate. (Ontario Place Cinesphere, Lake Shore Boulevard West, Toronto, Ontario) 20220806Chef 88 Oriental Cuisine: Full table of 10, with family dinner coordinated with arrivals from the south. Previous day travel from Woodstock NY by sister and husband via automobile, and son #4 via airplane. Catching up on news, maybe another opportunity later in the week. (Chef 88 Oriental Cuisine, Kennedy Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20220807Dim Sum King: Summer Systems Conferences Debriefings planned outdoors for Grange Park were driven inside due to rain. Round table was a good configuration for comments and questions, but food arriving and active acoustics were distracting. Inclined to return to online meeting for next month. (Dim Sum King, Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20220808Port of Orillia: Tourism stop #LawrenceBoyer (2016) Weirs Story Pole depicts indigenous fisherman above, with fish getting tangled up in the threads below. Sister who actually lived in this city, early in her career, remarked how much the waterfront had changed. We gather in Toronto every few years, so trips north have a frequency approaching decades (Port of Orillia, Centennial Drive, Orillia, Ontario) 20220810Pizzeria Via Mercanti: Wood-fired Napoletana pizzas in a relaxed Kensington Market vibe a nice change from a week of Cantonese cuisine. Downtown evening with sister and brother-in-law, who moved away from downtown Toronto (and uptown Richmond Hill), and haven’t seen how much the city has changed. After-dark stroll across College Street and down Spadina Avenue, alongside viewing new condo apartments of sons now residing on the west side of town. (Pizzeria Via Mercanti, Augusta Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220810Centre for Social Innovation Spadina: Laneway BBQ of burgers south of @csiTO coworking space, combined with Salad Club providing greens while invitees contribute toppings and dressings. Brief pause for speeches to recognize the sponsors, who were also manning the grills. A mix of members from the Spadina building + Bathurst Annex + virtual members with online privileges, enjoying mocktails and cocktails under perfect weather conditions. (Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220811Bentway Studio: Street furniture #MichaelLeePoy (2022) Moko Jumbie design has a mandoria of two intersecting congruent circles, representing eyeballs. Practice of balancing on stilts for the West African masquerade (mas) tradition in Afro-Caribbean communities calls for stepped tiers that afford seating, mounting and training. Further west are apartment towers of the CityPlace planned neighbourhood, filling over over the past 10 years. (Bentway Studio, Fort York Boulevard, CityPlace, Toronto, Ontario) 20220813Canoe Landing Park: Four times normal life size @DougCoupland (2009) Tom Thomson’s Canoe is at southwest corner of park, elevated above the height of the elevated Gardiner Expressway to the south. The bright red sculpture outer structure rests on concrete, made of steel and resin sufficiently durable for children to climb on top. A wall of condominium towers partitions the city from Toronto Harbour beyond. (Canoe Landing Park, Gardiner Expressway, CityPlace, Toronto, Ontario) 20220813Union Station: Outdoor stage @kazdouramusic Sunday evening @smallworldnotes series. Modern western electric guitar, keyboard synth and drum kit, yet vocals in Arabic understood by only a fraction of the audience. Lady at the next table was animated in recognition of songs, eventually sufficiently moved to stand up with belly dancing thrusts. (Union Station, Front Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20220814Centre for Social Innovation Annex: Panel discussion after @csiTO Cinema #FoodForTheRestOfUs @CarolineCoxFilm presented by @FoodSecureCAN @TYFPC . Documentary about leaders in 4 marginalized communities returning to the land, hands-on. Post-movie commentary relating programs in the region that provide opportunities and education for youth otherwise disadvantaged. (Centre for Social Innovation Annex, Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20220816Ontario Place West Channel: Bike riding westbound at dusk, the daylight is getting shorter past mid-summer. The Toronto Windshare turbine was turning slowly, generating electricity. To the south, I could the Toronto Summer Live Muisc Festival playing in Trillium Park, while bright lights of the Canadian National Exhibition were to the north. (Ontario Place West Channel, Martin Goodman Trail, Toronto, Ontario) 20220819Spadina Avenue at Dundas Street: Slow martial arts performance bearing staffs, on north stage of Chinatown Festival, while singing on south stage. Audience maybe half non-Asian, the other half Asian but not exclusively Chinese. Southbound Spadina Avenue closed to traffic for two blocks, while northbound traffic seems notably unimpeded. (Dundas Street at Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220821Roncesvallles Avenue: Thankful to an honest anonymous Torontonian who turned in my lost wallet at a bank branch, cross town. I only noticed the missing item on Sunday night, after biking back from Spadina Chinatown, home. Teller phoned me after tracing a credit card. I have already requested replacements, and gotten temporary ID issued. (RBC Royal Bank, Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20220824Edward Gardens: Annual tradition of revisiting the fountain and renewing our vows, with a rare occasion to have all four sons in town at the same time, with grandfather. Reversed order to have dinner earlier, and then stroll around the gardens before dusk. Noted that we will lose our photographer from the past few years, as an official marriage means she should be included in future years. (Edward Gardens, Lawrence Avenue East, Don Mills, Ontario) 20220824
Centenary Hospital: Half dome mirror shows waiting in corridor outside CT Scan room in Diagnostic Imaging departrment. Urgent case prioritized appointment early in morning, waiting room filled up, and gurneys were staged in the hallway. Time in machine is only 5 minutes, but total includes drinking liquid, changing into gown, and inserting IV, for about 2 hours. (Scarborough Health Network, Centenary Hospital, Ellesmere Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20220830
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #4 of 4. Mother is conveniently interred just west of Lowkong Society obelisk. location selected with foresight. We hope our descendants will remember us, here. (Pine Hills Cemetery, Birchmount Road, Toronto, Ontario) 20250518
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #3 of 4. Lowkong Society collectively respecting ancestors who migrated to Canada. Date in recent years has been Victoria Day weekend, better weather than April, so we follow their schedule. Whole roasted pig was served before pandemic, now just oranges with an invitation for early dinner following. (Pine Hills Cemetery, Birchmount […]
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #2 of 4, for my maternal grandparents. Following former practice of my mother, less elaborate ceremony, planting flower and lighting incense. Just 2 lanes west, then south of other grandparents (Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario) 20250518
Qingming tomb sweeping visit #1 of 4, for my paternal grandparents. Removed leaves and dead annuals, planted new flowers, incinerated hell money, bowed with incense, then shared food. Families of aunts and uncles used to join us when everyone was younger. (Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario) 20250518
Road construction impacting not only automobiles, but also bicycles and pedestrians. Roadway is to be reconfigured to 3 lanes each direction. Bike path might be restored in June, but the whole project to the Don River will take to end of 2025. (Lakeshore Boulevard East at Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20250517
On morning bike commute to OCADU event, the lower leg of the rear rack sheared off, just above the eyelet. I slowed down and fell to the ground on my left side, causing back pain for the day. Old Raleigh mountain bike still comfortable on roads with potholes. (Commissioners Street Bridge, Port Lands, Toronto, Ontario) […]
Afternoon @TedX @OCADU_SFI speaker @zaid___khan on Humbling Design by Sensing Rhythms. Major Research Project of 2020 extended with continuing progress on Systems Changes Learning. Noticed audience resonance with heads nodding. (OCAD U Co, Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario) 20250516
Emcee for @TedX @OCADU_SFI day, @FentonJagdeo synthesized across 12 themes on identity, assumptions, power, + possibilities. Program content by Master of Design graduates, acknowledgement of scripts provided by student organizers of the event. Video recordings of speakers should show up in a few weeks. (OCAD U Co, Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario) 20250516
Family dinner celebrating birthday with vegan desserts from new Bloordale bakery originating from Montreal. Also another belated birthday, plus belated Mother's Day. Schedules have been busy. (Pape Village, Broadview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20250515
Welcome to first day of SFI International Innovation Forum by @MikeMastroeni, with lead-off by #DannyGhantous. Presentations of Major Research Projects from master's program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, second day will be online. Getting a feel for type of research from OCADU, now that I'm an adjunct professor. (OCAD U Co, Queens Quay East, Toronto, […]
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 […]
Rhythm and pitch are primordial to language. Susan Rogers, after a career becoming Prince's recording engineer, turned to complete a PhD in psychology focused on music cognition and psychoacoustics.Read more ›
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 ›
Timothy F.H. Allen, president of International Society for the Systems Sciences 2008-2009, passed away peacefully in his home, surrounded by his family, on May 1, 2025. With his work on ecosystem ecology, I learned more about living systems than anyone else in the systems community. After his retirement, he was proud of putting together a […]
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 […]
