Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

Internet withdrawal by the lake in Austria

The International Federation for Systems Research hosts about 25 people in Fuschl am See, Austria, every other year. I was invited to the meeting two years ago, when the venue had been set as the Seehotel Schlick. Over the two years, I’ve noticed two improvements at the hotel. Firstly, they seemed to have done some sprucing up, with a small but noticeable maintenance (which is probably more than just cleaning). Secondly, the Seehotel Schlick has gotten a fancy web site, done by a professional designer. The photos aren’t misleading, but that’s not to say that every day in Austria has blue skies. (About half our days did).

In 2004, the best that we could do in Fuschl was dial-up access. On one afternoon, arrangements had been made for attendees to get a bus ride into Salzburg, presumably for the opportunity to see sights. DLH and I spent much of the afternoon in an Internet cafe, catching up on e-mail. Going offline for extended periods of time just feels bad.  Unfortunately for the Seehotel Schlick, their Internet access hasn’t improved over the two years.

This year, we heard that up the street, at the Hotel Mohenwirt, high speed Internet access was available. On the first day, three of us took our laptops up at lunchtime. We told the person at the front desk that we had come for lunch and Internet, and she gave us IDs and passwords for an hour, without charge. On the second day, a different front desk clerk said that she was going to charge us, but then gave us the same deal. There must have been six laptops all open on lunch tables that day.

On the third day, on the walk up to the Hotel Mohenwirt, we met some of our group walking down. They said that the policy had changed, and the hotel was charging for Internet access and for lunch. That group decided to walk out in protest. Gary and I decided to just pay for 30 minutes, and then ate somewhere else. The hotel lost some revenue by not bundling its services together.

On the afternoon off, if it wasn’t for the cataract in my eye, I might have taken a bicycle trip around the lake. Diana wouldn’t let me pack the folding bike on this trip, though.

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • RSS on Coevolving

    • Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the SDGs | ST-ON | 2023-03-13
      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 […]
    • Systems Changes Learning: Recasting and reifying rhythmic shifts for doing, alongside thinking and making | JSCI
      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, […]
    • Appreciating Systems Changes via Multiparadigm Inquiry | ISSS 2022 Proceedings
      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, […]
    • Sensemaking and Theory-Building | Gary S. Metcalf | ST-ON 2023-02-13
      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 […]
    • World Theories as Analytic-Deductive, Dispersive-Integrative
      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. […]
    • Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses | ST-ON 2023-01-09
      Researching the philosophical foundations of systems theory to understand the meanings of “causal texture, contextualism, contextural” from the Tavistock legacy led to philosopher Stephen C. Pepper. The philosophical lineage and contributions of Pepper were the focus for the January online meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario.  A deep reading of Pepper’s work (over a month!) was […]
  • RSS on Media Queue

  • RSS on Ing Brief

  • Meta

  • Translate

  • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
    Theme modified from DevDmBootstrap4 by Danny Machal