Summer in the city with temperate weather, without the usual crowd scenes for summer festivals.
Toronto, Ontario
Queen’s Park: If Queen Victoria (reign 1837-1901) looked over her shoulder, she would see J. Sandfield Macdonald (first premier of Ontario, 1867-1864). Government offices are closed on the public holiday, visitors can enjoy the green space on bright summer day. City has started to open up from pandemic shutdown, optimistic for more social time. (Queen’s Park, Wellesley Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20210701Leslie Grove Park: Tai chi group would seem to convene at 10 a.m. in this east end green space. Those presuming the Chinese commmunity centered on the west side around Spadina Avenue may not have appreciated residential property was more affordable on the east side, even in the 1970s and 1980s. Outdoor ping pong table was in use, slightly to the south. (Leslie Grove Park, Queen Street East at Jones Avenue, Leslieville, Toronto, Ontario) 20210702FedEx Ship Centre: In the Port Lands district, dropping off laptop computer return, with job change. Original Thinkpad carton fits exactly in the large shipping box, must be more than a coincidence. Distribution centre has tall grasses indigenous to the Toronto Harbour marshes, better than a lawn. (FedEx Ship Centre, Commissioners Street, Port Lands, Torotno, Ontario) 20200706Toronto-Dominion Centre: During the heat warning, the shadow on #JoFafard (1985) The Pasture cools the seven bronze cows on the lawn. The installation was originally south of Wellingston Street, when I worked in that tower in the late 1980s. Looking between the TD North Tower and E&Y Tower in the Mies style, in the distance, are the Commerce Court South Tower by I.M. Pei and Scotia Plaza modern tower with parallelogram floorplan by WZMH Architects. (Toronto-Dominion Centre, Wellington Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20210706The Bentway: Roller skaters on southern branch of loop, through cross-court installation #EsmaaMohamoud (2021) Double Dribble, past basketball nets oversized and undersized, at impossibly high and child heights. Without rules to guide participants, play is negotiated interactively at this underpass under the Gardiner Expressway West. Varying levels of proficiency on wheels suggests that most have rented equipment from the pop-up store, rather than bringing their own. (The Bentway, Fort York Boulevard, Toronto, Ontario) 20210710Charles Sauriol Parkette: Modest green space with benches facing west, with only dense forestry as the scenic view. Just beyond the trees is the sharp drop to Pottery Road. History says the old Pottery Road roadbed used to end here, but the south end was moved a few hundred meters south (by the Dairy Queen) in the 1960s, to reduce the gradient for automobiles. New landscaping and seating area renewed this patch of land in 2015. (Charles Sauriol Parkette, Hillside Drive at Broadview Avenue, Toronto, Onrtario) 20210715Craven Road at Gerrard Street East: Travelling eastbound through Little India, bright splash of colour reveals itself down the side street. With Leslieville School of Dance and Music now occupying the space, the solid beige was boring, and a potential target for tagging. Along the main street, restaurants and cafes have extended over the sidewalk onto the curbside lane. (Craven Road at Gerrard Street East, Little india, Toronto, Ontario) 20210717Bellair Street: Public space has been reallocated into curbside patio, with the restaurants taking over the whole street. The brick lane only runs two short blocks, and can easily be circumnavigated by cars on a slow one-way loop. Businesses were active with customers, but not like the usual summer festival seasons for the city. (Bellair Street, Yorkville, Toronto, Ontario) 20210718Hong Shing: Family dinner at restaurant in Toronto Old Chinatown, updated by a second generation owner. Cantonese cuisine with northern options featuring numbing Sichuan peppers, background house music might be better appreciated by late night crowd. Guests visting in city swap with son #3, they’re in Vancouver liviing in Eastern Time. (Hong Shing, Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20210721Crothers Woods: Long stroll with @redesign from Broadview Avenue down through Todmorden MIlls, around Cottonwood Flats. Is this an old CP Rail line towards Belleville? We encountered two acquaintances and said hello, dispersed social interactions still under pandemic distancing. (Crothers Woods, Broadview North, Toronto, Ontario) 20210722Lisgar Park: Sculptural playground climber of logs may be better than artificial materials, planned as a safe place for toddlers. In the plaza beyond, trees sparsely ring the open space, yet it seems unlikely that children would attempt ascending. Park is a former 1900s warehouse site, constructed between 2014-2016, with the rise of apartments in the district. (Lisgar Park, Abell Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20210723
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 […]
The International Society for General Systems Research formed circa 1956 became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988. In 1985, Bela H. Banathy organized the annual meeting on the theme of “Systems Inquiring”. Proceedings normally are published in the year following. In 1987, John A. Dillon summarized Banathy’s perspective in the yearbook, General […]
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 […]
