Wrapped up paperwork on closing out family buildings in Gravenhurst, returned to classes and technical conferences in usual pattern of learning.
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
Toronto, Ontario; Markham, Ontario; Scarborough, Ontario; Orillia, Ontario; Shanghai, PR China; Helsinki, Finland.
Chinese Visa Center: Mural of historical figures and stories of China’s five thousand years of civilization includes: 1. Houyi, Shooting Suns; 2. Shennong, the Ancient Herbalist; … 5. Hua Tuo, the Ancient Divine Chinese Medical Practitioner; 6. Sun Wu, the Great Military Theorist; 7. Qu Yuan, the Famous Poet; … 11. Confucius, the Great Chinese Philosopher; … 17. Mulan, the Chinese Girl-warrior; 18. Genghis Khan, the Great Conqueror; 24 Marco Polo, and The Travels of Marco Polo; … 27. Koxinga, the National Hero. Waiting in queue to drop off visa application folder, wondering about the process of choosing the 27. (Chinese Visa Application Service Center, University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20171102Cascon 2017: Clustering sticky notes in Strategic Foresight Workshop after discussions over lunch and ideation. After years of lecture layouts, ballroom is arranged with round tables to encourage sharing and capturing amongst participants. Many drawn away from collective activity towards posters at kiosks around the room, so maybe next time reducing options for distraction will lead to stronger inputs. (Cascon 2017, Hilton Suites, Warden Avenue, Markham, Ontario) 20171106Cascon 2017: Presentation #cascon on Cognitive Blockchain @DonnaExplorer, IBM Fellow. Clear demonstrations of pilots on cross-border supply chain traceability, Kimberley Process Certification Scheme for diamonds, IBM Verifier scanner to validate sources, Walmart Food Safety provenance. Digest at https://ingbrief.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/2017-11-07-1015-donna-dillenberger-cognitive-blockchain-cascon/Highland Farms: Ontario grown Flemish Beauty pears on destination shopping, later in the season that I had expected. This heritage variety grows locally, not as popular as Barlett, Anjou or Bosc. Childhood memories of the tree by my grandparents’ house on the southeast corner of Beverley Street and Cecil Street in the 1960s, gone by the 1980s. I’m appreciative of a smaller grocery store that supports local growers. (Highland Farms, Ellesmere Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20171107Delicious Paradise Kitchen: Father’s choice for Chinese fast food lunch. When I saw the serving of rice pulled on the plate, I said “too much”, and the server put half back into the pot. Dad says one serving is enough to serve two seniors. (Delicious Paradise Kitchen, Silver Star Blvd., Scarborough, Ontario) 20171109Port of Orillia: Off season for boat cruise on Lake Couchiching, on the Orillia waterfront. Quick business trip driving north on overcast early afternoon, followed by southbound trip starting before dusk and then ending in rainy dark. Radio reports subsequently declared winter snow, relatively early for the season. (Port of Orillia, Centennial Drive, Orillia, Ontario) 20171109
Markham, Ontario; Scarborough, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario; Istanbul, Turkey; Athens, Greece; Sounion, Greece; London, England; Hull, England; Cambridge, England; Madison Heights, Michigan; Fairfield, Iowa.
Cascon Day 1 plenary: Resilience engineering and antifragility, says @Kocolosk @IBMCAS #CASCON, is a research interest in his role as DE & CTO, Cloud Data Services, IBM Analytics. Plenary presentation on “Data Services in the Cloud: Past, Present and Future” included history on open source projects with Cloudant, new enthusiasm for Apache Spark. (IBM Centre for Advanced Studies, CASCON, Markham, Ontario) 20151102CASCON 2015 best paper: Game design characteristics by Mazz Nasir @prof_lyons @IBMCAS #CASCON presentation of paper, awarded as 2015 best a few hours earlier. “Operation Sting: A Collaborative Heist” designed as 20 to 30 minutes of icebreaking, good for teams who have not previously met together face-to-face. Measures included speech turns and floor holding, laughter and pauses in subsequent meetings, compared with control groups. (IBM Centre for Advanced Studies, CASCON, Markham) 20151102CASCON Day 2 plenary: Plenary @IBMCAS #CASCON describes @SilverHookPower as @ibmiotf exemplar, by Jim Caldwell, in building and managing an IoT solution. The race team gets real-time intelligence, the fans get a better viewer experience, and officials can rapidly ensure the leading competitor has won within rules. James Caldwell presented in his role as Director, IBM Internet of Things, Continuous Engineering Solutions Development. (IBM Centre for Advanced Studies, Cascon, Markham, Ontario) 20151103CASCON Day 3 plenary: Bayesian analysis, says @EliotSiegel @IBMCAS #CASCON is better by machines than typical human judgement. Imaging provides more data than just the specific question that a doctor is hypothesising. Imaging and clinical data is high dimensional information. Regression methods are insufficient. (IBM Centre for Advanced Sides Studies, CASCON, Markham, Ontario) 20151104Brick oven: Custom-made pizza in only a few minutes, when the fire is already hot. Friday afternoon at 3:30, bakery wasn’t busy, so a good destination for a casual business meeting. Strudel and cookies for dessert, could have brought fresh bread home. Chose location so that friend could beat traffic from city centre to the east end, he dropped me off for the westbound subway. (Calabria Bakery, Midland Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario) 20151106
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 […]
