Chicago, IL; Toronto, Ontario; Fairfield, IA; Des Moines, IA; Deadwood, SD; London, UK; Oxford, UK.
Jetway B24 at the end of the OHare universe. Arrival on commuter plan from Cedar Rapids, to discover gate at very end of airport, by fences with access road into terminals just on the other side. Fortunately, connection scheduled of 2 hours, and flight to Toronto leaves from Gate B14. (Chicago) 20140501Pine Hills Cemetery. Family and friends gathered to honour the life of Violet Ing. Lots of stories about the past and memories. (Scarborough, Ontario) 20140505PanAm Athletes Village under construction. Canary District, Cherry Street by Front Street, with unfinished apartments in the background. Roads are blocked to traffic while streetcar tracks are being put in, but construction workers at the end of day don’t pay much attention to a cyclist (Toronto) 20140507Corktown Commons playground ready for children. Aqua colored soft playground surfaces in quiet playground on a cool late Thursday afternoon. Road construction and unfinished apartment buildings mean families not yet nearby. View north to Adelaide overpass. (Toronto) 20140508Monday night family dinner out. Seating for 6, ordered for 8. Way too much good, leftovers predictable. (Markham) 20140512Alfresco dining in Iowa. Heartland tradition of thick burgers from local beef on Fridays, Curbside Grill by Chef Curtis by the Hy-Vee supermarket, over by the gas bar. Cooked to order slightly pink might not meet big city bylaws. Retreated to cafe for warmth in unexpectedly chilly May. (Fairfield, IA) 20140516Intercept for breakfast. Early morning, then two hours drive west in Iowa to meet in person, after months of teleconferences. Last minute plans on meetings in South Dakota over breakfast. (Des Moines) 20140519Deadwood History and Information Center. Learned that during the Gold Rush, Deadwood had the largest Chinatown outside of San Francisco. Historian said last building demolished some decades ago, leading to formation of historical society. (Deadwood, SD) 20140522Queue for platform 9-3/4. Everyone wants to join Harry Potter at Hogwarts at permanent installation at King’s Cross station. Renovations at station now all done. (London, England) 20140525Lounge at Egrove Park. Residence for executive education at Said Business School at Oxford U. is quite tranquil when not in session. Bedrooms are architecturally interesting, but luggage up and down stairs annoying. (Oxford) 20140529
Radcliffe Observatory, Green Templeton College on Flickr. Dinner for Oxford Futures Forum on oldest continually operating meteorological station on Britain. Chef reputed to get superior ratings after each course than professors (Oxford) 20140530
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 […]
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 […]
