Frankfurt, Germany; Hameenlinna, Finland; Takajarvi, Finland; Espoo, Finland; Vantaa, Finland; Vienna, Austria; Linz, Austria; Hull, UK; Chicago, IL; Evanston, IL; Las Vegas, NV.
Air Canada FRA. Boeing 777 arrived at Terminal B at Frankfurt, on a cloudy day. Flight delay at outset meant 3 hour connection became a 1 hour connection. Changing to Terminal A and then Gate 36 at the far end was a really long walk to Helsinki leg (20120407 0840) Frankfurt, GermanyIce and drainspouts, Hameenlinna. Field work more as art than science, as @minlii emerges a theme in thawing temperatures. Curated as a collage on Facebook photos (Hameenlinna, Finland) 20120408 1340Takajarvi docks well. Unexpected Easter snow after thaw. Docks still stacked up for the winter. Too early to prime the well head in the forest. Cottage will be more welcoming when the temperature rises. (Takajarvi, Finland) 20100409
TUAS party. Spring break for Aalto U. engineering students, jousting at party in Tuas house parking lot. Hot tub in background, naked engineers but no females participating. Sunny day, temperature above freezing isn’t like Daytona Beach. (Espoo, Finland) 20120410 1635Vantaa Design Gallery. An invitation to enjoy Finnish design at Helsinki Vantaa Airport leads to an installation of chairs designed by Finns, with biographies on display. Directions to “wear hearing protectors” a typically playful Finnish style, enabling greater enjoyment of design in “seizing the moment” (Vantaa) 20120411 1309Mariahilfer Vienna. Airline waylaid luggage, got suggestion to shop along Mariahilfer, outside the ring road. Found C&A. Browsing underwear led mindset shift, as American white briefs nowhere to be seen, nearest alternative in color with no fly. Luggage fortunately delivered later in the evening. so prior conception of foundation clothes can remain undisturbed (Vienna, Austria) 20120412 1901ArsElectronica BitFlow. Installation by Julius Popp, associated with myth of Ariadne’s thread in which chaos is vanquished by order. First exhibited in 2008, now at @ArsElectronica. (Linz, Austria) 20120418 1448ArsElectronica FabLab. 3D stylus, screen and visors still requires talent, to design to make in Fab Lab at Ars Electronica. Polygons have to be closed so that 3D printers will work. (Linz, Austria) 20120417 1604Mountains behind Salzburg. Approaching Salzburg from the east on the train, the mountains are impressive. Brief stop on the Railjet from Linz to Munich (Austria) 20120419 1058Blossoms UHull. Pink blossoms having a tough time flourishing in early British springtime, by the U. of Hull. More warmth and sunshine might help. (Hull, UK) 20120420 1251Ferens Gallery Upstairs. Second floor of the Ferens Art Gallery recently renovated, opens up with beautiful skylight. With @jmwilby, enjoyed the Precious Cargo exhibition of contemporary works by local artists more than the pre-21st century works in most of the galleries. (Hull, UK) 20120421 1307UIC view east. John Hancock tower in background behind Lecture Centre, on plaza outside Richard J. Daley Library. Beautiful spring day could make one forget that winters on the west coast of Lake Michigan can be bitter. Visited Annalenna for lunch (Chicago) 20120427 1241Kellogg Reunion 2012. Under tent on Deering Meadow, Kellogg School Class of 1982 convening as 30th year alumni. Noisy, with deejay calling people to make more noise encouraged us to decamp to private party earlier (Evanston, IL) 20120427 1722McCarran Airport gates, Immediately on arrival as Las Vegas Airport, there are slot machines nearby. Casinos don’t like cameras on their floors, but the attendants at the airport don’t seem to care (Las Vegas, NV) 20120429 1136SandsExpo breakfast. Feeding 8500 #ibmimpact attendees for breakfast in Las Vegas presents an industrial scale challenge. There’s disglamour in the Sands Expo self-service buffet and tables on the concrete floor. The style follows fast food protocols, unlike lunches served in ballrooms with carpets, and dinners hosted in onsite hotel restaurants. Maybe late Vegas evenings encourage rudimentary service early in the day. (Las Vegas, NV) 20120430 0759
Treasure Island Sirens. Almost trampled by Asian women tourists recoiling from the heat in performance of Sirens of Treasure Island on humid Las Vegas evening. Performers might have been more emotive if they weren’t lipsynching, and actually sang, instead. (Las Vegas, NV) 20120430 2032
The Germans use bicycles in the Frankfurt air terminal … which indicates the challenge of size.
With my increased travel to Europe, the transfers from one terminal to another feel longer and longer. Moving sidewalks help, but it’s not encouraging to stand at one end of the tunnel and not be able to see the other end. Here’s a good example at Frankfurt airport (which has parallels at Heathrow, JFK, and now even Pearson Terminal 1!)
Digging into philosophies underlying the systems sciences, pragmatism seems to have been a strong historical foundation for some research streams. In ongoing discussions, Gary Metcalf and I have been approaching pragmatism from two directions. Gary has been tracking from mid-1800s forward, listening to the audiobook The Metaphysical Club, with a history of figures living through […]
The ties between systems thinking and pragmatism are apparently strong, but the breadth in the philosophy of pragmatism can be confusing. Within the tradition, one of the threads is called nonrelativistic pragmatism, proposed by systems luminaries C. West Churchman with Russell L. Ackoff, descending from the work of philosopher Edgar A. Singer, Jr. A concise […]
A luminary in the systems movement, C. West Churchman, showed some respect for Chinese philosophy, with the I Ching (Yi Jing) in particular. Deborah Hammond was encouraged by West Churchman into joining and becoming a historian of the systems movement. In her 2003 book, Hammond wrote of her conversations with Churchman, back into his days […]
The 1969 publication of Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by Fred E. Emery as a Penguin Modern Management paperback, can be regarded as a milestone. The articles date from the 1940s to the 1960s, when the first wave of systems thinking was on the rise. For the June session of Systems Thinking Ontario, we stepped […]
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 […]
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 […]
