Days brightening and temperatures above freezing, optimism with vaccinations against the pandemic.
Toronto, Ontario
One City Hall: View southeast from 12th floor of apartment tower in historic Old Chinatown. After Asian businesses moved west to Spadina, a 12-storey office tower was built in 1974, then bombed by the Italian Mafia in 1977 and feared with bad feng shui. In 1999 that tower was imploded, and then replaced by three towers completed in 2007. (111 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20210306Eastern Avenue at Carlaw Avenue: Sign of the times with “Cyclists Accommodated With Only Minor Delays”, suggesting that automobiles and trucks will be completed diverted. Consistent with the joke that Canada has two seasons: winter, and construction. Temperature swing of 10 degrees Celsius has citizens abandoning parkas. (Eastern Avenue at Carlaw Avenue, Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20210310Jeff’s No Frills: Scheduled appointment to receive AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, responding to call for under-age 65 subjects. Received quick jab in office of grocery store, in the afternoon after National Advisory Community on Immunization expands recommendation of formulation for all ages. Ontario pharmacists are now reporting that supply is depleting, hard to plan more than a week ahead. (Loblaws Pharmacy at Jeff’s No Frills, Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20210316Centenary Hospital: Father receiving Moderna vaccination, with second appointment scheduled 16 weeks away. Registration on vaccineto.ca led to coordination by local hospitals, decentralized registration online with friendly reminder phone call. Venue on the eastern edge of Metro Toronto has physical distancing not common in the downtown core. (Margaret Birch Wing, Scarborough Health Network Centenary Hospital, Ellesmere Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario) 20210318Philosophers Walk: Looking south beyond university campus, CN Tower in the far distance, on a bench alongside @zaid___khan. Discussed science as a pursuit of better answers, with philosophy as a pursuit of better questions. The tension between attention and intention can be portrayed as a struggle between phenomenology (ecological epistemology) and teleology. Spring equinox drawing out many pedestrians with upswing in temperature. (Philosophers Walk, Queen Park Crescent West, University of Toronto) 20210321Essroc Silos: Crews convening amongst earth movers, on the growing berm for the south end of the new Cherry Street North Bridge. On the roll-up door of the defunct Essroc cement plant, the Framework photograph of 130 Commissioners Street installed in October 19 by #VidIngelevics and #RyanWalker hasn’t faded. The industrial heritage of the Port Lands persist. (Essroc Silos, Cherry Street, Toronto Port Lands) 20210323MEC: A trip for bicycle brake pads is mundane, but shopping in person seems extraordinary after pandemic shut down changes to pandemic grey zone. Cantilever style brakes aren’t so common these days, the charitable might describe my old bike with a steel frame as vintage. (MEC, Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20210327
Bike and Forth Services: Acquired another modest bicycle with low regret if it’s stolen. I found the vintage Miyata mountain bike on Facebook, posted by James. John installed slick tires, and tuned up the cables. Neighbourhood bike shops are getting rarer in the big city. (Bike and Forth Services, Danforth Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20210328
Life at home is much the same with the pandemic sheltering-in-place directives, touring city streets on bicycle, avoiding the parks on weekends.
Toronto, Ontario
Tollkeepers Park: Canoe unexpectedly found in park in Humewood neighbourhood, part of the #Butterflyway @DavidSuzukiFDN project installed in 2017, natural habitats for bees and butterflies. Park has cottage from the 1850s, in use when roads had tolls for travellers on horseback or on wagons. Grass is following the unkempt trend, as city services are limited during social isolation. (Tollkeeper’s Park, Bathurst Street at Davenport Road, Toronto, Ontario) 20200505The Silver Mill: Strangely shaped 3-storey former wooden-crib grain elevator from 1906, beside a former flour/grist mill on dead end road just north of railway tracks in east end of the city. Building was used as a transdisciplinary arts centre, with municipal art organization vacating the premises in 2018. Signage now minimized, redevelopment into a new high rise complex that will connect to the Danforth Go Train terminal was in council in 2019. (The Silver Mill, 10 Dawes Road, East York, Toronto, Ontario) 20200512Riverdale Farm: One of three sheep in the pen, all in need of shearing. Hair wet from recent rainstorm, temperature rising to spring normals from the record low frost warnings the past evenings. Starting route northbound on Lower Don River Trail and found unpaved sections with big puddles. Opted to push the bike up one set of stairs, ride west downhill, and then push up again into the park. (Riverdale Farm, Winchester Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20200515Ashbridges Bay East Breakwater: Rocky berm shore onto Lake Ontario put in place to control sediment from the west, maintained by regional conservation authority. The park is on lands historically a marsh. Saw a couple lounging by the point, amongst the many cyclists and pedestrians enjoying spring temperatures. Still too cool for beachwear, with strong winds from the east. (Ashbridges Bay East Breakwater, Lakeshore Boulevard East, Toronto, Ontario) 20200520Riverside neighbourhood: Restored cover on backyard gazebo, spring is turning into summer. Trimmed with accent lights for atmosphere after dark. Potential for social visits with physical distancing, if guests come via the laneway. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 201200523
Kadampa Meditation Centre: Bicycling along residential streets in Little Italy, wasn’t expecting to find a temple for Modern Buddhism. Gilded panels on facade reflecting glare with the late afternoon son. About 90 years ago, this was a Ukranian church before the congregation moved, the use in intervening years isn’t readily apparent. (Kadampa Meditation Centre, Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20200530
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 […]
