Mentally busy month with a conference coming to town, and maintaining the regular pattern of local meetings, travel around town only by bicycle.
Toronto, Ontario
OCADU Great Hall: Figure @OCAD assembled from many materials by Sarah Juliet Nadler, part of the Frutti exhibition, Florence off-campus program. Sheet to the left either fell down due to poor adhesive, or the figure rose in the night to pull it down. (OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20181103Congee Queen: Sisters-in-law on both sides of our family on short visits through town, we voted for Sunday lunch with greater variety than dim sum. Discussions included where and who to visit on the upcoming holiday season. I over-ordered by a few dishes, so we had leftovers to take home. (Congee Queen, Sheppard Avenue East, Scarborough, Ontario) 20181104Spoke Club: Design ladder @hallahelga@honnunarmidstod with DesignTOFest promoting @IcelandNatural. Step 1 No design; Step 2 Design as a style; Step 3 Design as a process; Step 4 Design as innovation; as illustrated by @designcentret . Design March @honnunarmars cited as the biggest design festival in the work per capita. With population of 330,000, everyone in Iceland knows @bjork or her mother. (The Spoke Club, King Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20181105 Regis College: Lawren Harris (1968) Abstraction A, shows a sun-like form emitting light. This painting hangs in theological school of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) at the University of Toronto. The room is within line-of-sight of the receptionist, and most passing through the college probably have never taken a second look. (Regis College, Wellesley Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20181107 Power Plant Gallery: Vivian Suter “La Canicula” exhibition @ThePowerPlantTO of canvases created with nature. Works were moved both indoors and outdoors her home in Panajachel, Guatemala, marked by insects and weather. Visitors appreciating the installation, walking around the hangings. (Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Harbourfront, Queen Quay’s West, Toronto, Ontario) 20181108Climate Ventures: Systems thinking peer circle @csiTO, on @longnow history, @stewartbrand How Buildings Learn pacing layers. Fast gets all the attention; Slow has all the power. Also covered James March ambidextrous organization, and Pierre Bourdieu Algeria 1960. Second session, trying to meet every 3 weeks. (Climate Ventures, Centre for Social Innovation, 192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181112Renaissance Basecamp: Welcome by @chriskutarna to Renaissance Basecamp @Basecamp3 #rebase #basecampTO . Full day of teams working Rethinking in tables, having prepared with online discussions in weeks preceding. Most people meeting each other for the first time face-to-face. (Artscape Sandbox, Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 2018114Books on Pattern Language: Selecting from bookshelf for #WickedProblems #SystemsApproach #PatternLanguage show-and-tell at #SystemsThinking Ontario session at #ClimateVentures @csiTO tonight. Publications cross architecture, software development, social change. https://wiki.st-on.org/2018-11-21 (Centre for Social Innovation, 192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181121 Bissell Building: Understanding #Tablets in Early Childhood Education @rhondamcewen@KDMI Semaphore speaker series @UofTInfoFaculty. Research based on communication theory by #NiklasLuhmann. Attentional deficits in children are already there, but tablets make it worse. Not much better than flash cards, as developers don’t encourage instructing or exploring concepts, mostly tap and drag, dumbing down rather than featuring other modes (e.g. blowing into a device). Gestures can change the way that knowledge is conceptually understood, not just on working memory, but long term memory. (Knowledge Media Design Institute and Semaphore Labs, Bissell Building, University of Toronto School of Information) 20181121Systems Thinking Ontario: Books to browse at #SystemsThinking Ontario #ClimateVentures @csiTO. Discussion on #WickedProblems, #SystemsApproach, #Pattern Language tracked through history with #HorstRittel, #CWestChurchman, #ChristopherAlexander. Focus from 1964 Notes on the Synthesis of Form through to October 2018 @PLoPCon and #PUARL #Purplsoc meetings. (Climate Ventures, Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181121Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Medal and trophy for Professor David Lam, recognition of “Outstanding Doctor” by the Chinese Government, including founding the oldest acupuncture school in Canada. He declined to travel to China for the ceremony, so the honours were shipped to him. I haven’t visited in 5 years, and wanted a more systemic diagnosis combined with experiences in both Chinese and western medicine. Prescribed not a single herb, but a complex combination. (Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Dupont Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20181123 Systems Thinking TO: Champagne toast for #SystemsThinkingTO second anniversary, led by @DerailleurAgile. Played Triangles game from the #SystemsThinkingPlaybook, emphasizing system behaviors and conceptual errors in (i) autonomous behavior and (ii) magnification. (Systems Thinking TO, LoyaltyOne, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20181127 Unify Toronto: Panel on #UnifyToronto Land Use Summit @DrawdownProject meeting #6 of 7 sectors. @lmiresk, @AndrewJamesKnox for @transitionTO, #KevinBest, #RyanNess for @TRCA_News, #SeanThomas for @UofTForestry. Sketching by @playthink , emphasis on relevance from global study to action in Greater Toronto (Unify Toronto, Drawdown Toronto, Friends House, Lowther Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181128
Olga Korper Gallery: Steel letterforms of #RustGarden by @DonovanSiegel are 707,349 characters from the 1945 #TwoSolitudes novel by #HughMacLellan on the perceived lack of communication between Anglophone and Francophone communities. Sign @OlgaKorper Gallery encourages walking on the artwork that fills the main space. Ephemeral art has some people spelling out words on the bench backs. (Olga Korper Gallery, Morrow Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20181130
The February 2019 Systems Thinking Ontario meeting was an opportunity to bring those unfamiliar with the work of Christopher Alexander on methods revealed in the Eishin School and Multi-Service Centers projects.
The wholeness generated through pattern language may be influenced by stronger foundations from advances in the systems sciences, not just in built environments, but also in other domains.
An invitation to give a talk at IBM Research Almaden presented an opportunity to trace the history of science of pattern language, as it developed inside the company, and with the external community.
An invitation as a keynote presenter at the 2018 International Conference on Smart Cities and Urban Design (SCUD) was initiated on a recommendation by Susu Nousala to the program chair WU Jing. Blending the conference theme with my recent doctoral research, I proposed the topic “Innovation Learning for Sustainability: What’s smarter for urban systems”? For […]
The March 2018 lecture on Architecting for Wicked Messes for the OCAD SFI Understanding Systems and Systemic Design course was influenced having just taught Systems Methods at UToronto, and launching the Open Innovation Learning book.
The idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Concerns on #personaldata should be reframed as interpersonal, says @sheldrake , less the nodes and more the edge connections. “I want to take back control” superficial, @hartzog says control doesn’t scale. Agency is about negotiation in the world, more rhizomatic…Read more ›
Doing science should be wayfinding (pathfinding), says #TimIngold , gaining grounding in the art of paying attention, towards research as the pursuit of truth. Truth is more than objective facts, where science and art are embraced with materials, so that we can see the quality inside the natural world as it forms, rather than as […]
We should be more vigourous, says @MazzucatoM , in debating differences between value extraction and value creation, and between profits and rents. Lecture at Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford U., January 2019Read more ›
Most destructive analogy last 100 years @DavidGelernter @econtalker : Post-Turing thinkers decided that brains were organic computers, that computation was a perfect model of what minds do ... and that mind relates to brain as software relates to computer Read more ›
Before judging democratic systems over authoritarian, examine the functioning of governments through its diplomats, where plutocracy has an alternative in meritocracy, says @mahbubani_k @longnow @asiasocietysfx. [1:19:30] … when people compare the American government with the Chinese government, they say: “This…Read more ›
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
“You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts” by #DanielPatrickMoynihan is predated on @Freakonomics by #BernardMBaruch 1950 “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts”. Source: “There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Facts” | Fred Shapiro […]
Satire can be an antidote, says Prof. #PaulBabbitt @muleriders , to #bullshit (c.f. rhetoric; hypocrisy; crocodile tears; propaganda; intellectual dishonesty; politeness, etiquette and civility; commonsense and conventional wisdom; symbolic votes; platitudes and valence issues).
If we don’t first know “what is system is”, how do we approach an intervention? #MichaelCJackson OBE and Dr. #LuisGSambo appreciate the difference between “systems thinking” (plural) and “system dynamics” (singular), and suggest expanding theory with Critical #SystemThinking in Health Systems Research. An ignorance of history is, if anything, even more pronounced among those authors […]
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
