Helsinki, Finland; Hameenlinna, Finland; London, UK, Scarborough, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario
Kiasma: Julia Varela (2016) X/5.000 from the series Hijacked, plasma screens crumpled and rendered useless. Inspired by terrorists erecting screens in Mosel to promote propaganda. Museum exhibition of Ars17 features contemporary artists on the digital revolution. (Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio, Helsinki, Finland) 20171201HAMK: Saturday lecture to master’s students scheduled in the luxury of space of a large classroom. Reorganized discussion into small groups, sitting around a table might have improved interactions. In a new building on the university campus. (HAMK Häme University of Applied Sciences, Hämeenlinna, Finland) 20171202Ahvenisto Lake: Winter swimming area kept clear of ice by air bubbling near shore. Steps down from public sauna are kept warm for health enthusiasts who want to warm up before plunging into the cold. In early evening, saw visitors headed towards the building, then a woman emerged in near freezing temperatures to enter the water. We walked a path around the lake, illuminated after the sunset before 3:30 p.m. (Ahvenisto Lake, Hameenlinna, Finland) 20171202Rosso: Our friendship is a continuing conversation since my first visit to Finland in 2003 (and meeting in California in 1999). This restaurant has been truly local for over 50 years, predating fast food chains. Neapolitan pizza with vegan cheese an indulgence leading to overconsumption. (Rosso, Sibeliuksenkatu, Hämeenlinna, Finland) 20171202Museo Militaria: Days before centenary of Finland’s independence, immersed in longer history of land controlled by Sweden, and then Russia until the revolution of 1917. Jaegers trained in Germany in the few years preceding, became core of white (anti-communist) army who defeated the red and Russian forces. History explains why Finnish engineering and telecommunications figure large in the society. (The Artillery, Engineers and Signals Museum of Finland, Vanhankaupunginkatu, Hämeenlinna, Finland) 20171203HAMK: Soft launch @daviding with @MinLii of Open Innovation Learning book in Finland, in advance of formal event in January. In conjunction with Open Data Hame meeting, led to practical questions about engaging greater participation supporting regional travel and tourism initiatives. (HAMK Häme University of Applied Sciences, Visamäentie, Hämeenlinna, Finland) 20171204Dipoli: International students on intercept lunch between other activities on campus. Completed renovation of Dipoli touted as first step in the new university campus plan. The granite interior was part of the original design from 1966 for the Student Union of the Helsinki University of Technology. Hope they got a good price when it was sold to Aalto University Properties a few years ago. (Dipoli, Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland) 201712015
Helsinki City Museum: Helsexinki exhibition celebrates sexuality, gender and sex. Equal Marriage Act came into force in March 2017, legalizing same-sex marriage beyond the Registered Partnership Act in 2001. This new museum building opened near Market Square and the Senate in May 2016. (Helsinki City Museum, Aleksanterinkatu, Helsinki, Finland) 20171205Kamppi: Coffee with @jannejsalovaara talking about graduate studies and careers with impact. We had shared experience of interdisciplinary innovation in the Creative Sustainability program circa 2010-2011. Making change requires more than just talk. Comfy leather chairs, then two security guards came to escort the man sleeping next to us, out of the mall. (Kampii Keskus, Helsinki, Finland) 20171206Saatchi Gallery: Kate MccGwire (2011) Corvid is a 3-metre serpentine form, made of 20,000 crow and pigeon feathers. Muscular and tensile, without beginning or end. Part of the Iconoclasts exhibition). (Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, London, UK) 20171207BAFTA: Christmas menu available, but we selected from the regular menu lunch menu in the busy member’s club for the actors in film and television. Hosted by a working media professional, I wouldn’t have recognized any celebrities as a visitor to this country. A quick meal, due to an unexpected emergency at home. (BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London, UK) 20171207
One, Two, Three, Swing! Tate Modern: Danish art collective Superflex created a site-specific installation for the third annual Hyundai Commission. Adults and children can take art less seriously on the three-person seats. Gloomy shadows in the gallery after the early winter dusk. (Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, Bankside, London, UK) 20171207
Ethos: Catching up with @EllenPruyne on shifts in lives and careers over the past few years. Working amongst millennials, while senior leaders resist change and defer moving on. Stress amongst expats higher, as Brexit terms are still under negotiation. (Ethos, Fitzrovia, London, UK) 20171207Heathrow 1-2-3 station: Noticed Mark Wallinger (2013) Labyrinth 269/270 on the wall beside the first ticket machine that a traveller would encounter entering the Piccadilly line from Heathrow Airport Terminals 1, 2 and 3. One of the unique 270 works in vitreous enamel, black lines with a red X to cue the pathway. Commissioned for the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. I hadn’t paid attention on prior trips to London, but I forgot my Oyster card at home, and thus purchased and got a refund on another for the 2 day visit. (Heathrow Terminal 1-2-3 Underground station, London, UK) 20171208Highland Heights: Circa-2009 PC power supply diagnosed as dead. Replaced, plugged in to Asus P5E-VM motherboard, discovered disk partitioned with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04. Fixed startup with Boot Repair, BIOS predates USB installation, so DVD disks required. Brought computer tower home and updated to Xubuntu 16.04, runs great with 6GB RAM. (Highland Heights, Scarborough, Ontario) 20171212Corktown: Retreat led by @redesign for designwithdialogue.comst-on.orgunifytoronto.ca reflecting on progress with communities. @DwDTO started in August 2008, will have been running for a decade this year. Breakouts gave time for social talk over potluck snacks. (Corktown, Toronto, Ontario) 20171214Yonge Street, north of St. Clair Ave.: View north from midtown on a clear winter day, beyond Deer Park to the west and Mount Pleasant Cemetery to the east. Beyond the Beltline Trail bridge, urban density increases with concrete towers. (Yonge Street, north of St. Clair Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20171220Tinuno: Kamayan feast of Filipino grilled fish, squid, shrimp, kebabs, pork and garlic rice went quickly with everyone eating with hands in plastic gloves. Visitors from Vancouver a good occasion for a special meal at a venue where reservations are required even for an early dinner. A fun experience, relieving the stress of planes arriving late, and then driving through rush hour traffic. (Tinuno, Howard Street, St. Jamestown, Toronto, Ontario) 20171220Degrassi Street Park: Playground spacenet not an attraction when there’s winter snow everywhere. Observed children down the street playing on their front lawns, as parent cleared walks. Unusual walk for me from home to Chinatown East for groceries, too wet for bicycling, shopping list too small to justify driving. (Degrassi Street Park, South Riverdale, Toronto, Ontario). 20171223The Monkey Vault: Parkour for family day. Hopping over benches, swinging around a pipe and leaping through a window was fine. Running up a wall was a bigger challenge. Was almost through the entire beginner’s class, when I injured my ankle, probably by not staying on toes and putting down the heel. Trying to remain active at da shou birthday. (The Monkey Vault, Syme Road, Toronto, Ontario) 20171224Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu: Christmas eve Sunday a tough day to have a birthday lunch, with many restaurants closed. Korean hosts welcomed us as a family, giving us extra dishes. (Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu, Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20171224St. Michael’s Hospital: Referred to emergency room by family practice urgent care clinic earlier in the morning. Left with immobilizing boot, and appointment tomorrow for ultrasound and then orthopedic clinic. Had deferred reality of injury for family holiday time, hospital had been operating on skeleton staff anyway. (St. Michael’s Hospital, Shuter Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20171226Fracture Clinic: Ultrasound confirmed completely detached Achilles tendon. Standard procedure now is to splint the injury, foot down in planar position and let the tendon grow back naturally. Surgery has higher risks of infection, with similar results although one month faster (for pro athletes). Plaster split is actually just on the top, flannel wrap is open to the bottom. Will return in 19 days, plan is to switch to an fibreglass walking air cast with lifts that get lowered every 2 weeks. Splints and casts for 3 months, then son #3 advises lots of months of stretching, from his similar experience. No pain today, will have to learn to use crutches, otherwise moving in a fencing stance. (Fracture Clinic, St. Michael’s Hospital, Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20171227ReBOOT: Donating old monitor for computer recycling, reducing clutter in the house. I have been the passenger-navigator, son #1 is the driver. In high school days, he volunteered at reBOOT, before they relocated, twice. (reBOOT Canada, Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Ontario) 20171228Riverside: Da shou celebration, man’s 60th and woman’s 61st birthday as a complete cycle around the Chinese calendar. Grateful to see many friends who we knew before our sons were born. We offered the peach longevity buns and red-dyed eggs, plus gift of rice bowl, chopsticks and spoon to take home. Unfortunately heavy snowfall led to a few last-minute regret calls, we’ll have to follow up when the weather improves. (Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20171229
Riverside: Party for da shou extended an extra day, as guests arrived one day late by mistake. Happy to open up a bottle of Valpolicella for a catch-up conversation, it’s better that they drove on a clear day from Collingwood. Sons weren’t so involved, one gone on a flight for a holiday in Utah. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20171230
For five immersive days, a team of six researchers had the opporunity to collaborate on ideas on rhythmic shifts (mostly based on Systems Changes Learning) and anticipatory systems (in the legacy of Robert Rosen). The 2024 Banathy Conversation was organized by the Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute, facilitated by Susu Nousala, Gary S. Metcalf, and […]
Systems Processes Theory has been under development for many decades, led by Len Troncale, a past president of the International Society for the Ssytems Sciences. Many have found getting a grip on the science to be a demanding task, both in scope and in depth. Over many decades, Lynn Rasmussen was a collaborator, refining and […]
The Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspective, dating back to the studies of Eric L. Trist and Fred E. Emery, was on the reading list of organizational behaviour classes in my undergraduate and master’s degree programs. It wasn’t until 15 years later, when I got involved with the systems sciences and David L. Hawk, that the Socio-Ecological […]
Civic Tech can be described as projects using technology “for the public good“. Civic Tech may be related to, but different from Gov Tech. For the May 2024 Systems Thinking Onrtario, we had two knowledgeable guests in conversation. Dorothy Eng, executive director of Code for Canada since 2021, related her professional journey from engineering to […]
On my May trip through the UK, I accepted an offer to lead an Expert-Led Session at the University of Hull. I had previously been a Research Fellow of the Centre for Systems Studies, but haven’t travelled to the Hull for some years. As we worked out the arrangements, I found out that the seminar […]
I’ve been checking on the breadth of some personal research on systems thinkers. (The list is incomplete, and may orient more towards systems scientists). Searching on Scopus gives an h-Index that counts scholarly references (with a boost, for the first person on the list who received a Nobel prize in chemistry). The list below is […]
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 ›
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 […]
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 […]
