Toronto, Ontario
Perfect Chinese Restaurant: New Year’s dinner to hear about father’s 40-day trip to Asia. One son absent in the U.S., but not the usual one. Normalcy from holiday season should return next week. (Perfect Chinese Restaurant, Sheppard Avenue East, Scarborough, Ontario) 20180101Lifelabs: A series of waiting rooms for medical labs and clinics all in on morning is better than making multiple trips. Following through on previously-scheduled appointments was manageable with Uber rides, crutches and a found wheelchair at the hospital. (Lifelabs, Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20180102Bissell Building: UToronto iSchool students self-organizing into teams who will lead presentation-facilitation in the Systems Thinking, Systems Design Information Workshop running for 6 weeks. Started lecture with student reading the syllabus on their phones and computers, due to AV issues with equipment in the room. (Bissell Building, St. George Street, University of Toronto) 20180110St. Michael’s Hospital: Switched to air cast from plaster splint after 19 days. Doctor said the Achilles tendon seems to be healing well, but can’t give strong diagnosis until next appointment, 31 days away. Changing from totally non-weight-bearing to being able to balance on toe. Can removed air cast for showers at night, but will be sleeping with two wedge inserts as treatment. The air chambers aren’t to be pumped up until wedges are removed. (St. Michael’s Hospital, Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20180115UToronto iSchool: Object Process Methodology presentation-facilitation led by UToronto iSchool students who described themselves as far from engineering types. Stepped through slides, then showed prepared example in Opcat software downloaded from Technion. They then further engaged the class by leading collaborative live modelling of a making a snowman. Showing the methods side in the Systems Thinking, Systems Design course. (UToronto iSchool, Bissell Building) 20170117
OCADU: Strong turnout for @sophiesanniti on Behaviour Change for Climate Change, Systems Thinking Ontario 53rd monthly meeting, first of the year. Early research into Terror Management Theory, derived from Ernest Becker (1973) Denial of Death. (Lambert Lounge, OCADU, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20170117UToronto iSchool: Idealized Design presentation-facilitation by UToronto iSchool students, with detailed review of Interactive Planning. Classic Ackoff story of “the telephone system of the United States was destroyed last night”. (UToronto iSchool, Bissell Building) 20180124UToronto iSchool: Soft Systems Methodology presentation-facilitation by UToronto iSchool students, teasing with Bitcoin story. Breakout groups tried developing rich pictures, trying out methods is different from learning about theory. (UToronto iSchool, Bissell Building) 20180124SystemsThinkingTO: History of systems @sregoczei #SystemsThinkingTO @DerailleurAgile moderating. Chart includes Ludwig von Bertalanffy as father of general systems theory, ISSS past presidents Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapoport, Ilya Prigogine. Meetup group hadn’t appreciated Toronto is a hub of systems research in the world, extended welcome to visit at Systems Thinking Ontario. (LoyaltyOne, King Street East, Toronto) 20170126Hogtown Vegan: Dinner was meatless, but western comfort food may only be slightly healthier. Unchicken soy had texture of meat, cheese on nachos had a convincing feel. Gluten-free menu available as an extra step. Indulged on desserts that we normally can’t enjoy. (Hogtown Vegan, Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20180127Bad Dog Comedy Theatre: Theatresports final competition, Odin’s Song won Globehead trophy in fourth year of trying, celebrated by being impaled to return to Asgard. Family event, small venue, improvised performances a test of quick wits. (Bad Dog Comedy Theatre, Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20170127UToronto iSchool: Viable System Model presentation-facilitation by UToronto iSchool students. Exercise mapping Systems 1 to 5 with a city government example, puzzling through some distinctions made in the original case study. (UToronto iSchool, Bissell Building) 20180131UToronto iSchool: Resilience in Social Ecological Systems presentation-facilitation by UToronto iSchool students. Scripted participatory theatre with students around a riverbank set playing Nepalese residents, cows, dogs and doctors from Martin Bunch’s 2016 SRBS article on zoonotic disease. (UToronto iSchool, Bissell Building) 20180131
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 […]
