Toronto, Ontario
Kensington Market: Sleepy Saturday afternoon in market that would normally be packed with shoppers, if not tourists. Lineups outside the few essential services reminiscent of a visit to Russia in the 1970s; people don’t expect to be in a hurry. Bicycling around town maintains physical distance, with only light vehicle traffic. (Baldwin Street, Kensington Market, Toronto, Ontario) 20190404Danforth Village: Long stretch of sidewalk with almost no pedestrians, on a late pre-holiday afternoon with social isolation. On this main street towards the east end, storefronts are wider than in the city centre, so walks seem longer. Maybe one in ten businesses was open, and few had customers. Pedalling bicycle with light traffic on street. (Danforth Avenue, west of Coxwell Avenue, Danforth Village, Toronto, Ontario) 20200409Riverside neighbourhood: Touchup on hairline, since all of our sons have decided to self-barber. The chair and clippers were already in place, since I prefer to NOT cut my own hair in a mirror, and DY agreed to learn the tools for me. She’s primarily the one who would have an opinion on my hair style. I’m just happy that my head is cooler. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20200412King Street West at Peter Street: Encountered the first raised transit stop platform in town, where bicyclists and pedestrians take turns through a narrow lane previously a parking space. On Easter Sunday, streetcars paused only momentarily, with few passengers boarding. Only pedestrians of note were lined up outside the pharmacy, with respectable distances between them. (King Street West at Peter Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20200412Underpass Park: Public space unoccupied, with yellow tape not only on playground equipment, but also benches, to discourage social gatherings. Citizens mostly respecting physical distancing directions to stay at home. Dogs out walking their masters, who may get more exercise than others who aren’t leaving the house. (Underpass Park, Lower River Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190419Distillery District: Unadorned and unilluminated as in @tolightfest, the #SymbolicPeace scupture by #StudioRosenblatt was first installed in early 2019. Laser cut, cold rolled steel celebrating diversity in the community stands silent on a bright afternoon where a normally teeming plaza is now deserted. Art galleries are closed, so more permanent outdoor sites have to be sought. (Gristmill Lane, Distillery District, Toronto, Ontario) 20200422New Century Plaza: Saturday 1pm in Chinese mall in Markham reveals gates up at non-essential businesses. Came to pick up replacement contact lens from optometrist. Transaction, started on phone, completed mostly by talking through a locked glass door. I was invited in, asked to use hand sanitizer, used pen for signatures, and was then reminded to sanitize on the way out. Terse service consistent with 14-minute drive up DVP/404 from Lakeshore Drive to Steeles Avenue. (New Century Plaza, Ferrier Street, Markham, Ontario) 20200425
Don Roadway: Roadblock southbound into the Portlands now blocked to vehicular traffic, with ongoing construction. Don Roadway is being rebuilt to a higher elevation, so that major rainfalls flooding the Keating Channel won’t spill over into the lands on the east side of the road. It’s a dull afternoon for bicycling. (Don Roadway, Portlands, Toronto, Ontario) 20200430
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 […]
