Please, see my talk for Cybernetics Society Annual Conference: 21st Century Stories of Practice:
‘There’s nothing like the real thing’ (Kenny, 2009). The talk will be ‘connecting what is with what if’ (Thackara, 2019). It will look at complexities of feedback loops in Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance (SAAP) field’s multicentred methodology and processes where the designer oscillates between being inside and outside of the system. This will be exemplified on several research by design projects’ cases, indigenous references and their crossrelations. SAAP deals with rather small hyperobjective ecosystemic interventions that are codesigned and redesigned across complex multiscalar biodigital feedback loops across the biosphere. Therefore, these interventions interact with the existing ecosystem and are generative, regenerative, and adaptive. The talk will show that similar way it has been present in indigenous cultures. Such adaptive, generative, and regenerative systems are codesigned and coperformed by multispecies, living and non-living stakeholders and communities’ members…
Those who have followed this podcast in the past, and those who follow developments in cybernetics in the present, will be no strangers to the name Ranulph Glanville. This brilliant, multiple-PhD holding polymath who co-mingled cybernetics with ethics, pedagogy, and, above all, design, has, through his voluminous body of ground-breaking papers, had a greater influence upon the field than, arguably, any scholar since Heinz von Foerster.
At the 2015 Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in Berlin, a group of self-proclaimed “Glanvillians” made up largely of former students and collaborators of Glanville, and a few interlopers like myself, met over a breakfast table at the Scandic Hotel, Potzdammer Platz, Berlin and, at the prompting of Thomas Fischer and Candy Herr, committed themselves to consolidating Glanville’s legacy and pointing the way to future extensions and investigations of his central claim that design is the practice of cybernetics and cybernetics is theory for design.
The result is Design Cybernetics: Navigating the New (Springer) edited by Fischer and Herr. Featuring an eclectic blend of mid-career and senior scholars, the assembled chapters probe the vital relationship between conversation and design, the commitments of a radical constructivist epistemology, the virtues of being “out of control”, the embracing of error, and the seemingly paradoxical notion of getting “lost with rigour” across a wide array of artistic and scientific domains.
As both the interviewer and a contributor to the book, I have, in the sprit of “walking our talk”, eschewed the erasure of error by editing and left, in full view, the meandering trail of a wandering and, at times, stumbling conversational journey featuring prolonged gaps in thinking, confusion between different articles by the same author, technical miscues, and even a pitched battle between my two cats, in order to model our commitment to process over perfection and personify Glanville’s favourite Samuel Beckett quote: “Try again, fail again, fail better.” I hope you find the stops along the way of this meandering journey as stimulating as I did.
Thomas Fischer is a design researcher, epistemologist and cybernetician. He is a Professor and Director of Research at the Department of Architecture at XJTLU in Suzhou, China. Thomas is also a Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Christiane M. Herr is an architectural researcher and educator focusing on the areas of structural design, digitally supported design, radical constructivism, design pedagogy and traditional Chinese approaches to creative thinking. Christiane is a Senior Associate Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China, where she directs the Master of Architectural Design as well as the Bachelor of Architectural Engineering programmes.
Adam, with whom I seem to see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and Bulent, of whom I suspect the same, have shared some great content relating to the book and worshop / approach Patterns of Strategy, (which I think ought to revolutionise strategy).
It is our pleasure to welcome you to the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Complexity in Education (IJCE). The aim of the journal is to disseminate mainly empirical research about the application of complexity theory paradigm to educational processes in the broadest sense of the word. The new paradigm focuses on general and specific properties of complex systems and includes the related subfields, such as chaos theory, agent-based modeling, social network analysis, cellular automata and catastrophe theory. In addition, it embraces all other theories and methods that have been developed explicitly to capture complex and unpredictable processes. The above comprise a distinct intellectual tradition that focuses on the study of all things complex, systemic, dynamical and nonlinear and while they typically utilize quantitative approaches, qualitative inquiries are not excluded as long as they adhere to philosophical –ontological and epistemological-considerations of Complex Adaptive Systems (…)
In a famous article written 50 years ago this week, Milton Friedman argued ‘the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits’. The statement remains a lightning rod for the debate on ‘corporate purpose’ – whether public corporations should be managed just for the benefit of shareholders or for a broader set of stakeholders, including employees, suppliers and the community.
We continue to go back and forth. In 2019, to much fanfare, 181 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable publicly committed to manage corporations for stakeholders – reversing their 1997 statement that upheld shareholder primacy! Not so fast, countered Harvard Law Professors Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, who argued that stakeholderism can backfire in insulating corporate leaders from external accountability and compromising economic performance… to the detriment of broader stakeholders!
The thermostat is a simple device that is often used to describe the basic ideas of Cybernetics. Cybernetics is the art of steering. Simply put, a goal is identified and the “system” acts to get closer to the goal. In the example of the thermostat, the user specifies the setpoint for the thermostat such that when the temperature goes below the setpoint, it kicks on the furnace and stops when the internal temperature of the house meets the desired temperature. In a similar fashion, when the temperature goes above a setpoint, the thermostat kicks on the air conditioner to bring down the internal temperature. The thermostat acts as a medium for achieving a constant temperature inside the house. This is also the idea of homeostasis. In order to achieve what the thermostat does, it needs to have a closed loop. It needs to read the internal temperature at specified frequencies…
REMINDER – CECAN Webinar: Trophic Analysis of Directed Networks Tuesday 22nd September 2020, 13:00 – 14:00 BST Presenter: Professor Robert MacKay, University of Warwick You are warmly invited to join us for the following CECAN Webinar… Webinar Overview: Directed networks are used in many domains. Particularly relevant examples to evaluation and appraisal are systems maps and influence maps. Trophic analysis indicates how far up or downstream each node is and computes a quantity called trophic incoherence, but perhaps better called circularity, which indicates the extent to which the network fails to line up with each node feeding to nodes at the next level. Robert will suggest incorporating trophic analysis into systems mapping, and present relations of trophic incoherence with some other network properties, and end with an application of incomplete pairwise comparison to football leagues. Learning Outcomes:How to quantify up/down-streamness in directed networks.How to quantify the directedness (or its complement, the circularity) of a directed network. Presenter Biography – Professor Robert MacKay: Robert MacKay is a Professor in the Mathematics Institute of the University of Warwick and Director of Mathematical Interdisciplinary Research at Warwick. He was Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at Cambridge (1995-2000), founding Director of Warwick’s Centre for Complexity Science from 2007-15 and President of the (UK) Institute of Mathematics and its Applications for 2012-13.
His principal area of research is the theory and applications of Nonlinear Dynamics. Highlights are the discovery and renormalisation explanation of how invariant tori break for magnetic fields and Hamiltonian systems; development of a method to establish regions through which no invariant tori pass; a proof of existence of spatially localised time-periodic movements in networks of oscillators and analysis of their stability, interaction and mobility; construction and proof of a mechanical example of an Anosov system (uniformly hyperbolic); and the construction of indecomposable spatially extended deterministic dynamical systems exhibiting more than one space-time phase. How to Join: This talk will take place via a Zoom Webinar – please click here to register for a place. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. In case you are unable to attend, a recording of the webinar will be uploaded to News and Videos sections of our website following the event.
The Collective Systems Map is the result of 2 months of conversations with a group of professionals from the third sector in Spain. It tries to capture the relationships between the critical factors that will condition and impact the social and economic recovery process after the Covid19 pandemic. It doesn´t pretend to be an exhaustive model to forecast the near future, but it is a framework to enable deep conversations and to integrate the wide range of perspectives and experiences that the participants shared with us.
SYSTEMS THINKING APPROACH
Although we are using a causal loop diagram tool that is part of the systems dynamic methodology, we are not approaching this social complexity from only a positivist perspective, but also from an interpretative perspective. We believe that there are systems in place that condition the way we live and relate to each other, but at the same time people can change them by creating new meaning and acting congruently.
Our purpose is to provide social organizations with a holistic perspective to identify potential risks and threats to their mission to provide effective support to vulnerable people in this complicated moment in history.
COLLECTIVE SYSTEMS MAP
The map starts with the lockdown instigated by the Covid19 pandemic. To tackle the social and health care emergency, the Spanish Government enforced a national lockdown, reducing all economic activity and social interactions. This situation has triggered an economic recession, the size of which has prompted Germany and France to propose a 500bn€ recovery fund.
In our conversations, we focused on understanding what the economic, social, and political consequences of the pandemic could be.
Coinciding with the Conference on Complex Systems, and profiting from the opportunity offered by the presence of a wide variety of experts in different topics, we are organising one-day school for PhD students and early-stage researchers. The school is an informal one-day event that offers early-stage scientists the opportunity to learn about the scientific and life experience of young and senior researchers, try their skills in a data visualisation and have fun playing the specifically tailored online trivia.
This year, due to a worldwide pandemic situation, the school is going to be to be held online on December 4, 2020, before the main CCS conference. The school consists of two non-scientific lectures from young scientists, ask me anything session with a prominent senior researcher, data visualisation contest and an online pub quiz. The sessions will be divided by informal coffee breaks, where participants may chatter with their peers, as in a…
What Lies Beneath – A Human Systems Perspective: A Conversation with Barry Oshry
In this video we are joined by Barry Oshry, a distinguished educator/scholar/practitioner and a pioneer in the field of human systems thinking. Barry’s mission is to create robust human systems – systems of Power and Love. His research, writing and teaching have focused on the identification of patterns of human systems power dynamics arising when people work together in organisations, communities, groups, and families. He has also explored how such patterns can – without awareness – deteriorate into dysfunctional and conflict-laden systems. His research has led him to develop hope through growing partnerships between different parties by helping them understand and see their dynamic patterns, therefore giving rise to life-giving systems. Today, Barry shares with us his journey to seeing systems, describes the multiple patterns we fall into within organizations, and outlines how we can look beneath the veil to see these patterns.
Articles and Resources
Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life
Context, Context, Context: How Our Blindness to Context Cripples Even the Smartest Organizations
The Organic Systems Framework: A New Paradigm for Understanding and Intervening in Organizational Life
Note: Barry would like to clarify that in his references to his Boston University experiences in the 1960s, he refers specifically to what was then called The College of Business Administration whose unique culture and student body were distinct from those of other colleges within the university.
Biography
Barry Oshry is a distinguished educator and a pioneer in the field of human systems thinking. His mission is to create robust human systems – systems of Power and Love. Barry serves this mission through transforming systems blindness into system sight. His research, writing and teaching have focused on the human systems dynamics arising when people are in top, middle, bottom, and customer relationships with one another. His research has also led him to investigate the dynamics at play when dominant cultures interact with “other” cultures. Barry is the developer of the Power Lab, a weeklong total immersion leadership development experience, the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, and the When Cultures Meet Workshop. Barry is the author of Seeing Systems, Leading Systems, and Context, Context, Context. He is also a playwright whose stage productions include “What A Way To Make A Living,” “Hierarchy” and “Peace.” In 1975, Barry and his wife and partner, Karen Ellis Oshry, founded Power+ Systems Training, Inc. in Boston, from which they retired in 2017. It continues to be the organization from which much of his work continues.
This is the first of two videos I created as part of Dr. Mee-Yan Cheung Judge’s Just in Case series. The request was to present the essence of my work along with what drives me to do that work. The title – What Lies Beneath – represents my attempt to cover both. My goal in these presentations is to bring about a cultural shift in how we make sense of our day to day interactions with one another, whether in the family, the organization, the community, or any of the many social systems of our lives. I draw a distinction between how our interactions are normally experienced and how they are viewed through a human systems framework. Using this framework, I demonstrate how, without awareness or choice, we regularly fall into scenarios that are unsatisfying, unproductive, and often destructive of our relationships and our systems.
This framework also enables us – with awareness and choice along with determination and strategic thinking – to create satisfying, creative, and productive relationships in all the systems of our lives.
This material is also covered in Barry Oshry, What Lies Beneath, Organization Development Journal, volume 38, number 3, 11-32. (Fall, 2020) My thanks to the editors.
[PUBLIC EVENT] IMPACT GAPS CANVAS: TACKLING HEROPRENEURSHIP USING AN ECOSYSTEM APPROACH
A two-part, research-focused workshop for social entrepreneurs to learn about the landscape and ecosystem they’re working within.
About this Event
“We are in an age of heropreneurship: everyone wants to ‘be’ a social entrepreneur. The myth of the entrepreneur creates a false hierarchy with ‘start-up founder’ at the top. We foster this obsession in our education, our funding, our awards, and our media. But we don’t just need more founders. We need more positive social impact.”
During this two-part workshop on September 21 and September 28, you will learn how to use the Impact Gaps Canvas: a research tool designed by Daniela Papi-Thornton. The Impact Gaps Canvas teaches entrepreneurs how to take an “ecosystem” approach both at the outset of building their social enterprise and as an iterative process in working on initiatives that require us to constantly adapt, evolve, and respond.
Please note that by registering for this event, you are committing to Part 1 and Part 2 of this workshop.
This workshop is best suited for early stage social entrepreneurs who are looking to understand the landscape of their work: their problem space, existing solutions, and gaps to meaningfully catalyze impact and innovation.
Monday September 21, 12:00-1:30pm ET | PART 1 (90 minutes)
This session explores how well-rounded research identifies landscape gaps that lead to more impactful solutions and enterprise models.
Monday September 28, 12:00-1:00pm ET | PART 2 (60 minutes)
This session is focused on peer coaching and feedback on participants’ first iteration of their Impact Gaps Canvas.
By the end of this workshop series, you will:
Understand the value of an ecosystem approach to problem solving
Frame ecosystem research using the Impact Gaps Canvas
Begin to uncover the root causes of the challenges in your landscape
Learn how to use the Impact Gaps Canvas to research an issue you are passionate about and understand how to identify meaningful gaps within the landscape
Learn the importance of interviewing a variety of landscape stakeholders
Be ready to test assumptions through guided research
We’ve mentioned before Lewes writing about emergence in 1875 – but another important link to the history of the concept here from Matthew Shapiro in the Ecology of Systems Thinking facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecologyofsystemsthinking/permalink/3320043871408067/)
The Theory of Emergence
Reuben AblowitzPhilosophy of ScienceVol. 6, No. 1 (Jan., 1939), pp. 1-16 (16 pages)Published By: The University of Chicago Presshttps://www.jstor.org/stable/184327
Vladimir A. Lefebvre was born and educated in Russia. Since the early 1960s, he keeps working on studying reflexion as a special phenomenon. He has introduced the concepts of reflexive analysis, reflexive games, reflexive systems, and reflexive control in the realm of Social Sciences. Since 1974 he lived and worked in the USA.
Cybernetics helps us understand dynamic systems that are driven by a particular type of data. Here are some examples:
Many economists see markets as essentially driven by price data.
On the Internet (especially social media) we can see systems that are essentially driven by click data.
Stan culture, where hardcore fans gang up on critics who fail to give the latest album a perfect score
In a recent interview with Alice Pearson of CRASSH, Professor Will Davies explains the process as follows:
For Hayek, the advantage of the market was that it was a space in which stimulus and response could be in a constant state of interactivity: that prices send out information to people, which they respond to either in the form of consumer decisions or investment decisions or new entrepreneurial strategies.
Davies argued that this is now managed on screens, with traders on Wall Street and elsewhere constantly interacting with (as he says) flashing numbers that are rising and falling.
The way in which the market is visualized to people, the way it presents itself to people, the extent to which it is visible on a single control panel, is absolutely crucial to someone’s ability to play the market effectively.
Davies attributes to cybernetics a particular vision of human agency: to think of human beings as black boxes which respond to stimuluses in particular ways that can be potentially predicted and controlled. (In market trading, this thought leads naturally to replacing human beings with algorithmic trading.)
Davies then sees this cybernetic vision encapsulated in the British government approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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