This volume engages with post-humanist and transhumanist approaches to present an original exploration of the question of how humankind will fare in …
New Book: Post-Human Futures
New Book: Post-Human Futures
Recent Updates Page 209
Fresh from the press | Draw your organization! A solution-focused theory-method for business school challenges and change
Abstract: This article presents a solution-focused approach to current problems and criticisms faced by business schools. In order to facilitate the required shift from problems to solutions, I outline a theory-method and demonstrate how it has informed my teaching at FT-ranked business schools and other institutions of higher education in two subjects and on three continents. I […]
Release | Draw your organization! A solution-focused theory-method for business school challenges and change
Northumberland County Council seek someone…
Northumberland County Council seek someone with SSM, SODA, systems maps etc experience for Community Conversations 15 Mar-15 Apr – please see attached.
This came through SCiO – see attached and keep us in the loop if you go for it please!
https://bit.ly/3dOyyTE
Complex Systems Society Seminars
We created a calendar to aggregate seminars and events from and for members of the Complex Systems Society.
Please share and subscribe.You can access it here, or in iCalformat.
If you would like to add events to this calendar, please send me an email.
Using ‘Systems Thinking’ To Make Sense Of The World, From Pandemics To Politics | On Point, WBUR
source:
Using ‘Systems Thinking’ To Make Sense Of The World, From Pandemics To Politics | On Point
Using ‘Systems Thinking’ To Make Sense Of The World, From Pandemics To Politics47:22
February 25, 2021
To solve a puzzle, you never just look at one piece of it. So why do we try to tackle the most complex problems of modern life in such a piecemeal fashion?
From pandemics to politics, we discuss whether shifting to so-called “systems thinking” unlock hidden solutions to the world’s biggest problems.
Zeynep Tufekci, associate professor at the UNC School of Information and Library Science. Author of the Insight newsletter. (@zeynep)
From The Reading List
New York Times: “To Understand This Era, You Need to Think in Systems” — “So as a million media theorists before me have argued, in a few short decades, or depending on how you want to rate it, a few centuries, we’ve moved from the defining problem of human civilization being information scarcity.”
The Hill: “Systems Thinking — the new American idea” — “Systems Thinking is a somewhat vague concept, but one that is getting increased attention thanks to the news about coronavirus. The premise is simple, but putting Systems Thinking into practice can be challenging, especially for individualistic-minded Americans.”
Get up to speed on the local coronavirus outbreak and other news Boston is talking about. Add our daily newsletter to your morning routine. Sign up now.
The Atlantic: “It Wasn’t Just Trump Who Got It Wrong” — “Many will be tempted to see the tragic coronavirus pandemic through a solely partisan lens: The Trump administration spectacularly failed in its response, by cutting funding from essential health services and research before the crisis, and later by denying its existence and its severity.”
New York Times: “How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right” — “When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans in January that they didn’t need to wear masks, Dr. S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor at the Mayo Clinic and the editor of the Blood Cancer Journal, couldn’t believe his ears.”
The Atlantic: “America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent” — “Now that Joe Biden has won the presidency, we can expect debates over whether Donald Trump was an aberration (‘not who we are!’) or another instantiation of America’s pathologies and sins.”
This program aired on February 25, 2021.
source:
Using ‘Systems Thinking’ To Make Sense Of The World, From Pandemics To Politics | On Point
Complex systems and wicked problems – Thea Snow – YouTube
Complex systems and wicked problems – Thea Snow 133 views•Streamed live on 24 Feb 2021 4 0 SHARE SAVE Design for Impact 94 subscribers SUBSCRIBED In this session, Thea Snow spoke to us about the Cynefin framework and how to apply systems thinking in practical ways. If you want to be part of the next session, come and join us! https://www.designforimpact.co/ SHOW LESS
Complex systems and wicked problems – Thea Snow – YouTube
Release | George Spencer Brown’s “Design with the NOR”: With Related Essays
A polymath and author of Laws of Form, George Spencer Brown, brought together mathematics, electronics, engineering and philosophy to form an unlikely bond. This book investigates Design with NOR, the title of the yet unpublished 1961 typescript by Spencer Brown.
Available as e-book or for pre-order in print.
Suggested citation: Roth S., Heidingsfelder M., Clausen L., and Laursen K. (2021), George Spencer Brown’s “Design with the NOR”. With related essays, Bingley: Emerald.
Photo credit: Markus Heidingsfelder.
Systems Practice course with Rob Ricigliano on Acumen Academy – Free – May 11, 2021 – 11 weeks
Should be good for systems mapping (maybe some systems dynamics) and that sort of ‘systems change’ (social activism, peacebuilding, philanthropic sort of perspective).
Systems Practice
Systems Practice
Learn to use a systems thinking approach to move from “impossible” to impact
Free May 11, 2021 11 weeks Enroll Now
Learn How To
Map a complex system to gain clarity
Identify specific points in the system where you can make a big impact
Create leverage hypotheses to describe how you will aim to create systemic change
Develop a framework for learning and adapting over time as your system changes
Learn For Free
New courses at no cost—made available every month.
Change Your View Of The World
Draw inspiration from thought-provoking readings, videos, and reflections.
Gain Diverse Perspectives
Learn with a team that brings different experiences and thinking to the table.
Receive A Certificate Of Recognition
Attain a “Statement of Accomplishment” recognizing your successful completion of a course.
T
his is the best approach for solving complex problems I’ve ever seen.
Jakub
Course Syllabus
01
LEARNING TOOLS
35 instructional videos featuring Rob Ricigliano, The Systems and Complexity coach for The Omidyar Group
A 94-page Systems Practice workbook produced by The Omidyar Group and Daylight Design
7 workshop guides that break down each stage of a Systems Practice
7 reading guides featuring in-depth case studies Free access to the Kumu.io platform for systems mapping for course participants
02
SECTION 1: WHAT IS SYSTEMS PRACTICE?
03
SECTION 2: SET A GUIDING STAR AND NEAR STAR FOR YOUR SYSTEM
Video: Systems Thinking Mindsets
Video: Setting Goals for Systems Change
Video: Examples of Guiding Stars, Near Stars, and Framing Questions
Reading 2: Systems Practice in Action with Case Studies
Activity: Developing Your Guiding Star and Near Star
04
SECTION 3: EXPLORE FORCES IN YOUR SYSTEM
Video: Explore the Forces in your System
Video: Enablers and Inhibitors
Video: Upstream and Downstream Effects
Video: Structural, Attitudinal and Transactional Forces
Reading: Explore Forces in Your System
Activity: SAT Analysis
05
SECTION 4: BUILD LOOPS AND DISCOVER THE DEEP STRUCTURE
Video: Tell the Story of Your Loops
Video: Uncover the Deep Structure
Video: Examples of Uncovering Your Deep Structure
Video: Big Picture Reminder: Why Use Systems Practice?
Reading: Uncover the Story of Your System
Activity: Create Loops
Activity: Discover the Deep Structure
06
SECTION 5: MAP YOUR SYSTEM
Video: Build Your Map
Video: Avoid Getting Stuck
Video: Craft Your Systems Narrative
Video: Socialize Your Map
Reading: Map Your System
Activity: Build Your Map
Activity: Craft Your Narrative
Activity: Socialize and Iterate Your Map
07
SECTION 6: FIND OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEVERAGE
Video: Discover Opportunities for Leverage
Video: Tips for Finding Opportunities for Leverage
Video: Develop Leverage Hypotheses
Reading: Find Opportunities for Leverage
Activity: Develop a Systemic Problem Statement
Activity: Find Opportunities for Leverage
Activity: Articulate Leverage Hypotheses
08
SECTION 7: BUILD A SYSTEMS STRATEGY
Video: How to Pick the Right Leverage Hypotheses
Video: Fast and Slow Variables
Video: Scaffold Your Learning
Video: 4 Drivers of Success in the Systems World
Video: Adapt Quickly
Video: Parting Words from Rob
Reading: Build a Systems Strategy
Activity: Evaluate Fit
Activity: Maximize Potential for Leverage
Activity: Develop Key Performance Questions
Activity: Learn from the System
Course Description
With so many interconnected forces at play in our complex world, it’s easy to get discouraged by detours or dead ends when striving to create enduring change. Systems Practice is a way to make sense of complex environments and uncover the dynamics that have the greatest potential for impact.
This course will lead you through each step of understanding a system, analyzing it to find points of leverage, and learning how to adapt in a changing environment. You will also gain a portfolio of step-by-step tools, processes, and mindsets to apply to your current and future work.
Systems Practice Learn to use a systems thinking approach to move from “impossible” to impact Master Innovation Free May 11, 2021 11 Weeks
Systems Practice
Release | The Great Reset. Restratification for Lives, Livelihoods, and the Planet
Abstract: In reviewing the Great Reset, an initiative launched by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in response to the global coronavirus crisis, this perspective article considers the scenario of an epochal transition from capitalism to “restorism”. To facilitate the observation of underlying trends and assumptions, a systems-theoretical framework is developed for the observation of both […]
Release | The Great Reset. Restratification for Lives, Livelihoods, and the Planet — Dr. Steffen Roth
Adam Thompson’s Zen Organisations blog
Adam is a brilliant systems explainer, a consultant, and happily shares a lot of his conceptual background with me (Viable Systems, particularly a focus here, Systems Leadership Theory (Macdonald et al), Barry Oshry’s power+systems approach and a background in lean with some agile – he also draws from Theory of Constraints (and no doubt many others)
His regular updates and videos are well worth following:
https://zenorganisations.com/
videos directly here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdnbhf4icwDsjhYAD4HyNBQ/videos
Systems Practice – new website and blog from Yoel Ben-Avraham
main page: https://syspractice.com/
about us: https://syspractice.com/#aboutus
Blog – Systems Practice
Thinking in Systems: a Primer
Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global.[…]Posted in Books, ResourcesTagged book, systems practice, systems thinking0 Comments
Kumu – Systems Mapping
Kumu is an analytics and visualization platform that creates interactive relationship maps. It can be used to summarise complex datasets with dozens of variables in a visually simple map.[…]Posted in Platform, ResourcesLeave a comment
Systems Practice?
I don’t know about you, but every time I’m asked what it is that I do or “What the heck is Systems Practice?” I actually tell them!
Most people respond “Uhhh?” In this article I’ll share a choice selection of short answers to this question by others, far more famous than myself to see how they explained it
source:
Blog – Systems Practice
Entropy | Special Issue : What is Self-Organization?
Many of us have used the notion of “self-organization” in our studies. What is it precisely, though? A constituent element could be, e.g., the emergence of non-trivial properties from comparatively simple rules. What would simple, non-trivial or complex emergence mean in this context?
In this Special Issue, we invite viewpoints, perspectives, and applied considerations on questions regarding the notions of self-organization and complexity. Examples include:
Routes: In how many different ways can self-organization manifest itself? Would it be meaningful, or even possible, to attempt a classification?
Detection: Can we detect it automatically—either the process or the outcome? Or do we need a human observer to classify a system as “self-organizing”? This issue may be related to the construction of quantifiers, e.g., in terms of functions on phase space, such as entropy measures.
Complexity: Is a system self-organizing only when the resulting dynamical state is “complex”? What does “complex” mean exact;ly?…
View original post 67 more words
ASC Speaker Series #3: Towards a Critical Cybernetics by Klaus Krippendorff Tickets, Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 12pm EST | Free
book at source:
ASC Speaker Series #3: Towards a Critical Cybernetics by Klaus Krippendorff Tickets, Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 9:00 AM | Eventbrite
FEB 28
ASC Speaker Series #3: Towards a Critical Cybernetics by Klaus Krippendorff
by American Society for Cybernetics FollowFree
Event Information
What’s solvable within one context doesn’t necessarily account for the larger social consequences. It’s affected by language.
Klaus Krippendorff has been involved with cybernetic thinking for many decades now. During this presentation he will discuss his current thoughts on what he refers to as “Critical Cybernetics,” as a follow up to his talk, “Agency Algorithms, New Forms of Oppression and How Cybernetics Might Help,“ at the American Society for Cybernetics conference in 2019.
Critical Cybernetics is his response to the observation that people often uncritically focus either on small problems they think are solvable within the context of existing institutions, are satisfied with their own understanding and describing their observations as outsiders, and are unaware of how their language affects what they are describing. All of which make it difficult the larger social consequences of what our interactions with technologies set in motion.
ASC Speakers Series: Cybernetics and humans’ knowing
Participant Bio
Klaus Krippendorff is the Gregory Bateson emeritus professor for cybernetics, language, and culture at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Philadelphia. He was a student of Ross Ashby, is a long-time member of American Society for Cybernetics and has a history of applying cybernetics to social phenomena; communication in particular. Klaus has a background in design which brings him closer to seeing the social world in which we live as being constructed and constantly reconstructed, by actions that are in turn shaped by different discourses, among which the reflexive language of cybernetics is an especially potent one.
Critical Cybernetics
Klaus Krippendorff will present his latest insights about how cybernetic technologies not merely mediate between members of society but tend to confine human agency.
“Critical Cybernetics” is his response to the observation that people often uncritically focus either on small problems they think are solvable within the context of existing institutions, are satisfied with their own understanding and describing their observations as outsiders, and are unaware of how their language affects what they are describing. These approaches make it difficult to address the larger social consequences of what our interactions with technologies set in motion.
- Klaus will show that over the last 50 years, reliance on uncritical cybernetics, namely circular causal explanations, has advanced the design of cybernetic technologies but remained blind to their larger social implications. One of its unintended consequences is the exponential growth of digitalizing business and government practices that thrive on the economic benefits of cybernetic technologies. As a consequence, corporations and bureaucracies have become increasingly automated, algorithmized, and closed to human control, thus rendering the population of innocent users as mere customers and operators.
- Klaus’ main thesis is that our own everyday vocabularies, metaphors in dominant narratives mistakenly attribute agency to technologies and social systems which implies the blind surrender of our own agency and entraps us in submission to the algorithmic logic of cybernetic technologies. Uncritical cybernetics’ lack of considering these social consequences has fed the unfettered growth of huge technologically driven complexes and encouraged a new form of oppression.
- Critical cybernetics is critical insofar as it aims to emancipate members of social systems from burdensome entrapments by uncritically designed and used cybernetic technologies. It recognizes that language not merely describes observations; using it can change observations. Modifications of how we language reality into being can liberate speakers from this new form of oppression. Klaus is not promoting a particular ethic, rather he is encouraging critical cyberneticians, and all who care, into new conversations capable of critically examining the social consequences of all imaginable cybernetic technologies. He argues that this is a way to regain human agency where it was lacking or felt intolerable.
book at source:
ASC Speaker Series #3: Towards a Critical Cybernetics by Klaus Krippendorff Tickets, Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 9:00 AM | Eventbrite
An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems with Gerald Midgley | lnu.se – 4 MAR 2021 2:00 PM-3:30 PM Swedish time
An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems | lnu.se
4 MAR 2021 2:00 PM-3:30 PM
An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems
Welcome to a seminar in informatics organized by the Linnaeus University Systems Community field of knowledge and Centre for Systems Studies, Faculty of Business, Law and Politics, University of Hull, UK.
Title: An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems
Lecturer: Gerald Midgley, international guest professor at the Department of Informatics, Linnaeus University
Organizer: Linnaeus University Systems Community and Centre for Systems Studies, Faculty of Business, Law and Politics, University of Hull, UK
Abstract
We are increasingly facing ‘wicked problems’. They are stubborn, challenging and often have to be managed rather than solved. They frequently involve interlinked issues, multiple agencies with different perspectives on both the problem and potential solutions, conflict over desired outcomes or the means to achieve them, power relations making change difficult, and uncertainty about the possible effects of proposed changes. While traditional scientific, policy and management approaches can make a useful contribution, we need something more than these if we want to gain a bigger picture understanding of how to act in the face of wicked problems. Systems thinking can help. In this talk, Gerald Midgley will introduce a framework of systems thinking skills, plus a variety of systems ideas and methods that can help people put these skills into practice. He will illustrate the use of the methods with a number of examples from his own social policy, natural resource management and community development projects in the UK and New Zealand. In this way, he will show how we can begin to get a better handle on wicked problems.
Gerald Midgley is Professor of Systems Thinking in the Centre for Systems Studies, Faculty of Business, Law and Politics, University of Hull, UK. He also holds Adjunct Professorships at Linnaeus University, Sweden; the University of Queensland, Australia; the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Mälardalen University, Sweden; and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has held research leadership roles in both academia and government, having spent ten years as Director of the Centre for Systems Studies at Hull, and seven years as a Senior Science Leader in the Institute for Environmental Science and Research (ESR), New Zealand. Gerald has written over 300 papers for academics and practitioners on systems thinking and community operational research, and has been involved in a wide variety of public sector, community development, health service, technology foresight and resource management projects. He was the 2013/14 President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and has written or edited 11 books. These include: Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology, and Practice (Kluwer, 2000); Systems Thinking, Volumes I-IV (Sage, 2003); Community Operational Research: OR and Systems Thinking for Community Development (Kluwer, 2004); and Forensic DNA Evidence on Trial: Science and Uncertainty in the Courtroom (Emergent, 2011). Gerald is also the editor of a Systems Thinking book series for Routledge, with the first two titles released in 2020, and his forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Systems Thinking will be published in 2021.2:00 PM3:30 PMVia Zoom, https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/62265557447Sadaf SalavatiAdd to your calendar
book at source:
An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems | lnu.se
IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021) – conference with stream on sociocybernetics starts today ($50/25 for students, 800 sessions in total)
confrence link – https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2020/meetingapp.cgi/Symposium/617
Program of the RC51 (sociocybernetics) ISA FORUM: https://sociocybernetics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/RC51-ISA-FORUM-PROGRAM.pdf
Organisers say:
“If you are presenting a paper, thanks for being one of the 60 participants have prepared a paper proposal to discuss Sociocybernetics as a way to observe “the Blind Spot of Society” and as a toolbox to think differently. Sessions will include topics such as the digitalization and societal innovation, the transnational spaces and digital divide, complexity and truth. Art, resistance, otherness, ageing, agency, reflexivity, scientific citizenship, democracy and inequalities will be at the core of our debates. The program has some key instructions and particularly a full view of RC51 sessions. You can also can have a view online of the full RC51 program https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2020/meetingapp.cgi/Symposium/617 with links to every session, abstract and participant.“
If you are not presenting paper this time, there is still time to register with View-Only Registration (regular fee USD50, student fee USD25). This will give you access to all 800 live sessions, to the session recordings posted after the Forum & to Congress Program Book & Book Abstracts. Most importantly, you will be able to see the 16 full RC51 program sessions :D. https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2020/registration/call.cgi
The program attached includes a preview of two JoS call for papers. Andrew Mitchell has recently joined the JoS project to be part of the editorial team. Along with Fabio Giglietto, they have produced two CfP. One for the Forum papers and other the special issue on Felix Geyer contributions to Sociocybernetics. More information in the attachment
RC51 is on the move. Be active part of it.
On behalf of the RC51 Board
Raija, Martina and Patricia
RC51 ISA Forum Coordinators
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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