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Home | Bridging Systems
What are bridging systems?
Home | Bridging Systems
The inevitable “layering” of models to extend the reach of our understanding
Bruce Edmonds
RofASSS
There is a modelling norm that one should be able tocompletelyunderstand one’s own model. Whilst acknowledging there is a trade-off between a model’s representational adequacy and its simplicity of formulation, this tradition assumes there will be a “sweet spot” where the model is just tractable but also good enough to be usefully informative about the target of modelling – in the words attributed to Einstein, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”1. But what do we do about all the phenomena where to get an adequate model2one has to settle for a complex one (where by “complex” I mean a model that we do not completely understand)? Despite the tradition in Physics to the contrary, it would be an incredibly strong assumption that there areno such phenomena, i.e. that an adequate simple model…
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RSD12 – Relating Systems and Design – will be October 9-20 at Georgetown University, USA
| RSD12 ANNOUNCEMENT | February 22, 2023 |
| RSD12 organising institution announced Georgetown University, USAThis year, RSD12 is a multi-event symposium. The invitation to submit an expression of interest to host a hub site is now open. Proposal deadline is March 7, 2023. |
| RSD12 HUB EOI & CONCEPT PAPER |
| RSD12 Concept |
| SAVE THE DATES: OCTOBER 9–20, 2023READ MORE |
| The Georgetown proposal is a multi-event symposia concept, connecting systemic design hubs around the world in a sequence of in-person, online, and hybrid sessions. Hub symposia are augmented by a daily four-hour online program dedicated to full papers and emergent programming (RSD12 co-schedule). The working dates for RSD12 are October 9th–20th, 2023, excluding weekends (the dates will be finalized following input from confirmed hubs).The RSD12 program will feature up to eight hubs, plus Georgetown University. Hubs will run programs sequentially to avoid an overlap in programming and consist of in-person sessions over at least one day, including a live-streamed keynote speaker. RSD12 will culminate with a three-day event, October 18–20, 2023, hosted on-campus at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and the SDA General Assembly on Friday, October 20th, 2023. |
| RSD12 Call for hubs |
| The Systemic Design Association and Georgetown University are ready to receive Expressions of Interest from partner organizations to host one or multiple days of RSD12 as part of the collaborative hub model envisioned for October 2023. Please submit your EoI before March 1, 2023.READ MORE |
| Expression of Interest and FAQsThe expression of interest provides clear steps for putting your hub idea forward. There’s a schedule and budget template to help make planning easier. FAQs include what you need to do, what to expect from organisers, proceedings and how to apply. |
| Take a minute |
| Systemic Design Symposium SurveySURVEY |
| Please take a minute to complete this brief survey to help guide planning for the next phase of the systemic design symposium and RSD12. The results of this systemic design symposium survey will guide RSD12 planning group decision-making.Since the first RSD symposium was held in 2012 a symposium has been held each year. The inaugural two-day seminar, organized by Birger Sevaldson and Marit Helgesen at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, has expanded to accommodate the systemic design community and the trove of interdisciplinary contributions each year. The planning teams have adapted the programme to online and hybrid formats and in 2021, SDA launched RSDsymposium.org to provide a robust, searchable repository. The repository represents leading thinking on systemic design and consists of hundreds of presentations, papers, and gigamaps. |
| About Georgetown |
| Located in Northwest Washington, D.C., situated along the Potomac River.RSD12 INFO |
| Georgetown University is a top-ranking academic and research institution comprised of 11 undergraduate and graduate schools and degrees in more than 40 disciplines. RSD12 chair, Evan Barba, is an associate professor in the Communication, Culture and Technology Program and co-director of the Iteration Lab, a multidisciplinary laboratory for the design and analysis of socio-technical systems. Evan is an SDA founding member, a consistent contributor to RSD symposia, and joined the SDA board in 2019.If you plan to join the culminating in-person three-day event at Georgetown University, it’s worth planning to stay the weekend. RSD12 is situated near Washington DC museums, which number more than 75 and include the Smithsonian Institution’s 17 museums, many galleries and a zoo. (Bonus: many of the museums are free of charge.) |
| Opportunities |
| TU Delft and AHO have open calls for professors of systemic design.Assistant Professor Systemic Design, TU Delft—deadline March 16Professor/Associate Professor in Design, AHO—deadline March 26 |
| “How we might design with and across intergenerational communities to cultivate pluralistic, participatory communities?” Elon University’s Design Forge 2023 sessions run from March 29-31. Sign up now for free online registration. For more information contact Danielle Lake. |
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Complexity72h
Complexity72h is an interdisciplinary workshop for young researchers in complex systems. Participants form teams and carry out projects in a three days’ time, i.e. 72 hours. The goal of each team is to upload on the arXiv (or similar repositories) a report of their work by the end of the event. The editions of 2018 and 2019 were a success: 11 out of 11 projects became arXiv preprints and new collaborations were born. Complexity72h is back for a 2023 edition, which will take place in Palma (Mallorca, Spain) on June 26-30.
More info & application: www.complexity72h.com
Deadline for applications: March 1st 2023
Complexity Explorables | The Prisoner’s Kaleidoscope
This explorable illustrates beautiful dynamical patterns that can be generated by a simple game theoretic model on a lattice. The core of the model is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a legendary game analyzed in game theory. In the game, two players can choose to cooperate or defect. Depending on their choice, they receive a pre-specified payoffs. The payoffs are chosen such that it seems difficult to make the right strategy choice.
Read the full article at: www.complexity-explorables.org
Davide Nicolini on the Tavistock Institute and associated socio-technical systems tradition in Approaches to the Study of Work part 2- Classics AoM PDW LIVE – Talking About Organizations Podcast 93
Shared for Davide Nicolini on the Tavistock Institute and associated socio-technical systems tradition (second speaker in Part 2)
93: Approaches to the Study of Work — Classics AoM PDW LIVESEPTEMBER 13, 2022 EPISODES, EVENTS, ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY 00:03:29Audio Player00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.From the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2022With panelists Steve Barley, Gina Dokko, Ingrid Erickson, and Davide Nicolini (pictured at left)
93: Approaches to the Study of Work – Classics AoM PDW LIVE – Talking About Organizations Podcast
Nature’s order | #11 – by Christian Lemp
Nature’s order | #11Biological systems, information theory, research updates, and leading with the heartChristian Lemp
Nature’s order | #11 – by Christian Lemp
Fixing The Good Regulator Theorem – johnswentworth
Fixing The Good Regulator Theorem
10 min read
9th Feb 2021
Fixing The Good Regulator Theorem
The Original Good Regulator Theorem
Making The Notion Of “Model” A Little Less Silly
Minimum Entropy -> Maximum Expected Utility And Imperfect Knowledge
Making The Notion Of “Model” A Lot Less Silly
Crossposted from the AI Alignment Forum. May contain more technical jargon than usual.
Conant & Ashby’s “Every Good Regulator Of A System Must Be A Model Of That System” opens with:
The design of a complex regulator often includes the making of a model of the system to be regulated. The making of such a model has hitherto been regarded as optional, as merely one of many possible ways.
In this paper a theorem is presented which shows, under very broad conditions, that any regulator that is maximally both successful and simple must be isomorphic with the system being regulated. (The exact assumptions are given.) Making a model is thus necessary.
This may be the most misleading title and summary I have ever seen on a math paper. If by “making a model” one means the sort of thing people usually do when model-making – i.e. reconstruct a system’s variables/parameters/structure from some information about them – then Conant & Ashby’s claim is simply false.
What they actually prove is that every regulator which is optimal and contains no unnecessary noise is equivalent to a regulator which first reconstructs the variable-values of the system it’s controlling, then chooses its output as a function of those values (ignoring the original inputs). This does not mean that every such regulator actually reconstructs the variable-values internally. And Ashby & Conant’s proof has several shortcomings even for this more modest claim.
This post presents a modification of the Good Regulator Theorem, and provides a reasonably-general condition under which any optimal minimal regulator must actually construct a model of the controlled system internally. The key idea is conceptually similar to some of the pieces from Risks From Learned Optimization. Basically: an information bottleneck can force the use of a model, in much the same way that an information bottleneck can force the use of a mesa-optimizer. Along the way, we’ll also review the original Good Regulator Theorem and a few minor variants which fix some other problems with the original theorem.
Continues in source…
Fixing The Good Regulator Theorem – LessWrong
Coordinated management of meaning
Coordinated management of meaning
Coordinated management of meaning – Wikipedia
One of the topics I covered well on https://model.report before that went down, and has never properly been replicated here.
Introductions:
https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-coordinated-management-of-meaning.htm
At SCiO (access to members only, but only £30/year including many open ‘development days’:
https://www.systemspractice.org/resources/co-ordinated-management-meaning-systemic-framework
http://wordpress.ei.columbia.edu/ac4/about/our-approach/coordinated-management-of-meaning/
one-page pdf
one-page website
http://talkabouttalk.weebly.com/coordinated-management-of-meaning-theory.html
A nice summary on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/coordinated-management-meaning-carlotta-maria-shinn-russell/
A good 18-page pdf
A good original piece from W. Barnett Pearce, one of the originators:
And with Vernon Cronen, the other originator:
Five minute video: http://www.stes-apes.med.ulg.ac.be/Documents_electroniques/MET/MET-COM/ELE%20MET-COM%20A-8192.pdf
Extension to community dialogue process (short paper)
Click to access ELE%20MET-COM%20A-8192.pdf
The W. Barnett Pearce records:
http://digitalarchives.fitchburgstate.edu/digital/collection/p15892coll12
Trond Hjorteland introductions to Socio-Technical Systems Theory
My attention was drawn by this tweet:
Wonder what makes a Search Conference so different from the seemingly similar Future Search? The latter claims to extend the former, but have left out core parts to make it suit a terrible individualiatic and non-systemic thinking. Here’s a comparison by M Emery.#OpenSystems
Trond Hjorteland on Twitter: “Wonder what makes a Search Conference so different from the seemingly similar Future Search? The latter claims to extend the former, but have left out core parts to make it suit a terrible individualiatic and non-systemic thinking. Here’s a comparison by M Emery. #OpenSystems https://t.co/QAKiJrJPx9” / Twitter
It was only after enquiring with Trond about the technical language that I realised what an advocate for STS he has been (along of course with Merrelyn Emery herself), particularly in the IT/Agile space.
See
Participative Design for Participative Democracy
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/participative-design-democracy-trond-hjorteland/
Sociotechnical Systems Design for the “Digital Coal Mines”*
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
Autonomy across the enterprise
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/autonomy-across-enterprise-trond-hjorteland/
(all on LinkedIn – and many other articles)
Also the evolving six important psychological criteria for job satisfaction, on Twitter
Journal launched: Frontiers in Complex Systems
Frontiers in Complex Systems publishes rigorously peer-reviewed quantitative research on Complex Systems, either theoretical, experimental, mathematical, computational or data description. Field Chief Editor Maxi San Miguel at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC) in Spain is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international experts. This open-access journal is to become the reference and natural publication outlet for the Complex Systems community at large, and to be at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and technological innovation in the field to researchers, academics, entrepreneurs, companies, policy makers and the public worldwide.
Frontiers in Complex Systems covers fundamental questions, theories and general methodologies on complex systems as well as the cross-disciplinary application of these concepts and methods, often giving rise to new disciplines. It provides a forum for cross-disciplinary communication and welcomes quantitative research from different fields including Physics, Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Climate…
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A CRITIQUE OF CYBERNETICS – Jonas (1953)
A CRITIQUE OF CYBERNETICS
HANS JONAS
Social ResearchVol. 20, No. 2 (SUMMER 1953) , pp. 172-192 (21 pages)
Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press
A CRITIQUE OF CYBERNETICS on JSTOR
Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lesson Learned in Trying to Reform AI – Agre (1997)
Timely….
Toward a Critical Technical Practice:
Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AIPhilip E. Agre
Toward a Critical Technical Practice
Department of Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90095-1520pagre@ucla.edu
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/This is a chapter in Geof Bowker, Les Gasser, Leigh Star, and Bill Turner, eds, Bridging the Great Divide: Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, Erlbaum, 1997.
EconPapers: The Nondesignability of Living Systems: A Lesson from the Failed Experiments in Socialist Countries – Hu (1991)
The Nondesignability of Living Systems: A Lesson from the Failed Experiments in Socialist CountriesJixuan HuCato Journal, 1991, vol. 11, issue 1, 27-46
EconPapers: The Nondesignability of Living Systems: A Lesson from the Failed Experiments in Socialist Countries
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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