systems thinking

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Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Meadows. Donella, Diana Wright

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, clean water, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, game design, Garrett Hardin, Gunnar Myrdal, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, peak oil, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Stanford prison experiment, systems thinking, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, Whole Earth Review

From this understanding I move into what you and I can do about restructuring the systems we live within. We can learn how to look for leverage points for change. I conclude with the largest lessons of all, the ones derived from the wisdom shared by most systems thinkers I know. For those who want to explore systems thinking further, the Appendix provides ways to dig deeper into the subject with a glossary, a bibliography of systems thinking resources, a summary list of systems principles, and equations for the models described in Part One. When our small research group moved from MIT to Dartmouth College years ago, one of the Dartmouth engineering professors watched us in seminars for a while, and then dropped by our offices.

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Sweeney, Linda B. and Dennis Meadows. The Systems Thinking Playbook. (2001). A collection of 30 short gaming exercises that illustrate lessons about systems thinking and mental models. Organizations, Websites, Periodicals, and Software Creative Learning Exchange—an organization devoted to developing “systems citizens” in K–12 education. Publisher of The CLE Newsletter and books for teachers and students. www.clexchange.org isee systems, inc.—Developer of STELLA and iThink software for modeling dynamic systems. www.iseesystems.com Pegasus Communications—Publisher of two newsletters, The Systems Thinker and Leverage Points, as well as many books and other resources on systems thinking. www.pegasuscom.com System Dynamics Society—an international forum for researchers, educators, consultants, and practitioners dedicated to the development and use of systems thinking and system dynamics around the world.

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I also have drawn from thinkers in a variety of disciplines, who, as far as I know, never used a computer to simulate a system, but who are natural systems thinkers. They include Gregory Bateson, Kenneth Boulding, Herman Daly, Albert Einstein, Garrett Hardin, Václav Havel, Lewis Mumford, Gunnar Myrdal, E.F. Schumacher, a number of modern corporate executives, and many anonymous sources of ancient wisdom, from Native Americans to the Sufis of the Middle East. Strange bedfellows, but systems thinking transcends disciplines and cultures and, when it is done right, it overarches history as well. Having spoken of transcendence, I need to acknowledge factionalism as well.

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything by Peter Morville

A Pattern Language, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, augmented reality, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Black Swan, business process, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Computer Lib, disinformation, disruptive innovation, folksonomy, holacracy, index card, information retrieval, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Kanban, Lean Startup, Lyft, messenger bag, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Nelson Mandela, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Project Xanadu, quantum entanglement, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, single source of truth, source of truth, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Ted Nelson, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, zero-sum game

Thinking systematically also requires several shifts in perception, which lead in turn to different ways to teach, and different ways to organize society.viii There’s a subversive dimension to systems thinking with hints of danger and risk. And this talk of change can overwhelm. We can’t have everyone thinking this way. But, at times, we need activists and entrepreneurs who can see the system as the source of its own problems, and restructure it. Progress depends upon people who know there must be a better way. These change agents are often found in and around information systems, because our tools of communication are powerful levers of change. As the legendary systems thinker and environmentalist Donella Meadows explains: Some interconnections in systems are actual physical flows, such as the water in the tree’s trunk or the students progressing through a university.

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It’s an unconventional text that explains why slums stay slums and traffic gets worse. So it’s no surprise that Jane Jacobs was a systems thinker. To see complex systems of functional order as order, and not as chaos, takes understanding. The leaves dropping from the trees in autumn, the interior of an airplane engine, the entrails of a dissected rabbit, the city desk of a newspaper, all appear to be chaos if they are seen without comprehension. Once they are understood as systems of order, they actually look different.xiii Her 1961 book was an attack on conventional city planning and a perfect illustration of systems thinking. Jane recognized cities as problems in organized complexity, a jumble of parts interrelated into an organic whole.

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Economic volatility, political corruption, crime, drug addiction, lifestyle disease, and environmental degradation are systemic. Nobody creates these problems on purpose or wants them to continue. They emerge from the system and are wholly immune to the quick fix. That’s where systems thinking comes in. While conventional thinking uses analysis to break things down, systems thinking relies on synthesis to see the whole and the interactions between parts. As Russell Ackoff, a pioneer in systems thinking and business management, explains: Systems thinking looks at relationships (rather than unrelated objects), connectedness, process (rather than structure), the whole (rather than just its parts), the patterns (rather than the contents) of a system, and context.

Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win by Chris Kuenne, John Danner

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset light, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bob Noyce, business climate, business logic, call centre, cloud computing, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gordon Gekko, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, pattern recognition, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, sugar pill, super pumped, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, work culture , zero-sum game

Once hooked by the problem, they fixate on execution, at least until the next intriguing problem emerges in search of solution. Their management style is hands-on to the point of being overly controlling at times. Explorers are systems thinkers who like to tinker with how a system works to develop a better approach. As a result, they tend to be quite empirical in their decision making, relying on the relevant facts and underlying logic of the issue, rather than emotion or intuition. These builders attract similar problem solvers, who build their own confidence after demonstrating their particular systems-thinking chops. Explorers can be rather dismissive of areas in their companies that don’t relate directly to their primary passion for solution design.

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If you are an Explorer, you get your Builder Personality Type label from your twin drives of curiosity and confidence to seek and develop a better approach to solving commercially valuable problems. You consistently bring your detailed systems thinking to every part of your business. You did not necessarily set out to be an entrepreneur, but rather are always on the prowl for the next puzzle to solve, the next mystery to decode. Bringing your systems thinking to each of the growth dynamics works well most of the time, particularly as you build through the first few levels of scale. Launching your first products, winning early customers, and attracting your first set of investors are all challenges that can play to your linear, fact-based, problem-solving skills.

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If you are an Explorer, you have a keen eye for which problems offer the opportunity to create and capture value through a systematic and inherently scalable process. The Explorer’s Gifts and Gaps Throughout this chapter, we have seen how Explorers apply their systems thinking and deep curiosity to identify and then exploit commercial opportunities. As an Explorer, you have a powerful set of gifts and have figured out how to apply them to generate economic value. However, your exceedingly high need for control and its secondary effects can hinder you along the path to scale. Here is a brief summary of your gifts and gaps: Curiosity and systems thinking: As an Explorer, you are endowed with an extraordinary curiosity, which motivates you to plumb the depths of why things operate the way they do.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global village, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Minsky moment, mobile money, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, price mechanism, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wikimedia commons

And so over half a century, GDP growth shifted from being a policy option to a political necessity, and the de facto policy goal. To enquire whether further growth was always desirable, necessary, or indeed possible, became irrelevant, or political suicide. One person who was willing to risk political suicide was the visionary systems thinker Donella Meadows – one of the lead authors of the 1972 Limits to Growth report – and she didn’t mince her words. ‘Growth is one of the stupidest purposes ever invented by any culture,’ she declared in the late 1990s; ‘we’ve got to have an enough.’ In response to the constant call for more growth, she argued, we should always ask: ‘growth of what, and why, and for whom, and who pays the cost, and how long can it last, and what’s the cost to the planet, and how much is enough?’

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What’s more, the diagram also provides the basis for different ways of measuring national income in an accounting framework that is still used worldwide. It is, evidently, a handy picture, making visible many key macroeconomic ideas. The trouble, however, lies in what it leaves invisible. In the words of the systems thinker John Sterman, ‘The most important assumptions of a model are not in the equations, but what’s not in them; not in the documentation, but unstated; not in the variables on the computer screen, but in the blank spaces around them.’4 The Circular Flow diagram certainly needs to be introduced with this caveat.

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It has since transformed many fields of research, from the study of ecosystems and computer networks to weather patterns and the spread of disease. And although it is all about complexity, its core concepts are actually quite simple to grasp – meaning that, despite our instincts, we can all learn, through training and experience, to be better ‘systems thinkers’. A growing number of economists are thinking in systems too, making complexity economics, network theory, and evolutionary economics among the most dynamic fields of economic research. But, thanks to the lasting influence of Jevons and Walras, most economics teaching and textbooks still introduce the essence of the economic world as linear, mechanical and predictable, summed up by the market’s equilibrating mechanism.

Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook by Michael Lopp

do what you love, finite state, game design, job satisfaction, John Gruber, knowledge worker, reality distortion field, remote working, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, sorting algorithm, systems thinking, web application

There isn't a class in college that teaches any of this. Wikipedia can give you definition, but it can't help a social introvert who sees much of the world through a keyboard. This is the hand you've been dealt. Let's embrace the geek. A System Thinker We're different, and understanding these differences is a good place to start. At our core, I believe geeks are system thinkers. A simpler way to think about this is that in the mind of a geek, the world is like a computer—discernible, knowable, and finite. After years of successfully using the computer as a means of interacting with the world, we've come to follow a certain credo: We seek definition to understand the system so that we can discern the rules so that we know what to do next so that we win.

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Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener

autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, behavioural economics, Blitzscaling, blockchain, blood diamond, Burning Man, call centre, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, digital divide, digital nomad, digital rights, end-to-end encryption, Extropian, functional programming, future of work, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, growth hacking, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, Jane Jacobs, job automation, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, means of production, medical residency, microaggression, microapartment, microdosing, new economy, New Urbanism, Overton Window, passive income, Plato's cave, pull request, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Social Justice Warrior, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech bro, tech worker, technoutopianism, telepresence, telepresence robot, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, urban planning, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, work culture , Y2K, young professional

I didn’t give the repository a second thought, until it was all over the news. Later, I would wonder if I had missed it because I was more of a product of the tech industry—with its context aversion, and emphasis on speed and scale, its overwhelming myopia—than I wanted to admit. Or maybe it was personal; maybe I wasn’t analytical. Maybe I wasn’t a systems thinker. Even so: the systems thinkers missed it, too. * * * Patrick and I met for dinner. I found him sitting in the back of the restaurant, reading the house zine. He waited for me to shrug off my coat, then leaned across the table. “Is winter coming for the tech industry?” he asked. It was never winter in San Francisco, I thought; it was always winter.

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I had been primed to have expectations of a certain techie stereotype—antisocial and unwashed, sex starved and awkward—but the cofounders, who would never have referred to themselves as techies, immediately confounded this. The CEO was fast-moving, confident, and chiseled, and the chief technical officer, a soft-spoken systems thinker, was humble and patient. The creative founder, who referred to himself as the chief product officer, was an easy favorite. He had gone to art school on the East Coast and wore jeans that were so tight I felt I already knew him: he was like my friends from college, but successful. I was older than all three of them.

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If I didn’t want to stay at the company, the CEO said, he would personally help me find a new job. Either way, I would not be leading the Support Engineering team. “I’ve decided you aren’t analytical,” he said. “I don’t think we have the same values. I don’t even know what your values are.” Of course I’m analytical, I thought. I might not have been a systems thinker, but I could deconstruct to death. I had thought we shared some of the same values, at least on their face: we were similarly disenchanted by corporate hierarchies, we liked underdogs, we both called ourselves feminists. We liked winning. Despite my best efforts, I cried twice in the meeting, leaving in the middle to grab tissues from the bathroom, dodging looks of concern from the Engineering cluster.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Albert Einstein, bank run, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, food desert, high-speed rail, Housing First, illegal immigration, Internet of things, mandatory minimum, millennium bug, move fast and break things, Nick Bostrom, payday loans, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Snapchat, subscription business, systems thinking, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y2K

How can we ensure that, in our quest to make the world better, we don’t unwittingly do harm? “As you think about a system, spend part of your time from a vantage point that lets you see the whole system, not just the problem that may have drawn you to focus on the system to begin with,” wrote Donella Meadows in an essay. Meadows was a biophysicist and systems thinker whose work I’ll draw on several times in this chapter. She continued, “And realize that, especially in the short term, changes for the good of the whole may sometimes seem to be counter to the interests of a part of the system.” Here’s a painful illustration of Meadows’s point: In July 2009, a young Google engineer was walking through Central Park when he was struck by a falling oak tree branch, causing brain injuries and paralysis.

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On the other hand: No, look at subways or airplanes—when people are crammed in together, they find ways to retain some privacy through headphones or books or deeply unwelcoming glances. How can you know in advance which strand of common sense to trust? We usually won’t. As a result, we must experiment. “Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model,” said Donella Meadows, the systems thinker. “Get your model out there where it can be shot at. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.… The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn. The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error.”

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In short, if we want to make the education system better, we could try to concoct the perfect intervention—the new curriculum, the new model—and hope for the best. Or we could settle for a pretty good solution that’s equipped with so many built-in feedback loops that it can’t help but get better over time. The second option is the one that systems thinkers would endorse. How do you build a feedback loop? Let’s take a simple example from the business world: the staff meeting. Staff meetings are a great example of a human endeavor—like fistfighting and potty training—that never improve. We get a lot of practice in meetings, but as Michael Jordan said, “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way.”

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better by Annie Leonard

air freight, banking crisis, big-box store, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business logic, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, cotton gin, dematerialisation, employer provided health coverage, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, Firefox, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, intermodal, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, liberation theology, McMansion, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Wall-E, Whole Earth Review, Zipcar

So I learned about planned obsolescence, advertising, and other tools for promoting consumerism. On the surface, each of these topics seemed separate from the next, unconnected, and a long way from those piles of garbage on the streets of New York City or the forests of the Cascades. But it turns out they’re all connected. The journey led me to become what people call a systems thinker. That means I believe everything exists as part of a larger system and must be understood in relation to the other parts. It’s not an uncommon framework: think about the last time you came down with a fever. You probably wondered if it was caused by a bacteria or a virus. A fever is a response to a strange element being introduced to the system that is your body.

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We pay for child care and activities to entertain our kids. We can even buy computer games that simulate sports with live opponents. This is commodification at work: the process of turning things that were once public amenities, neighborly activities, or the role of friends into privately purchasable Stuff or services—i.e., commodities. Systems thinkers often talk about negative feedback loops—problems that cause an effect that adds to the original problem. For instance, when global temperatures rise, ice caps melt, decreasing the planet’s ability to reflect sunlight off that bright snow, so global temperatures rise further. The same thing is happening with our melting communities.

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The economy functions as a system, too, which is why there can be a domino effect inside it, as when people lose their jobs and then reduce their spending, which means that factories can’t sell as much Stuff, which means that more people get laid off... which is exactly what happened in 2008 and 2009. Systems thinking as related to the economy also explains a theory like “trickle-down” economics, in which benefits like tax cuts are given to the wealthy so that they’ll invest more in businesses, which would hypothetically in turn create more jobs for the middle and lower classes. If you didn’t believe these parts (money, jobs, people across classes) operated within a system, there’d be no basis for the trickle-down theory, or for beliefs about the interplay between supply and demand.

Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis by Anatole Kaletsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, buy and hold, Carmen Reinhart, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, eat what you kill, Edward Glaeser, electricity market, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, geopolitical risk, George Akerlof, global rebalancing, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peak oil, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, statistical model, systems thinking, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

A similar pragmatism will have to be extended in the years ahead to political decisions and to the interaction of government with business. Political and business leaders already seem to be embarking on this learning process. Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of General Electric, for example, reacted to the crisis by calling on his managers to “become systems thinkers who are comfortable with ambiguity.”7 Meanwhile, President Obama has advocated “a new, more pragmatic approach that is less interested in whether we have big government or small government [than] in whether we have a smart, effective government.”8 But while political and business leaders are recognizing the shift from a world of rationalist predictability to one characterized by ambiguity, unpredictability, and fuzzy logic, economists will be more stubborn in defending the precrisis ideas of rational and efficient markets.

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Available from http://www.imf.org/external/np/res/seminars/2009/arc/pdf/caballero.pdf. 6 Bernanke’s testimony on September 23, 2008, suggesting that the government should use hold-to-maturity valuations instead of mark-to-market valuations for calculating asset prices and bank solvency, was ignored by Paulson, and therefore by Congress and the markets. Yet it offered an obvious way out of the crisis, which was ultimately adopted a month later. See Mark Landler and Steve Lee Myers, “Buyout Plan for Wall Street Is a Hard Sell on Capitol Hill,” New York Times, September 23, 2008. 7 “Leaders must become systems thinkers who are comfortable with ambiguity. I am an applied math major and an MBA. In school, I loved science. My career has grown in a linear fashion. There wasn’t much ambiguity in my education. I grew up in a simpler world, both economically and geopolitically.” Jeff Immelt, “Renewing American Leadership,” Washington Post, December 10, 2009. 8 “What we don’t know yet is whether my administration and this next generation of leadership is going to be able to hew to a new, more pragmatic approach that is less interested in whether we have big government or small government; they’re more interested in whether we have a smart, effective government.”

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-To-5 by Taylor Pearson

Airbnb, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Black Swan, call centre, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, creative destruction, David Heinemeier Hansson, drop ship, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Google Hangouts, Hacker Conference 1984, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fragmentation, means of production, Oculus Rift, passive income, passive investing, Peter Thiel, power law, remote working, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, software as a service, software is eating the world, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, TED Talk, telemarketer, the long tail, Thomas Malthus, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, Whole Earth Catalog

Despite being more credentialed than ever, the U.S. economy has gone from adding 2.5 million jobs per year between 1960 and 2000, to shedding jobs at a rate of 100,000 in the first decade of the 21st century. Growth hasn’t just slowed—it’s reversed. In his book The Fourth Economy, author and systems thinker Ron Davison organizes the last seven hundred years of Western History into three distinct economic periods: Agricultural (1300–1700), Industrial (1700–1900), and Knowledge (1900–2000).25 At each economic transition, we’ve seen diminishing returns from investing in the previous limit. The popular response has been to label our current economic woes a painful global recession.

The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models by Barry Libert, Megan Beck

active measures, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, asset light, autonomous vehicles, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, business intelligence, call centre, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, disintermediation, diversification, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, future of work, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, independent contractor, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of writing, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, late fees, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Oculus Rift, pirate software, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, software as a service, software patent, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Wall-E, women in the workforce, Zipcar

—SAUL BERMAN, Vice President and Chief Strategist, IBM Global Business Services “Interdependencies and how to recognize them, allocate resources between them, and optimize them will define success in our new networked economy and operational models. We all need guidance and access to wisdom on how to win in a networked, interdependent system. The Network Imperative will help us to be more effective system thinkers, with Barry, Megan, and Jerry guiding the way.” —PHIL COWDELL, CEO, MediaCom North America “Get ready for a future in which everyone and everything are digitally connected, marginal costs approach zero, and openness to the ideas and assets that exist around the organization matter more than sheer scale.

Life Will Be the Death of Me: ...And You Too! by Chelsea Handler

airport security, Burning Man, Donald Trump, fake news, forensic accounting, impulse control, microdosing, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, systems thinking, zero-sum game

“A black person wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that.” “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that,” Dan told me. “By the way, that’s empathy.” He pointed at me. “Thinking about what it’s like to be a black person. You’re learning.” “Empathy couched in my entitlement. How convenient.” “You’re talking about becoming a systems thinker versus a linear thinker. To be able to look at the macro rather than the micro.” “Yes. I’ve been like this for a long time, and I don’t know if I can blame that on Chet dying. I’d like to, but I’m pretty sure I was throwing temper tantrums as a little girl before he died. I was always a bit of a hot mess.”

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo, Gabe Weisert

3D printing, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, Brexit referendum, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, connected car, data science, death of newspapers, digital nomad, digital rights, digital twin, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, factory automation, fake news, fiat currency, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Lean Startup, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mary Meeker, megaproject, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear winter, pets.com, planned obsolescence, pneumatic tube, profit maximization, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, smart meter, social graph, software as a service, spice trade, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, transport as a service, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WeWork, Y2K, Zipcar

This year the entire global industrial output, or the systems, factories, and labor force behind everything we make, is expected to enjoy a double-digit increase in delivery and supply chain performance, primarily thanks to IoT. All this connectivity is set to ignite a revolution in manufacturing, and it’s sorely needed. As industrial systems thinker Olivier Scalabre pointed out in a great 2016 TED talk, every sustained period of global economic growth over the last 150 years has been instigated by a manufacturing innovation—the steam train in the nineteenth century, the era of mass production at the start of the twentieth century, and the first wave of factory automation that began in the 1970s.

They Have a Word for It A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases-Sarabande Books (2000) by Howard Rheingold

Ayatollah Khomeini, clockwork universe, Easter island, fudge factor, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, junk bonds, Kula ring, Lao Tzu, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, The Home Computer Revolution, the map is not the territory, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons

The designer of the disposable but nonbiodegradable device known as the Styrofoam cup was a Toolwords 2 37 Fachidiot extraordinaire. But you don't have to be a technologist to be aFachidiot: The word is appropriate in any instance when a person's degree of specialization causes a radical narrowing of focus and an inability to see the big picture. A Fachidiot, the exact opposite of a systems thinker, is a person who divorces the context and consequences from individual actions. Politically, the word refers not to those who believe the end justifies the means, but to those who are so concentrated on the means that they don't even think about the ends. hari kuyo Qapanese) Shrine for broken sewing needles.

Kill It With Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems by Marianne Bellotti

anti-pattern, barriers to entry, business logic, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer age, continuous integration, create, read, update, delete, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, database schema, Dennis Ritchie, DevOps, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Google Chrome, Hans Moravec, iterative process, Ken Thompson, loose coupling, microservices, minimum viable product, Multics, no silver bullet, off-by-one error, platform as a service, pull request, QWERTY keyboard, Richard Stallman, risk tolerance, Schrödinger's Cat, side project, software as a service, Steven Levy, systems thinking, web application, Y Combinator, Y2K

When work tasks are completed, whatever extra time is left is directed to improving our technical debt. Figure 10-1: Feedback loops in the team’s workload Although this visual model might just look like an illustration, we can actually program it for real and use it to explore how our team manages its work in various conditions. Two tools popular with system thinkers for these kinds of models are Loopy (https://ncase.me/loopy/). and InsightMaker (https://insightmaker.com/). Both are free and open source, and both allow you to experiment with different configurations and interactions. For now, let’s just think through a couple scenarios. Suppose we have a sprint with 24 hours of work tasks for Service A and for Service B.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Atahualpa, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, complexity theory, conceptual framework, dematerialisation, demographic transition, different worldview, Doomsday Book, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Firefox, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, Garrett Hardin, Georg Cantor, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of gunpowder, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Metcalfe's law, Mikhail Gorbachev, move 37, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Plato's cave, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Solow, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, scientific management, Scientific racism, scientific worldview, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological singularity, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, ultimatum game, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, wikimedia commons

Instead of seeing each individual as selfish and competitive, seeking only personal advantage, it offers a more nuanced understanding of humanity as also cooperative and altruistic, embedded within larger social and natural networks.41 Scientists at the forefront of systems thinking recognize the far-reaching ramifications of their findings. “We are seeking a new conceptual framework that does not yet exist,” writes researcher Stuart Kauffman. However, while this view of nature is relatively new in science, we have seen in this book how earlier cultures have already explored many of the philosophical implications of a connected cosmos. The wisdom of indigenous worldviews shares much with systems thinking, and the Neo-Confucian investigation of the li—the organizing principles of the universe—offers deep insights to modernity, with its understanding of the Tao as the metapattern of all nature's principles, discoverable in one's own nature as well as in the natural world.42 Remarkably, though, many people today remain unaware of this alternative way of understanding nature.

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A profound and thoughtful investigation into the philosophical and spiritual implications of systems thinking. Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. A mathematically oriented exploration of the cosmological implications of complexity that is also highly accessible to a lay reader. Goodwin, Brian. How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). A thoughtful review of how systems thinking transforms our understanding of biology. Chapter 20. Consuming the Earth in the Modern Era McNeill, J.

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It also shows how self-organized systems are fractally embedded within one another: a cell may be part of an organism, which is part of a community, which is nested within an ecosystem, which in turn is part of Gaia.39 The shift from a reductionist to a holistic frame carries major philosophical and ethical implications. In recent decades, physicist Fritjof Capra, along with other leading systems thinkers, has applied this new understanding to an extensive range of human activities, including such disparate fields as health, economics, human relationships, environmental sustainability, and spirituality. The common theme linking all these domains is the recognition of the intrinsic interdependency of all living systems and the realization that humans are an integral part of the natural world.

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, cryptocurrency, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, financial engineering, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, Leonard Kleinrock, lock screen, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, packet switching, patent troll, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Crocker, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, The Chicago School, the long tail, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, yield management, zero day

In the wake of various privacy scandals at Facebook – among a relentless wave of bad PR over extremism, its corporate culture, censorship, and more – there’s no shortage of people who would like to see its CEO Mark Zuckerberg similarly humbled. That’s not intrinsically wrong: the people at the top of the pyramid rarely face anything like the same kinds of consequences for their actions that the rest of us do. But tarring and feathering the odd executive won’t change the system. We need to think bigger than that. We need to become systems thinkers. We can’t think about tackling Mark Zuckerberg, or even tackling Facebook, or social networking. The physical architecture of the internet is a network of networks. The power base it enables is similarly interconnected – a new model for financing businesses, a new model for how they generate profit, and a new model of connectedness and transparency.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

agricultural Revolution, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, fear of failure, Ford Model T, global pandemic, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of air conditioning, Louis Pasteur, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, oil shock, performance metric, plant based meat, purchasing power parity, risk tolerance, social distancing, Solyndra, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, the High Line, urban planning, yield management

The late David MacKay of Cambridge University inspired me with his wit and insights. I recommend his phenomenal book Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air to anyone who wants to dig deeper into the subject of energy and climate change. Vaclav Smil, a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, is one of the finest systems thinkers I have ever met. His influence on this book is particularly evident in the passages on the history of energy transitions, and in the errors he helped me avoid. I’ve been lucky enough to get to meet—and learn from—a number of knowledgeable people over the years. Thanks to Senator Lamar Alexander, Josh Bolten, Carol Browner, Steven Chu, Arun Majumdar, Ernest Moniz, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Henry Paulson, and John Podesta for being so generous with their time.

Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity by Bernard Lietaer, Jacqui Dunne

3D printing, 90 percent rule, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clockwork universe, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, conceptual framework, credit crunch, different worldview, discounted cash flows, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, liberation theology, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, Occupy movement, price stability, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban decay, War on Poverty, working poor

There are thousands of smaller species of fish in the sea, and oysters, clams, and snails that your nets will never catch. What’s more, your research is skewed, since anyone you’ve ever surveyed could only buy 215 216 RETHINKING MONEY seafood that’s greater than two inches long, or wide, for that matter. Your fishing nets, dear man, predetermine your perception of reality.”2 Donella Meadows, a systems thinker and advocate for sustainability, puts it another way: “Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.”3 The paradigm of the conventional, hypercompetitive money system is similar to the fisherman’s net that limits what can be perceived and valued.

Chaos Engineering: System Resiliency in Practice by Casey Rosenthal, Nora Jones

Amazon Web Services, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, blockchain, business continuity plan, business intelligence, business logic, business process, cloud computing, cognitive load, complexity theory, continuous integration, cyber-physical system, database schema, DevOps, fail fast, fault tolerance, hindsight bias, human-factors engineering, information security, Kanban, Kubernetes, leftpad, linear programming, loose coupling, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, no silver bullet, node package manager, operational security, OSI model, pull request, ransomware, risk tolerance, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, software as a service, statistical model, systems thinking, the scientific method, value engineering, WebSocket

How can I apply what I know about Chaos Engineering to human systems? When I first learned about the emerging field of Chaos Engineering, to say I was intrigued would be putting it lightly. Injecting failure into a system purposefully to help you better understand your system? I was sold right away. As a “new view” safety nerd and systems thinker, I can get behind a paradigm that acknowledges the systems we use every day are inherently unsafe. My initial hypothesis was if Chaos Engineering practices were designed to run against distributed web systems, then they could also be applied to other distributed systems we interact with on a daily basis—systems that are all around us, systems that form our daily lives.

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Your personal biases can have a significant impact on the experiment, the people in the experiment, and the business. Question everything, search out feedback, and be open to changing or even scrapping the whole experiment. Don’t let your desire to see it succeed blind you from the feedback. Case Study 1: Gaming Your Game Days Putting aside culture and systems thinking, let’s discover some new system boundaries. Coming from this fascination with “new view” safety led me to the belief that incidents are unplanned learning events within my organization.8 This realization inspired me to create Game Days that fully practiced our incident response life cycle. It’s a chance to throw someone new in the organization into the deep end and give them exposure to what it’s like to be part of the response, in a safe, low-consequence environment.

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Operational context is so critical to the success of software. Finding new ways to disseminate it throughout the organization will always be on my mind. I think more generally you could say the same thing about shared context and the value of finding common ground. Leadership Is an Emergent Property of the System What I find fascinating about systems thinking and complexity theory is that it applies to everything. When I realized that leadership within an organization could be looked at through this lens, it blew my mind. It’s important to note that when I talk about the word “leadership” in this context, I’m not talking about people or a team of people who “lead others.”

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, BRICs, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, data science, decarbonisation, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fear of failure, geopolitical risk, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuclear winter, Ocado, ocean acidification, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, systems thinking, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, University of East Anglia, warehouse automation

So from his worldview, although he was a rational person and saw what the science demanded, he just couldn’t see the world acting to achieve that outcome. He didn’t think about the implications of that deeply because it wasn’t a changeable outcome for him—the shift simply wasn’t going to happen. Of course, his self-interest and that of his company made having this view easier for him, but that wasn’t the only driver. My worldview was as a systems thinker and environmentalist. I saw what needed to happen, based on what the science was telling us were the consequences if we didn’t act. I knew society would, in its own interest, have to make that result happen to suit those immovable needs. From my worldview, I saw his strategy, which was to assume decades of further growth in coal consumption, and knew it couldn’t happen.

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H Naylor, David Horsey

Abraham Maslow, big-box store, carbon tax, classic study, Community Supported Agriculture, Corrections Corporation of America, Dennis Tito, disinformation, Donald Trump, Exxon Valdez, financial independence, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, God and Mammon, greed is good, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, junk bonds, low interest rates, Mark Shuttleworth, McMansion, medical malpractice, new economy, PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, Peter Calthorpe, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, Ray Oldenburg, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, space junk, SpaceShipOne, systems thinking, The Great Good Place, trade route, upwardly mobile, Yogi Berra, young professional

We hope this book equips readers with remedies for affluenza that have already worked for millions of people. A common thread in the recovery process is being able to admit we have a problem —which is equally true at the scale of the individual, the community, the bioregion, and the nation. COMING BACK TO LIFE Systems thinker Joanna Macy urges our civilization to take a deep breath, admit we have a major problem, and collectively go cold turkey. She’s working to create a new world ethic based on the way nature —and human nature —actually work (lifestyles based on reality—what a concept). In the past, as she discusses in the book Coming Back to Life, we’ve looked at the world as a collection of parts and pieces, but now we’re ready for a Great Turning, a new way of understanding.1 The idea that life is interdependent and self-organizing has always been perceived on a spiritual level, and now that perception is manifesting itself in biology and physics.

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World by Michal Zalewski

accounting loophole / creative accounting, AI winter, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, bank run, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carrington event, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, deep learning, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, dumpster diving, failed state, fiat currency, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Haber-Bosch Process, housing crisis, index fund, indoor plumbing, information security, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Joan Didion, John Bogle, large denomination, lifestyle creep, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Modern Monetary Theory, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral panic, non-fungible token, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, passive investing, peak oil, planetary scale, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, supervolcano, systems thinking, tech worker, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, Tunguska event, underbanked, urban sprawl, Wall-E, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

In a 1985 paper on barter, Caroline Humphrey, a noted anthropologist from the University of Cambridge, bluntly remarked the following: No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.2 It’s not clear where the parable of barter first originated. The most plausible explanation is that it’s the invention of early philosophers trying to wrap their heads around monetary systems. Thinkers from Aristotle to Adam Smith were forming their theories at a time when government-issued coinage was already ubiquitous, so they worked backward from the observed reality and concocted a plausible tale about human prehistory. Their speculations, without a shred of evidence, eventually morphed into the accepted truth.3 Upon closer inspection, the pork-for-shoes tale of money has other problems.

Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey, Rajendra Sisodia, Bill George

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Buckminster Fuller, business process, carbon footprint, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, do well by doing good, en.wikipedia.org, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, Flynn Effect, income per capita, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, John Elkington, lone genius, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, shareholder value, six sigma, social intelligence, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, union organizing, wealth creators, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Same-store sales accelerated from negative 6 percent in fiscal 2009 to positive 8 percent in 2011, net profits more than tripled, and the value of the stock increased from about $7 to more than $50 over three years. Systems Intelligence Another important type of intelligence conscious leaders tend to have in abundance is SYQ, introduced in the preceding chapter. Conscious leaders are natural systems thinkers. They can see the bigger picture and understand how the different components of the system interconnect and behave over time. They can anticipate the immediate as well as long-term consequences of actions. Given their intuitive understanding of systems, conscious leaders are excellent organizational architects.

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A business that generates financial wealth but destroys other forms of wealth (which can have greater impacts on people’s well-being) adds far less value to the world than it is capable of. If it destroys enough of the other kinds of wealth, the business has a negative net impact on the world and could even be described as a parasite on society. A key principle of systems thinking, identified throughout this book as an essential aspect of Conscious Capitalism, is that there are no such things as main effects and side effects. We take actions, and they have effects. All of the effects are potentially significant, and all must be accounted for. As in medicine, we tend to label some as “main” effects to emphasize them more, and some as “side” effects to downplay them (since they are almost always negative).

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Atul Gawande, Checklist Manifesto, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, deliberate practice, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Flynn Effect, Freestyle chess, functional fixedness, game design, Gene Kranz, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, knowledge economy, language acquisition, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, messenger bag, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, multi-armed bandit, Nelson Mandela, Netflix Prize, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, precision agriculture, prediction markets, premature optimization, pre–internet, random walk, randomized controlled trial, retrograde motion, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, Walter Mischel, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, young professional

In fact, they’ll turn a breakthrough innovation into an incremental one.” * * * • • • University of Utah professor Abbie Griffin has made it her work to study modern Thomas Edisons—“serial innovators,” she and two colleagues termed them. Their findings about who these people are should sound familiar by now: “high tolerance for ambiguity”; “systems thinkers”; “additional technical knowledge from peripheral domains”; “repurposing what is already available”; “adept at using analogous domains for finding inputs to the invention process”; “ability to connect disparate pieces of information in new ways”; “synthesizing information from many different sources”; “they appear to flit among ideas”; “broad range of interests”; “they read more (and more broadly) than other technologists and have a wider range of outside interests”; “need to learn significantly across multiple domains”; “Serial innovators also need to communicate with various individuals with technical expertise outside of their own domain.”

Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America by David Callahan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, automated trading system, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, corporate social responsibility, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Thorp, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial independence, global village, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, income inequality, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John Markoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, medical malpractice, mega-rich, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, NetJets, new economy, offshore financial centre, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, power law, profit maximization, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Florida, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, short selling, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stem cell, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, systematic bias, systems thinking, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, working poor, World Values Survey

He called it “creative capitalism.” Ultimately, the profit incentive by itself would never go far enough; it needed to be unified with the desire among both individuals and companies to do good and be recognized for doing good. The creative capitalism speech was yet more evidence that Gates was evolving into a systemic thinker—one who was willing to reject the cornerstone premise of conservative ideology, namely, that the free market could solve all of the problems of the world if meddling bureaucrats just got out of its way. Does this make Gates a liberal? Not quite. Or, rather, not yet. If history is any guide, however, Gates is already well along a familiar trajectory in which philanthropy that starts with a pragmatic bent migrates steadily leftward over time.

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A few decades ago, the main way that someone joined the upper class was by climbing to the top of a large and centralized industrial company. Back in the era of the “organization man,” traits such as creativity and initiative were often less valued than conformity. Success in the knowledge economy, in contrast, often comes by challenging existing systems, thinking outside the box, and taking risks. Here, bourgeois and bohemian values have seamlessly fused—a trend seen elsewhere, too, as David Brooks argued in Bobos in Paradise. Entrepreneurs who strike out on their own to “monetize ideas” are heavily represented among the new rich, while certain major knowledgeeconomy companies are set up to accommodate creative individuals.

Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities by Diana Leafe Christian

A Pattern Language, back-to-the-land, benefit corporation, Community Supported Agriculture, double entry bookkeeping, intentional community, land reform, off grid, search costs, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the built environment, urban sprawl

At the next meeting read each person’s version, then get into groups of three and merge them. Then select a committee of three or four people to write a rough draft of vision documents and/or a vision statement based on the groups’ merged statements. Include in this writing group, if possible, a visionary thinker, a systems thinker, and someone skilled with words. It works best having a small group write something to present to the group because it’s much easier to respond to something already written than it is for everyone to sit around and try to write the whole thing as a group. At the next meeting, the group reviews the first draft, decides what it likes and doesn’t, makes suggestions and refinements, and sends the amended draft back to the small group for more work.

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen

23andMe, 4chan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cloud computing, Columbine, company town, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital map, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Golden age of television, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, growth hacking, Haight Ashbury, immigration reform, James Bridle, John Perry Barlow, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kinder Surprise, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, moral panic, move fast and break things, non-fungible token, PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, systems thinking, tech bro, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Walter Mischel, WikiLeaks, work culture

* * * • • • Machinima’s discovery happened to fit neatly into the new strategy Salar Kamangar was setting for YouTube: a big, calculated swing at TV. YouTube’s new chief, Google employee number nine, was “cookie-cutter Google,” according to a former colleague. He liked computers, logic, and chess. He was a “systems thinker,” in Silicon Valley lingo. (Danny Zappin called him a “genius robot.”) He was introverted, sometimes cagey. Once he scribbled something on a notepad during a meeting with a media executive, who asked what the note said. “I’m not telling you,” Kamangar replied. Many at Google knew him merely as a very veteran, very wealthy corporate legend.

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 4chan, 8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, blue-collar work, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, don't be evil, don't repeat yourself, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, false flag, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, growth hacking, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, hockey-stick growth, HyperCard, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, Larry Wall, lone genius, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, microdosing, microservices, Minecraft, move 37, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, no silver bullet, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, OpenAI, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, planetary scale, profit motive, ransomware, recommendation engine, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, techlash, TED Talk, the High Line, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Zimmermann PGP, éminence grise

“If they’re physically capable of staying awake, they can get really far,” he says. “The limits are awake time. It takes you two hours to get the whole thing loaded into your head, and then you get like 10 or 12 or 14 hours where you can function at that level.” The 10Xers he has known also tend to be “systems thinkers,” insatiably curious about every part of the technology stack, from the way currents flow in computer processors to the latency of touchscreen button presses. “It’s some combination of curiosity, drive, and the need to understand. They find it intolerable if they don’t understand some part of how the system works.”

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, Chris Wanstrath, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, demand response, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Flash crash, fulfillment center, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, linear programming, Live Aid, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, ocean acidification, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, planetary scale, power law, pull request, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Transnistria, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban decay, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

We need to more deeply understand how individual psychology, organizations, institutions, and societies work and find ways to accelerate their adaptability and evolution. This will be a huge ongoing challenge. Every society and every community must compound the rate at which it reimagines and reinvents its social technologies, because our physical technologies will not likely be slowing anytime soon. As the systems thinker Lin Wells put it in his November 1, 2014, essay, “Better Outcomes Through Radical Inclusion,” if, roughly speaking, computing power per unit cost is doubling about every 18 months, in a year and a half we’ll have 100% more power, in five years more than 900% and in ten years over 10,000% … Moreover, the change is not just happening in the information domain.

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, animal electricity, back-to-the-land, British Empire, carbon footprint, classic study, collaborative economy, death of newspapers, delayed gratification, distributed generation, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, feminist movement, Ford Model T, global village, Great Leap Forward, hedonic treadmill, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, Recombinant DNA, scientific management, scientific worldview, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social intelligence, supply-chain management, surplus humans, systems thinking, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, working poor, World Values Survey

The science of ecology and the notion of a self-regulating biosphere are all about relationships, feedbacks, and networks. Ecologist Bernard Patten has observed that “ecology is networks. . . . To understand ecosystems ultimately will be to understand networks.”3 Physicist and philosopher Fritjof Capra points out:As the network concept became more and more prominent in ecology, systemic thinkers began to use network models at all systems levels, viewing organisms as networks of cells, organs, and organ systems, just as ecosystems are understood as networks of individual organisms.4 In other words, every organism is made up of smaller networks of organs and cells while it is also part of larger networks that comprise biotic communities, whole ecosystems, and the biosphere itself.

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That’s because it is the relationship between the parts that creates something qualitatively different at the level of the whole. For example, we know from personal experience that a living being is qualitatively different from a corpse. At the moment of death, all of the relationships that made that living being a whole disappear, leaving just a body of inert matter. The new systems thinking owes much to the emerging field of ecology. Ecology challenged the Darwinian model, with its emphasis on the competitive struggle between individual creatures for scarce resources. In the newer ecological model, nature is made up of a multitude of symbiotic and synergistic relationships, where each organism’s fate is determined as much by reciprocal engagement as by any competitive advantage.

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Our growing involvement in networks, our newfound ability to multitask and operate simultaneously on parallel tracks, our increasing awareness of economic, social, and environmental interdependencies, our search for relatedness and embeddedness, our willingness to accept contradictory realities and multicultural perspectives, and our process-oriented behavior all predispose us to systems thinking. If we can harness holistic thinking to a new global ethics that recognizes and acts to harmonize the many relationships that make up the l ife-sustaining forces of the planet, we will have crossed the divide into a near-climax world economy and biosphere consciousness. BIOSPHERE EDUCATION The American classroom is fast becoming a laboratory for preparing young people for biosphere awareness.

Coders at Work by Peter Seibel

Ada Lovelace, Bill Atkinson, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Conway's Game of Life, Dennis Ritchie, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, Donald Knuth, fallacies of distributed computing, fault tolerance, Fermat's Last Theorem, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, functional programming, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Guido van Rossum, history of Unix, HyperCard, industrial research laboratory, information retrieval, Ken Thompson, L Peter Deutsch, Larry Wall, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, Metcalfe's law, Multics, no silver bullet, Perl 6, premature optimization, publish or perish, random walk, revision control, Richard Stallman, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Saturday Night Live, side project, slashdot, speech recognition, systems thinking, the scientific method, Therac-25, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, type inference, Valgrind, web application

And for Ghostscript, I did have some pretty serious disagreements with two of the engineers who were brought into the team as it was getting handed over to the company that I started. Both very smart and hardworking guys, both experienced. I thought they were very good programmers, good designers. But they were not system thinkers. Not only were they not used to thinking in terms of the impact or ramifications of changes; they to some extent didn't even realize that that was an essential question to ask. To me the distinction is between people who understand what the questions are that you have to ask in doing larger-scale design and the people who for whatever reason don't see those questions as well.

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson

Ben Horowitz, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, data science, DevOps, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, functional programming, Google Earth, hive mind, Innovator's Dilemma, iterative process, Kanban, Kickstarter, Kubernetes, loose coupling, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, no silver bullet, pull request, Richard Thaler, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, statistical model, systems thinking, the long tail, web application

In some problem domains, the product management skill set2 is extraordinarily effective for identifying useful problems, but systems thinking is the most universally useful tool kit I’ve found. If you really want a solid grasp on systems thinking fundamentals, you should read Thinking in Systems: A Primer3 by Donella H. Meadows, but I’ll do my best to describe some of the basics and to work through a recent scenario in which I found the systems thinking approach to be exceptionally useful. 3.1.1 Stocks and flows The fundamental observation of systems thinking is that the links between events are often more subtle than they appear. We want to describe events causally—our managers are too busy because we’re trying to ship our current project—but few events occur in a vacuum.

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The key tools for leading efficient change are systems thinking, metrics, and vision. When the steps of change are too wide, teams get destabilized, and gaps open within them. In those moments, managers create stability by becoming glue. We step in as product managers, program managers, recruiters, or salespeople to hold the bits together until an expert relieves us. This chapter provides a box of tools for managing change, both from the abstract chair of guiding change and from the more visceral role of serving as glue during periods of transition. 3.1 Introduction to systems thinking Many effective leaders I’ve worked with have the uncanny knack for working on leveraged1 problems.

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Stripe Press Ideas for progress San Francisco, California press.stripe.com Printed in Canada ISBN: 978-1-7322651-8-9 Ebook by Bright Wing Books (brightwing.ca) First Edition Contents Preface Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 Organizations 2.1 Sizing teams 2.2 Staying on the path to high-performing teams 2.2.1 Four states of a team 2.2.2 System fixes and tactical support 2.2.3 Consolidate your efforts 2.2.4 Durable excellence 2.3 A case against top-down global optimization 2.3.1 Team first 2.3.2 Fixed costs 2.3.3 Slack 2.3.4 Shift scope; rotate 2.4 Productivity in the age of hypergrowth 2.4.1 More engineers, more problems 2.4.2 Systems survive one magnitude of growth 2.4.3 Ways to manage entropy 2.4.4 Closing thoughts 2.5 Where to stash your organizational risk? 2.6 Succession planning 2.6.1 What do you do? 2.6.2 Close the gaps 3 Tools 3.1 Introduction to systems thinking 3.1.1 Stocks and flows 3.1.2 Developer velocity 3.1.3 Model away 3.2 Product management: exploration, selection, validation 3.2.1 Problem discovery 3.2.2 Problem selection 3.2.3 Solution validation 3.3 Visions and strategies 3.3.1 Strategies and visions 3.3.2 Strategy 3.3.3 Vision 3.4 Metrics and baselines 3.5 Guiding broad organizational change with metrics 3.6 Migrations: the sole scalable fix to tech debt 3.6.1 Why migrations matter 3.6.2 Running good migrations 3.7 Running an engineering reorg 3.7.1 Is a reorg the right tool?

SUPERHUBS: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule Our World by Sandra Navidi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, digital divide, diversification, Dunbar number, East Village, eat what you kill, Elon Musk, eurozone crisis, fake it until you make it, family office, financial engineering, financial repression, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Gordon Gekko, haute cuisine, high net worth, hindsight bias, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Jaron Lanier, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, McMansion, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, Myron Scholes, NetJets, Network effects, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Parag Khanna, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, performance metric, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Satyajit Das, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Predators' Ball, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, women in the workforce, young professional

Kelly Shue, “Executive Networks and Firm Policies: Evidence from the Random Assignment of MBA Peers,” University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, January 12, 2013, http://rfs.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/6/1401.abstract. 39. Stephen Haines, Systems Thinking: The New Frontier—Discovering Simplicity in an Age of Complexity (Self-published, 2011), Kindle locations 106-29; Meadows, Thinking in Systems, 7. 40. Haines, Systems Thinking, Kindle location 16, 69. 41. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), Kindle location 136, Kindle edition. 42. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (Open Road Media, 2011), 8, 23, Kindle edition; Mitchell, Complexity, Kindle locations 419-21. 43.

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She applies social science to behind-the-scenes interactions at some of the financial world’s most exclusive events to paint a compelling portrait of the industry and offer readers new insight into those with the power to quickly change the world.” —IAN BREMMER, President and Founder of Eurasia Group, and author “$uperHubs shines a light on our financial world and the tremendously powerful titans who are in charge of it. With vivid narratives and systems thinking, Sandra Navidi effortlessly connects the dots between people, institutions and events. Her conclusions demonstrate the systemic pitfalls and potential improvements. I highly recommend this fun and very useful book!” —ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, host of Wall Street Week, and author “Since finance plays an unprecedented role in today’s world order, the crucial question is how its leaders connect and interact while they assume the responsibility for an entire system.

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N333513 2017 (print) | LCC HG3881 (ebook) | DDC 332/.042--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034403 Hardback ISBN 978-1-85788-664-1 Trade paperback ISBN 978-1-85788-665-8 U.S. eBook ISBN 978-1-85788-979-6 U.K. eBook ISBN 978-1-47364-511-0 Nicholas Brealey Publishing Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ Tel: 020 3122 6000 Nicholas Brealey Publishing Hachette Book Group Market Place Center, 53 State Street Boston, MA 02109, USA Tel: (617) 523 3801 www.nicholasbrealey.com www.beyond-global.com Dedicated to My Parents and Grandparents in Gratitude Contents Foreword Introduction Genesis About This Book The Financial Industry and the Power of Networks Applying the Lens of Network Science: Systems Thinking Crisis Alert Author’s Note CHAPTER 1 THE FINANCIAL UNIVERSE: AN INNATELY HUMAN SYSTEM The Stratosphere of Power: Davos The Orbit of the Financial Elite: The Gravitational Force of Networks The Financial System: Applying the Lens of Network Science The Human Factor: The Power of Personal Connections Introduction: Meet the “Superhubs” Fault Lines: The Fragility of Our Financial System CHAPTER 2 SUPERHUBS: THE FINANCIAL ELITE AND THEIR NETWORKS The Superhub Prototype: Hedge Fund Titan George Soros A Blueprint for Networks: Nodes, Hubs, and Superhubs—Bankers, Executives, and CEOs Financial Superhubs: Network Equals Networth Network Geography: Location Matters Location: Reputation Matters, Reputation: Access Matters Access: Social Capital Matters CHAPTER 3 THE LINKS THAT CONNECT SUPERHUBS: MONEY, INFORMATION, AND OPPORTUNITIES Network Nucleus: Larry Fink Network Power: Money The Printing Presses: Central Banks Federal Reserve Chairman: In Charge of the World’s Reserve Currency Central Bank of Central Banks: The Bank for International Settlements A Primer on Banks: Regular and Shadow Banks The Perpetual Crisis Manager: The International Monetary Fund Network Currency: Information The Influence of Personal Connections Information Access and Proximity The Benefit of Connections in Tumultuous Times Thought Leaders—Superhubs of Valuable Information Network Investments: Social Capital Money + Information + Social Capital = Infinite Opportunities CHAPTER 4 THE MATRIX: DECODING THE SUPERHUB DNA The Alpha Personality: Jamie Dimon EQ: Connecting Emotionally Master Closers: Steve Schwarzman Inquiring Minds Inventing Ideologies The Cult of Failure CEOs—Chief Ego Officers: Bill Gross On a Monomaniacal Mission: Ray Dalio CHAPTER 5 HOMOPHILY: SIMILARITY BREEDS CONNECTION The Charitable Superhub Network: The Robin Hood Gala A Law of Nature: Why the Rich Get Richer Global Conquest: The Transnational Financial Elite Meeting of the Minds: Circle of Trust The Hegemony of Homogeneity The IQ Elite: A Master’s Degree in Networking Network Plutocracy: “The Old Boys’ Club” That’s Rich: Superhubs and Super-Riches The “Flocking Effect”: The Superhub Habitat CHAPTER 6 EXECUTIVE NETWORKING: RELATIONAL CAPITAL The Superhub of Superhubs: Klaus Schwab Friends with Benefits: Capital Networks = Network Capital More an Art than a Science: Attraction + Interaction = Transaction Digital Bits versus Human Touch Beyond Networking: How to Win Friends and Influence People The Alchemy of Chemistry: Charm Offensive The Lords of Networks and Their Creations Negative Notions on Networking Think Tanks: Network Motherboards INET: Connecting the Connected at Bretton Woods CHAPTER 7 MEMBERS ONLY: THE EXCLUSIVE NETWORKING PLATFORMS OF THE GLOBAL SUPER-ELITE A Dinner of Consequence: Attack on the Euro Conspiracy Theories: An Explanation for Attempted Explanations Why Networks Need Platforms: Connectivity The Annual Power Circuit: Dispatch from Davos The Global Financial Power Center: The International Monetary Fund Washington, D.C.: The Financial Shadow Capital IMF Meetings in Istanbul: Dancing on the Titanic Power Summit: The Bilderberg Conference Stealth Power: Family Office Gatherings Feeding Off Power: Power Lunches Power Workout: Networking, Working, and Working Out “Superhub-Nobbing”: Private Parties The Higher Purpose of Networking: The Charity Circuit CHAPTER 8 OPPORTUNITY COSTS: THE DOWNSIDE OF THE UPSIDE Missing Out on Memorable Moments Stress Test: When Being a Superhub Is Not So Super Married to Their Jobs: Work-Family Life Imbalance Media Madness: Living Under a Microscope Super-Sick: Paying the Ultimate Price Clash of the Titans: Close Combat and Coups d’État Triumph and Defeat: A Turbulent Career CHAPTER 9 “WOMENOMICS”: THE MISSING LINK The Gender Gap: Women Missing in Action The Access Gap: Exclusive Means Excluding The Networking Gap: Schmooze or Lose The Assessment Gap: Performance versus Potential The Wage Gap: Selling Women Short The Failure Gap: Demoting Promotions The Mentoring Gap: Missing Out on Mentoring The Sexism Gap: The Wolves of Wall Street on the Prowl The Resilience Gap: Male Might and Female Feebleness Closing the Gender Gap: Superhub Christine Lagarde CHAPTER 10 REVOLVING SUPERHUBS: CREATING NETWORK MONOPOLIES Psychological Kidnapping The Revolving Door The Oscillating Megahub: Robert Rubin Open Doors: Tony Blair Cross-Connections: Cooperating Constructively in Times of Crises Launching a President “Legalized Corruption”: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy Purchasing Political Protection Relationship Power: Diffusing the Euro Time Bomb Super-Entity: The Capitalist Network That Runs the World CHAPTER 11 DE-LINKED: EXPULSION AND COMEBACK Sent into Exile: Dick Fuld Shock-Resistant: Larry Summers’s Network Meteoric Rise Against All Odds The Bull in Charge of the China Shop Den of Thieves: Mike Milken Complete Network Collapse: Dominique Strauss-Kahn Ponzi Schemes and Sex Scandals: Buddy Fletcher and Ellen Pao Omni-Connected: Michael Klein CHAPTER 12 SUPER-CRASH: “EXECUTIVE CONTAGION” The Crash of a Titan: John Meriwether The Big Picture: Capitalism in Crisis Debt and Financialization Wealth Gap and Inequality Globalization Winners versus Globalization Losers Approaching the Tipping Point When an Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object: Brexit The Next Crisis: Systemic Failure and Contagion The Culprit: The Superhubs or the System?

The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention by Simon Baron-Cohen

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Asperger Syndrome, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, bioinformatics, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, discovery of penicillin, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, Greta Thunberg, intentional community, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jim Simons, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, neurotypical, out of africa, pattern recognition, phenotype, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, theory of mind, twin studies, zero-sum game

This was undoubtedly a huge step forward in humans’ cognitive power—to be able to entertain thoughts about hypothetical situations—and it’s unclear if any other species is capable of this. But hypothetical thinking is not really a challenge to the Systemizing Mechanism theory of human invention because hypothetical thinking is the if element in if-and-then systems-thinking. In addition to hypothetical thinking, someone also had to use if-and-then thinking to see how ochre could be used as paint, or to make a tool like a paintbrush, or a chisel to carve a sculpture. Systems-thinking (if-and-then reasoning) had to come first. A second use of the term “symbolic thinking” is what psychologist Alan Leslie calls the capacity for meta-representation. During meta-representation, a proposition (“the moon is made of blue cheese”) is prefixed by a mental state (for example, “I imagine that…”).

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For example, when epidemiologists Richard Doll and Austin Hill back in 1954 found that if you’re a smoker (exposing your lungs to smoke) and you smoke more than thirty-five cigarettes per day, then you are forty times more likely to get lung cancer,6 this was a discovery rather than an invention. In all cases when you systemize, you end up with control over the system. Think about sailing downwind: if my boat is stationary and I hold my sail perpendicular to the wind, then my boat moves forward in the same direction as the wind.7 Figure 2.1. How systemizing leads to invention, control, and discovery The above description may sound a lot like the behavior of a professionally trained scientist or engineer, but let me remind you that we all systemize—we all have a Systemizing Mechanism in our brain.

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This suggests that, unlike us, they have no curiosity that impels them to experiment, to seek out, to play with if-and-then patterns. They see the same information we do—the wave changing shape, the seesaw going up and down—but just ignore it, because they lack the Systemizing Mechanism in their brain. They are system-blind—they don’t do any systems-thinking.16 If monkeys and apes are system-blind, we should expect them to fail causal if-and-then systemizing tests that even a two-year-old human can pass. In fact, even a nine-month-old human infant can recognize causal relationships, but can monkeys and apes?17 Are they stuck in their own version of the Stone Age that kept our hominid ancestors using only simple stone tools before the cognitive revolution 70,000 to 100,000 years ago?

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

Having identified the main driving forces of the global financial crisis, in the final section of the chapter we use our findings to draw distinct governance lessons from it. But first we identify key points for the financial sector to take account of as global networks start to rebuild. Generalizing from there, we show that all forms of resilient globalization must rely on two “pillars” and note these pillars’ value for systemic thinking. Relevant Factors for the Financial Sector Recent research emphasizes the role of resource constraints for financial regulators and highlights the value of simplicity in regulation. One recommendation, from Dewatripont and Rochet, is this: “If public authorities are unwilling to increase spending on supervision then, other things being equal, the regulatory regime should be simplified.”81 This is a diversion from the mainstream “conventional wisdom” that more intricate rules are “nuanced” and encourage growth.

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We examine how political changes and technological innovation gave rise to global supply chains. An analysis of “best practices” in supply chain management shows how these supply networks are vulnerable to systemic risk. We then seek to identify ways to make supply networks more resilient. This chapter’s conclusion draws lessons for systemic thinking from supply chain management and considers how the resilience and robustness of the system may be improved. GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS We begin by considering the rise of global supply chains in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We show how political and technological changes shaped global trade and international relations and how supply chain management adapted to suit this new transnational environment.

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The equivalent in supply chain management would be the creation of diverse structures and an acceptance of heterogeneity in risk management. This appears to be the less costly and more practicable of our two approaches. Unfortunately, for the time being it is precisely the spread of best practices emulation and the proliferation of standardized management education that have hampered resilience. Below are some lessons for systemic thinking that can be derived from supply chain management. Lesson 1: Network resilience should be promoted Economic reform should promote resilience not only through the diversification of supply chain risk but also—often more importantly—through the available strategies for risk management.54 As our analysis has shown, the globalization of management education and the ability to homogenize knowledge worldwide are currently promoting the exact opposite: fragility through homogeneity.

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

anti-pattern, business logic, business process, call centre, cognitive load, continuous integration, Conway's law, database schema, DevOps, different worldview, Dunbar number, holacracy, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kubernetes, Lean Startup, loose coupling, meta-analysis, microservices, Norbert Wiener, operational security, platform as a service, pull request, remote working, systems thinking, two-pizza team, web application

First, we assume that an organization is a sociotechnical system or ecosystem that is shaped by the interaction of individuals and the teams within it; in other words, that an organization is the interaction between people and technology. In this aspect, the book fits with ideas from the fields of: cybernetics (especially the use of the organization as a “sensing mechanism,” which goes back as far as 1948, when Norbert Wiener’s book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine was first published), systems thinking (particularly the work of W. Edwards Deming), and approaches such as the Cynefin framework for assessing domain complexity (described by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone in their 2007 Harvard Business Review paper titled “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”), and adaptive structuration theory (a term coined by Gerardine DeSanctis and Marshall Scott Poole in their Organization Science article, “Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory,” where they emphasized that the impact of technology is not a given, as it depends on how groups and organizations perceive it).

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For example, having teams adopting cloud and infrastructure-as-code can reduce the time to provision new infrastructure from weeks or months to minutes or hours. But if every change requires deployment (to production) approval from a board that meets once a week, then delivery speed will remain weekly at best. Systems thinking focuses on optimizing for the whole, looking at the overall flow of work, identifying what the largest bottleneck is today, and eliminating it. Then repeat. Team Topologies focuses on how to set up dynamic team structures and interaction modes that can help teams adapt quickly to new conditions, and achieve fast and safe software delivery.

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It hurts the larger business outcome and reduces IT agility.”8 Instead of trying to optimize for lowest cost in so-called “maintenance” work, it is essential that organizations use signals from maintenance work as input to software-development activities. In the The DevOps Handbook, Gene Kim and colleagues define The Three Ways of DevOps for modern, high-performing organizations:9 Systems thinking: optimize for fast flow across the whole organization, not just in small parts Feedback loops: Development informed and guided by Operations Culture of continual experimentation and learning: sensing and feedback for every team interaction The second and third ways rely on strong communication pathways between Ops and Dev.

There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years by Mike Berners-Lee

air freight, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cloud computing, dematerialisation, disinformation, driverless car, Easter island, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, fake news, food miles, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Hans Rosling, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jevons paradox, land reform, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, neoliberal agenda, off grid, performance metric, post-truth, profit motive, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stephen Hawking, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, urban planning

Energy use: Not inevitably harmful but very dangerous since it is linked to human capacity to trash the planet, including but Which kinds of growth can be healthy in the Anthropocene? 121 Probably essential Good Tricky at best Probably harmful Travel miles Energy Appreciation of small things in life Wellbeing Systems thinking Compassion Mindfulness Global empathy Population GDP Meat consumption GHG emissions Very bad Figure 5.1. Imagining human-kind’s transition to maturity expressed as the changing nature of our growth. The exponential shape has been made up purely as a comfort for any traditionally-minded economists.

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The final stage was to look at what they actually wanted to do given all those options. There is no particular magic or rocket science in this process. Anything along similar lines will do. I’ve used a similar method with several other companies of very different sizes. The point I’m making is that systems thinking is not particularly hard; you just need to decide to do it. A much more carefully designed and digital tool for helping organisations of every kind to think systemically has been designed by Bioregional and is framed around their ten principles of One Planet Living. (See box.) How can a business think systemically?

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Vision and demonstration of low carbon living that is better than life today Collective international will Finance Investment Divestment New growth models Business Opportunities from the low carbon world and escape route for high carbon life and work understood, visioned & demonstrated Products/services which enhance the wellbeing of people and the planet Fulfilling and meaningful work for employees Infrastructure To make low carbon living aspirational and easy Figure 7.1. What will it take for the world to agree to leave the fuel in the ground? A simple example of systems thinking. This is one map, drawn up by a few people within one company in order to look at how they might be able to help. Bioregional’s systemic tools for One Planet Living® At Bioregional they have been clear for over 20 years there is no planet B. They have been using their framework of ten principles for One Planet Living with businesses and communities all over the world1.

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, anti-pattern, Anton Chekhov, Apollo 13, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, business process, butterfly effect, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, fake news, fear of failure, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Goodhart's law, Gödel, Escher, Bach, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, housing crisis, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, incognito mode, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lateral thinking, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, LuLaRoe, Lyft, mail merge, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, nocebo, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, p-value, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, Potemkin village, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, premature optimization, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, publication bias, recommendation engine, remote working, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, school choice, Schrödinger's Cat, selection bias, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Streisand effect, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systems thinking, The future is already here, The last Blockbuster video rental store is in Bend, Oregon, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uber lyft, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse robotics, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, When a measure becomes a target, wikimedia commons

The probabilities of these events clearly need to be adjusted as the cascading effects of climate change continue to unfold. To better determine the outcome probabilities in highly complex systems like banking or climate, you may first have to take a step back and try to make sense of the whole system before you can even try to create a decision tree or cost-benefit analysis for a particular subset or situation. Systems thinking describes this act, when you attempt to think about the entire system at once. By thinking about the overall system, you are more likely to understand and account for subtle interactions between components that could otherwise lead to unintended consequences from your decisions. For example, when thinking about making an investment, you might start to appreciate how seemingly unrelated parts of the economy might affect its outcome.

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Not all companies are successful, and different companies raise different amounts, so the answer is not straightforward at the time of the initial investment. Many funds use Monte Carlo simulations to understand how much they ought to reserve, given their current fund history and the estimates of company success and size of potential financings. More generally, making the effort to understand complex systems better through systems thinking—whether it be by using diagrams, running simulations, or employing other mental models—not only helps you get a broad picture of the system and its range of outcomes, but also can help you become aware of the best possible outcomes. Without such knowledge, you can get stuck chasing a local optimum solution, which is an admittedly good solution, but not the best one.

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You must then still do de-risking exercises to finally turn it into a known known. As you can see, you enumerate items in each of the four categories, and then work to make them all known knowns. This model is about giving yourself more complete knowledge of a situation. It’s similar to systems thinking, from the last section, in that you are attempting to get a full picture of the system so you can make better decisions. As a personal example, consider having a new baby. From reading all the books, you know the first few weeks will be harrowing, you’ll want to take some time off work, you’ll need to buy a car seat, crib, diapers, etc.

Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies by Otto Scharmer, Katrin Kaufer

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, do what you love, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Fractional reserve banking, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, market bubble, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, new economy, offshore financial centre, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, technology bubble, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, working poor, Zipcar

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, coauthor of the book Factor Five, thinks this is quite possible if all the key players started to move in this direction.13 It would mean replacing the current industrial paradigm (take, make, and throw away) with one that manages closed-loop cycles of materials and energy. The approach of William McDonough and Michael Braungart around rethinking the economic process as an earth-to-earth closed loop that integrates economics, eco-system science, chemistry, design, and systems thinking is another pioneering example for this line of work.14 The practical challenge in implementing these approaches lies in bringing together interests and players from the entire business ecosystem in order to make them see, think, talk, and work together—a challenge that we will inquire into more later, when we talk about the issue of leadership.

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Weekly meetings were held between facilitators online over a period of four months to design and test the process for hosting and conducting the event. The hosting environment, Oxford University, was carefully chosen for its capacity to provide the space and atmosphere required for breakthrough thinking. The best practices in human interaction and systems thinking were tapped into and brought into the design. The entire process was a mix of plenary conversations, small-group discussions, and individual moments of reflection. To maximize the creativity of the participants, various tools and techniques in creative processes, such sculpting, drawing, painting, systems games, and journaling, among others, were used.

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The transformation to Democracy 4.0 entails shifting the source of power from the habitual actions of the center to the real needs and aspirations of the communities on the periphery—from a top-down leadership to a shared process of co-sensing and co-shaping the new. Here are two examples that offer some glimpses of that emerging future. Bojonegoro, East Java, Indonesia: Shifting the Field of Democracy to 4.0 The IDEAS Indonesia program that Otto chairs at MIT is a nine-month innovation journey based on systems thinking and presencing that guides diverse groups of high-potential leaders from government, business, and NGOs through a deep immersion journey to the edges of society and self. In the second half of that program, participants develop prototype initiatives to explore the future by doing. One prototype generated in one of the recent programs addressed the issue of government corruption.

Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker

8-hour work day, active transport: walking or cycling, barriers to entry, book value, buy and hold, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, delayed gratification, discounted cash flows, diversification, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, dumpster diving, Easter island, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, financial independence, game design, index fund, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, junk bonds, lateral thinking, lifestyle creep, loose coupling, low interest rates, market bubble, McMansion, passive income, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, power law, psychological pricing, retail therapy, risk free rate, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, wage slave, working poor

A web of goals Having thus whittled down the number of available behaviors to a number of strategies that have mostly--optimally, exclusively--positive benefits, at least to the first order (but feel free to continue the exercise to higher orders), it is possible to use a simple form of systems thinking to assemble modules for an overall strategy. Yet unlike the traditional approach to systems theory, which aims to include an increasing amount of existing problems to be solved, generally in a reactive fashion, since the previous lack of systems thinking created them in the first place, the web of goals strategy aims to solve problems proactively by creating solutions that could be part of a wider strategy in the future.

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If these in turn are treated heterotelically, then eventually the underlying problem will become so large that the system fails catastrophically (stress -> burn out -> depression -> heart attack) or simply becomes unsolvable. Conversely, the homeotelic response aims to fix the entire problem--that is, cure the disease. Naturally, this is the ideal approach, but it requires a wiser approach to the problem. An important part of the systems thinking approach is to continuously increase the number of different problems that the strategy aims to solve or the number of different goals that the strategy intends to meet. A good strategy solves multiple problems at the same time! Yet enormous amounts of resources in our society are aimed towards solving problems heterotelically.

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Now, it's possible to completely avoid dealing with this part of the economy and never set foot in a shopping center or pay for anything with money. However, although interesting, such self-imposed constraints aren't optimally efficient. As bad as the normal consumer economy is, it has its good points, so some interaction is desired or even necessary. The more interaction with the local economy by systems thinking people--and the reader should be one by this point--the better the likelihood of societal change. This interaction requires money, and so it requires some means of acquiring money. This can be done in two ways: "You working for money" or "Money working for you." In a money economy, the flow of money is a bit more complicated than this.

Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Workflow by Dominica Degrandis, Tonianne Demaria

cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, DevOps, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, loose coupling, microservices, Parkinson's law, Sheryl Sandberg, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, TED Talk, transaction costs, two-pizza team

The cycle of being overloaded will continue and you won’t realize the benefits of flow. Unhappy people are less likely to participate in solutions. Getting buy-in to limit WIP is easier when you ease customer pain along with easing your own team pain. It’s not just all about us. We must consider the whole system by using a Systems Thinking approach to optimize workflow across all teams in order to deliver business value. Optimizing in favor of one team can reduce the overall performance of the company. Organizational health includes discovering what our customers are unhappy about. Once work demand and pain points are identified, you’ll want to consider your work item categories.

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Exposing Conflicting Priorities Work takes a long time to complete because it sits in queues waiting for stuff to happen. It’s not unusual for wait times to be more than 80% of the total time. Many organizations are blind to the queue problem. They tend to focus on resource efficiency instead of applying systems thinking to improve the efficiency of the whole system, end to end. Cost of Delay (CoD) Priority is only a problem when things aren’t delivered in the desired timeframe. We know that trying to do everything at the same time increases the risk of delaying everything. And we know that choosing to work on one task puts other tasks on the back burner and causing their delay.

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SUNK COST FALLACY: When you keep doing something because you’ve put a lot of effort into it and you don’t want to waste that effort. SYSTEM: A network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish a goal; includes the people doing the work and the impacting rules and tools. SYSTEMS THINKING: A holistic view of the system where the goal is to optimize the whole system versus just individual functions or silos. TECHNICAL DEBT: Extra effort required to fix software bugs and develop new features because of previous quick and dirty design choices. THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS (TOC): A way to identify the most important limiting factor (the constraint) that stands in the way of achieving a goal and then systematically improving that constraint until it is no longer the limiting factor.

Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community by Karen T. Litfin

active transport: walking or cycling, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, collaborative consumption, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, congestion pricing, corporate social responsibility, degrowth, glass ceiling, global village, hydraulic fracturing, intentional community, megacity, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, publish or perish, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the built environment, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, urban planning, Zipcar

Permaculture’s ecological principles are a good start but are also more complex than we need. In order to export the ecovillage experience, we need a few simple principles that reflect the integrative character of that experience while attending to larger social and economic realities. Taking sustainability as a core purpose, I suggest the following five principles: 1. Systemic thinking is a key ingredient in ecovillage success stories. Architecture, transportation, and food production, for instance, are structured in ways that promote and amplify the core values of social trust and ecological sustainability. What if we joined together to grow food in our parks and backyards?

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A sustainable global civilization would mean harmonizing human life with Earth’s great biogeochemical cycles – “thinking like a planet.”13 At a minimum, such a civilization would require sufficient clean energy and communication technologies to share knowledge (particularly about the biosphere) and some form of governance. Applying whole-systems thinking and the subsidiarity principle, the key question would be: what functions are most appropriate to the global scale? The measure would be their social and ecological impact. A global internet might pass the test, but most world trade and travel would not. And then there is the perennial human question: who gets to decide and how?

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(Dr Ari) 28, 170 Arkin, Lois 30, 114–15, 143 art 8, 13, 58, 88, 119, 122, 138, 141, 183–4 Asia 12, 13, 15, 45, 71, 195 atheism 10, 150, 159, 162 atmosphere (Earth’s) 45, 113, 155, 169, 189 attunement 22, 128–9, 156 Auroville 10, 19, 27, 30–1, 38, 45–6, 63, 71, 88, 104, 114, 133, 137–40, 142, 150, 155, 177, 180–4 Auroville Village Action Group 181 Aurum earth-brick machine 46 Australia 13, 15, 26–7, 46, 53, 73, 181 Ba, Djibril (Jiby) 59, 72, 91 back-to-the-land 11, 22, 56 backyard 73, 97, 127, 189, 190, 205 backyard farm 97, 205 bacteria 29, 51, 60–1 Balde, Djibril 59 Bangladesh 107, 201 Barrel Cluster (Findhorn) 40 Bayer Corporation 199 beauty 25, 39, 47, 75, 78, 82, 89, 101, 108, 147, 163, 174–5, 205 bees 54, 74 belonging (sense of) 14, 30, 31, 136, 144, 146–8, 150, 152, 185 culture of 146–8, 152, 192 story of 185 Berlin 23, 64, 84, 86, 88, 177 Berry, Thomas 154–5 Berry, Wendell 170 Bible (New Testament) 163, 173 bicycle 1, 8, 27, 43, 63–7, 127, 192–4 Big Bang 154–5 bike trains 189 biodiversity 27, 71 see also wildlife biogeochemical cycles 201 biology 4, 25, 36, 51, 53, 57, 72, 135, 154, 159, 162, 163 birds 34, 73, 152, 155 Block, Peter 192 blocking (in consensus decision-making) 8, 41, 64–5, 117–19 Bokaer, Joan 54 Bott, Gabi 166 Brazil 13, 195 Brooks, Joss 181–3 Buddhism 28, 85, 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 164, 165, 171, 177 building codes 40, 44, 53, 194 bus stop 24, 63, 131, 191 Business Alliance for Local Living Economies 89, 199 Caddy, Peter and Eileen 128, 156 Calera Creek Water Recycling Plant 194 California 6, 29, 43, 69, 74, 111–12, 166, 169, 194 car culture 27, 46, 62, 65–6, 145, 193 Camara, Lamin 90–1 Canada 197 capitalism 79, 88, 106, carbon dioxide 45, 71, 161 Caron, Paul 175–6 Carruba, Capra 16, 125 Catholicism 189 cell phones 70 cement 45, 116 charcoal 33, 72–3 Chennai 181–2 child-rearing practices 11, 17, 18, 24, 94, 111–12, 114, 116, 119, 133–8, 168, 191 children 8, 17, 21–2, 24, 30, 46, 66, 69, 85, 88, 94, 111, 114, 116, 119, 124–5, 127, 131–8, 140–1, 143–4, 147, 153, 163, 168, 180, 189, 193 absence of 30, 137 education of 23, 66, 88, 132, 140, 153, 163, 189 participation of in ecovillage culture 13, 134, 137, 143–5, 147 raised in ecovillages returning 116, 135–7 wellbeing of 24, 30, 46, 111–12, 116, 119, 127, 131, 147, 153 China 36, 59, 62–3, 193 choir 98, 138, 141, 145 Christian, Diana Leafe 113, 119, 206 Christianity (Christian) 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 168, 185 circle of life 33–4, 74–7, 79, 109–11, 146, 148–9, 188, 202 circus 64, 88–9, 124 Cities for Climate Protection 194 citizenship 35, 49, 75, 92, 100, 122, 124, 136, 189, 202 City Repair 191 climate change 1, 5, 16, 34, 49, 50, 70, 75, 111, 130, 155, 161, 169, 172, 188, 190, 194, 195, 201, 204–5, 211 Club 99 (Sieben Linden) 43, 56–7, 70, 171 cogeneration 40, 49 co-housing 11, 21, 46–7, 93, 127, 207 Cold War 23, 88 collaborative consumption 34, 68–70, 92, 146 collective intelligence 175–9, 185 Colufifa 25–6, 31, 58–60, 66, 90–1, 105, 114, 120, 125, 150, 167–9, 196, 199 common house 17, 27, 43, 46, 50, 69, 70, 92–3, 97, 113, 127, 139, 143, 171 common property 69–70, 80, 92–4, 97, 191, 197, 199 Commoner, Barry 75 commons 191, 197, 199 see also common property commune 95–7, 127, 163 communication 18, 25, 78, 112, 119, 121–3, 125–8, 139, 147, 166, 174–5, 192, 201 communism 95, 106 community meals 70, 83, 162, 195 Community Sustainability Assessment 10, 132 Compassionate Listening 147, 192 complementary currency 99–103, 110 compost 5, 8–9, 32, 34, 54, 59, 128, 129, 137, 146–7, 207 composting toilet 15, 20, 41, 53, 61, 133, 147, 207 compressed-earth building 27–8, 46 conflict 11, 18, 106, 112, 114, 117–23, 137–8, 147, 150, 176, 205 conflict resolution 18, 106, 114, 137–8, 205 connection (sense of) 25, 69, 115, 123–4, 152, 155, 162–3, 166, 171 connectivity 185–6, 202–3 consensus 2, 6, 18, 20, 116–20, 125, 177, 180 consumerism 80, 97, 176 see also consumer society; overconsumption consumer society 15, 80, 92, 102 see also consumerism; overconsumption contraction and convergence 105 cooperative(s) 93, 100–2, 106, 191, 199 Copenhagen 133, 194 corporate lobbying 197–8 cottage industries 27, 87–8, 181–2 Council of Sustainable Settlements of the Americas (CASA) 200–1 courtyard 29, 46, 73, 84, 162 credito 100–3 crisis 3–4, 9, 11, 16, 18, 26, 36, 59, 108, 116, 120, 150, 153, 172, 176, 191, 203 ecological 1–5, 9, 11, 16, 150, 153, 172, 176 extinction 203 of meaning (existential) 150, 153 within ecovillages 18, 26, 108, 116–20 cult 115–16 currency (monetary) 12, 79–80, 98–103 da Silva, Arjuna 48 dairy 56, 83–4, 87 Damanhur 16, 18, 25, 30, 36–40, 42, 46, 57, 63, 87, 100–3, 115, 120, 122–5, 130, 133, 135–6, 150, 155, 157–60, 163, 171, 174, 177, 180, 183 Damanhur Crea 101 Dawson, Jonathan 11, 14, 68, 82, 124, 129, 130, 132 decision-making 17–18, 94, 116–17, 120, 135, 147, 177, 199 Dee, Bhavana 180–1 degrowth 196–7 democracy 66, 94, 106, 116, 117, 120, 177, 185, 188–9, 191, 193 Denmark 12, 22, 49, 92, 95, 97, 134, 197 dinosaurs 153, 155, 203–4 do-it-yourself politics 190 Dongtan (China) 193 downsizing 63, 105, 107, 197 drought-resistant plants 53 Duhm, Dieter 115–16 E2C2 30–5, 76, 80, 110, 151, 188, 191, 193, 195, 199, 203, 207 Earth community 76, 202 Earth System Governance 201 Earthaven 17. 20, 36, 38, 40, 43, 47–9, 53, 57–8, 77–8, 93, 100, 105, 108, 113–21, 129, 141, 150, 160, 165–6 Ecker, Achim 115 eco-home 42, 77, 108 ecological economics 196–7 ecological footprint 7, 21, 24, 26, 34–5, 43, 57, 68, 70, 73, 171, 183 ecology (defined) 34–5 eco-neighborhood 201 see also neighborhoods, sustainability practices in ecosystem 27, 34, 71, 74, 89, 109, 158. 182 ecovillage (defined) 3, 12 Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI) 17, 21, 36, 41, 46, 50, 54, 63, 69, 83, 86, 93, 107–8, 111–14, 127, 138–9, 152, 194, 198 Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) 38, 132, 195 Ecovillage Network of the Americas 12 EcoYoff (Senegal) 179 Edinburgh 195 education 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 23, 25, 67, 78, 89, 94, 119, 131–2, 135, 179, 181–2, 198 Effective Micro-organisms 29, 60, 182 efficiency 34, 36, 39–42, 64, 66, 81, 108, 121, 147 ego-village 42, 176 electric cars 36, 81 embodied energy 36, 42 energy 3, 20, 25, 27, 30, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–5, 47, 48–9, 50–3, 58, 62, 63, 66, 69, 70, 74–5, 78, 82–3, 86, 88, 92, 99, 101, 111, 115, 122, 127, 130, 154–5, 156, 164, 176, 182, 183, 188, 189, 190, 193, 195, 197, 202, 205 cogeneration 40, 49 descent 70, 83, 92, 130, 189–90, 195, 202 fossil fuel 34, 42, 49, 51, 58, 62–3, 74, 92, 161, 167, 171, 192, 197, 200 micro-hydro 48 natural gas 48–9, 63 nonrenewable 5, 15, 49, 83 renewable 3, 38, 40, 48, 49, 63, 78, 82, 83, 88, 135, 156, 190, 197, 205 solar 9, 15, 25, 27, 28, 36, 40–5, 48–9, 63, 81–6, 101, 108, 111, 113, 133, 147, 183, 191, 193, 198, 205 wind 27, 48–51, 63, 73, 133 wood 33–4, 40–2, 48–9, 72, 141, 161 energy return on energy investment (EROEI) 62–3 engineer 43, 69, 84, 111 enlightenment (spiritual) 164, 183 entropy 155, 159 Estonia Ecovillage Network 179 Ethiopia 60 ethnic diversity 115, 155 Europe 4, 5, 12, 13, 15, 19, 26, 44, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58–60, 65–6, 105, 117, 122, 132, 163, 167–8, 178–9, 194, 197 European Union 5, 55–6, 189, 195, 198 evolution 3–4, 146, 148, 149, 152, 154–5, 157, 159–60, 162–3, 166, 175, 178, 185, 203–4 biological 3, 146, 154, 159, 161, 162, 166, 185, 203–4 cosmological 154–5, 159, 163 cultural 4, 148–9, 160, 166, 175, 188, 203–4 evolutionary intelligence 151, 154, 157, 163, 203 exponential growth 92, 102, 186 Falco (Oberto Airaudi) 25, 122, 158 Farmer, Chris 47–8, 58, 118, 141, 160 fermentation 141, 192 Field of Dreams (Findhorn) 42 Findhorn 12–13, 21–2, 30–1, 40, 42, 49, 51–2, 63, 68, 82, 89, 100, 115, 124, 128–9, 133, 138, 142, 150, 155–7, 177–8, 180, 194–5 Findhorn Consultancy Service 98 Findhorn Foundation 98 fish 58, 77–8, 90, 99,106, 188, 198 focalizer 22, 128, 156 forest (include forestry) 20, 33–4, 37, 55, 58, 71–2, 77, 90, 92, 116, 119, 125, 134, 162, 181, 183, 198 Forum (ZEGG practice) 24, 121–2, 132, 147, 192 fossil fuels 34, 42, 49, 51, 58, 62–3, 74, 92, 161, 167, 171, 192, 197, 200 freedom 6, 86, 95, 97, 121, 131, 178 friendship 6, 9, 42, 81, 108, 129, 134, 164, 185 frugality 51, 105 full-cost accounting 80–2, 189, 197–9 funeral 24, 144–5 Furuhashi, Michiyo 95, 176 Gaia 5, 31, 155–6, 163, 201 Gaia Education 10, 31, 132, 155, 190, 195, 198 Gaia Trust 12 Galle (Sri Lanka) 170–1 Gambia 35, 59, 90, 140, 167–8 Game of Life (at Damanhur) 124–5 Gandhi, Mahatma 81, 106 garbage 5, 9, 88–9, 194 Gateway Farm 57–8, 77, 108, 118, 160–1 GEN-Africa 200–1 gender relations 27, 72, 120, 126, 168 GEN-Europe/Africa 12 GEN-Oceania/Asia 12 genetically modified food 16, 25, 36, 54, 57 Germany 23–4, 33, 40, 44, 48–9, 56, 105, 115–16, 129, 143, 166, 177, 193, 197 gift economy 103–4, 147, 191–2, 199 Gilman, Robert and Diane 12 Gilmore, Jeff 69, 111–13, 138 global civilization 189, 200–2 global economy 12, 16, 34, 62, 79, 80, 82, 107, 109 Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) 10–12, 26, 38, 132–3, 179, 200–1 global governance 200–2 global inequality 35, 105, 167–9 global injustice 35, 169 globalization 12, 60, 63, 75, 107, 133, 139, 170, 186, 200–2 goat(s) 60–1, 207 God 61, 102, 136, 149–50, 164, 168–9, 173, 176, 182 Goura (Damanhurian) 57, 171 governance 18, 20, 28, 114, 116–17, 119, 120–1, 125, 134, 188, 190, 198, 200–1 government 72, 73, 83, 92, 94, 102, 106, 183, 190–1, 195–200 see also subsidies Great Depression 102 Great Reskilling 192 Great Unfoldment 152–61, 162–5, 172–4, 177, 178, 185, 186 green building 13, 36, 39–44, 45–8, 75, 175, 182 greenhouse gas emissions 45, 48, 62, 67–8, 71, 167, 169, 184, 193 see also carbon dioxide Greer, John 103 Groundswell Training Center 198 guesthouse 27, 117 guests in ecovillages 20–1, 23, 28, 40, 65, 68, 71, 87, 100, 117, 128, 132, 140, 144 see also visitors Gunambil (Sri Lanka) 106 Guneskoy Village (Turkey) 179 Halbach, Dieter 164 Hall of Metals (Damanhur) 158–60 Harris, Martha 93, 108 Hanover (Germany) 193 Hawken, Paul 200 Higa, Teruro 60 high school 8, 11, 77, 136 high-density building 46, 194 high-tech approaches in ecovillages 16, 25, 36, 40, 47, 113 Hinduism (Hindu) 149, 150, 151, 159 holistic approach 36–9, 126, 155, 166, 170 see also systemic thinking Hollywood 29, 65–7, 193 homeowners’ association 93, 191 Honduras 65 Høngsmark, Kirsten 96–7 horses 36, 56, 134, 143, 145 Hubble Telescope 188 Hübl, Thomas 177–9, 189 human excrement 8, 34, 182 human manure 33–4, 53 see also human waste; urine human subjects review 11 human waste 33–4 , 53, 182 hunger 10, 25–6, 31, 58–60, 69, 84–5, 97, 130, 141, 185, 196 hybrid cars 36 hyper-individualism 29, 185, 192, 193, 203 idealism 6, 17, 47–8, 86, 89, 99, 118, 120, 136 income (ecovillagers’) 16, 20, 22, 88, 95–6, 98, 101, 164; see also salary India 19, 27, 35–6, 57, 59, 62, 81, 140, 165, 169, 180–3 individualism 29, 46, 116, 176, 178, 185, 192, 193, 203 Indus Valley Restaurant 104 industrialized agriculture 105 infrastructure 35, 48, 51, 62, 63, 69, 86, 186, 194, 202 insulation 41–3 integrity 9, 80, 86, 149, 181, 201 intention (in ecovillages) 114–16, 123, 164, 207 see also purpose (sense of) intentional community 12, 93, 123, 164, 207 interdependence 4–5, 9, 17, 27, 28, 46, 49, 75, 79, 108, 117, 152, 184, 185–6, 199–202 ecological 4–5, 9, 36, 75, 108, 117, 184, 185–6 global (planetary) 4–5, 9, 27, 46, 75, 79, 117, 184, 185–6, 199–202 social 4–5, 9, 17, 36, 49, 117, 152, 184, 185–6 interest (monetary) 12, 17, 23, 35, 54, 76, 79, 80, 83, 100, 102–3, 112, 129 internal economy 64, 100 internalizing costs 197 see also full-cost accounting International Consortium of Local Environmental Initiatives 190 international institutions 189, 200 international law 3, 189, 194, 200 International Training Center for Local Authorities (CIFAL) 195 internet 12, 36, 64, 70, 99, 189, 191, 199, 201 interreligious sensitivity 149–50, 168 Isadon (Furuta Isami) 29, 61, 121, 172–3 Islam (Muslim) 26, 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 168 Italy 16, 18, 25, 49, 100–2, 136, 157 Jackson, Ross 12 Japan 28–9, 60–1, 92, 94, 123, 172 jobs 79, 85–8, 96, 100, 111, 117, 166, 197 joining fee 93, 95 Judaism (Jew) 149, 159, 162 kibbutz 12, 13 Kibbutz Lotan (Israel) 179 Kidokoro, Yuki 84, 123, 143 Kitao, Koichi 60–1, 74 Kloster, Jørgen 55–6 Konohana 28–9, 60–1, 74, 92, 94–5, 121, 150, 155, 172–3, 176–7, 180 laboratory (ecovillage as) 13, 18, 27, 79, 86, 131, 149, 151, 164, 175, 180, 185–6, 205 LA County Bicycle Coalition 65 Læssø, Bø 55–6 Lagoswatte 28 laundry 46, 47, 50, 69 laws 25, 27–8, 93, 97, 106, 155, 170, 191, 197–9 learning author’s 2, 5–9, 13–16, 20, 39, 45, 67, 94. 102, 110, 141, 143, 153, 165, 168, 174–5, 179, 181, 205–7 from ecovillages 11, 14, 18–19, 60–1, 121, 131–4, 141–2, 147, 150, 187–204 in ecovillages 11, 14, 18–19, 28, 47, 51, 53, 60–1, 88, 108, 111, 113, 121, 131–4, 136–8, 147, 164, 177 legal and financial structure 92–7 lessons (from ecovillages) 9, 13, 15, 32, 69, 81, 110, 151, 187–204 libertarianism 190 Lietaer, Bernard 99–100 Lindegger, Max 26, 28, 84 linear model (economic) 33–4, 53, 75, 203 literacy 25, 106, 168, 181 Living Building Challenge 194 Living Machine 51–2, 194 living system 5, 53, 166, 173 Lizama, Jimmy 65–6, 193 localization 16, 54–5, 73–80, 84, 87–9, 97, 99, 110–11, 130, 141, 189–96, 198–9, 201–2 Los Angeles 13, 15, 29–30, 65, 67, 84, 93, 114, 150, 162, 193–4 riots in 30, 114–15 Los Angeles Eco-Village (LAEV) 29–30, 65, 67, 84, 93, 114–15, 123, 127, 137, 142, 150, 162, 193 Love, Brian 58, 77–8, 108 Lovelock, James 155 low-income housing 108 low-tech approaches in ecovillages 16, 36, 40, 47, 70 MacLean, Dorothy 156 Macy, Joanna 154, 165–6 magic 25, 124, 127, 159, 160–1, 163 malaria 25, 181 Marland, Angus 156–7 mass extinction 1, 75, 155, 172, 203 mass transit 23, 63–4, 66, 92, 127, 167, 206 Matrimandir (Auroville) 183–4 Mbackombel (Senegal) 198 meat 22, 25, 55–8, 83 medicine 59–60, 136 meditation 7, 25, 122, 128, 136, 151–2, 156–64, 165, 171, 177 Sarvodaya’s peace 151–2, 165 meetings 7, 17, 27, 46, 92, 95, 98, 105, 107, 112, 115, 117, 119, 120–1, 126, 132, 134, 138–40, 164, 172, 176–7, 179 membership process 22, 93–4, 96 microfinance 25, 59, 106–7, 168, 181, 185, 199 Middle America 21, 108, 194 Middle East 59, 197 Ministry of Ecovillages (Senegal) 198 misanthropic temptation 153 molecular biology lab 25, 36, 57 monasteries 11, 171 Monbiot, George 67–8 money 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, 49, 55, 77–80, 86–7, 98–103, 109–20, 140–1, 161, 168, 169, 180, 192, 198 see also currency (monetary); complementary currency monogamy 24, 115 Morrison, Lara 162 Mount Fuji 28, 172, 174 multinational corporation 112, 161, 200 music 8, 23, 86, 139, 142, 174–5, 185 see also song(s) Music of the Plants (Damanhur) 174–5 mysticism 115, 156, 162, 177, 183, 185 nation-state 117, 200 Nature-Spirit Community 126 Ndao, Babacar 198 neighborhood skills map 64, 70, 87, 192 neighborhoods 6, 21, 29, 32, 43, 54, 46, 50, 52, 56, 64, 67, 70, 87, 97, 108, 109, 110, 114, 138, 141, 146, 167, 171, 187, 188, 190, 191–6, 201, 205 sustainability practices in 80, 87, 97, 109–10, 114, 138, 141, 146, 188, 191–2, 205 New Age 21, 88, 162 New Rural Reconstruction Movement (China) 196 New York City 193 Nonviolent Communication (NVC) 112, 119, 123, 125, 147, 192 Nygren, Kristen 111–13, 138 Obama, Michelle, 199 oikos 74–5, 79 oneness 162, 186 organic food 2, 6, 9, 21, 29, 54–60, 73, 75, 81, 84, 87, 97, 128–9, 133, 191 overconsumption 4–5, 35, 36, 105, 107, 112, 167, 202 see also consumerism; consumer society Owen, David 193 ownership 11, 18, 64, 70, 80, 101–2, 92, 94, 97–8, 146, 199 Pacific Northwest 187 park (public) 73, 92. 97, 189 participatory development 10, 12 particle consciousness 178, 189 passive solar design 40–5, 48, 82, 108, 113 patriarchy 26, 115, 117, 120 Peace Contract with Animals (Sieben Linden) 24, 56 Peace Corps 198 peace movement 164 peak oil 5, 50, 62–3, 130 Pepe, Lucertola 174–5 permaculture 20, 26, 34, 36–9, 54, 58, 73, 75, 117, 162, 188, 195, 200, 205 personal growth 89, 113, 120, 148, 149, 175, 206 pets 73, 127 pioneer species 19 planetary citizen 189, 202 planetary interdependence 9, 27, 46, 186, 189 plants, communication with 162, 174–5 pocket neighborhood 194 policy making 189 polis 74–6, political activism 6, 11, 16, 23, 89, 133, 157, 164, 166 political science 35, 50, 85, 99, 116 politics 1–6, 35, 66, 88–9, 102–4, 113, 117, 129–30, 133, 141, 151, 157, 164–7, 189–90, 196 polyamory 23, 115 Portland (Oregon) 191, 193 postmodern 117, 125, 171 poultry 55, 58–61, 77, 84, 134, 168, 192, 207 Pour Tous Distribution Service (Auroville) 104 poverty 30–1, 43, 60, 81, 95, 151, 181 power of yes 190, 194, 199 power tools 69–70 preschool 107 private property 79–80, 92–4 product stewardship laws 197 prosperity 13, 101, 103, 105, 110 purpose (sense of) core human 188–9, 191, 196, 200, 202, 207 in ecovillages 12, 14, 18, 20, 23, 61, 78, 85, 109, 114–16, 118–19, 124, 132, 135, 138, 172, 182, 188 see also intention (in ecovillages) race 27, 168 rainwater 9, 26–9, 31, 44, 51–3, 71, 82, 113, 192, 205 real estate 54, 79, 92–4, 114 real wealth 97, 107, 109 recycling 3, 6, 188, 194 relational living 150, 165, 167, 192 religion 10, 149–50, 152, 154, 159, 162, 164, 165, 168–9, 172, 186 renters 79, 94 retirement 18, 81, 93–4, 108, 127, 207 retrofitting 41, 81, 114 right livelihood 80, 85–90, 99, 199 risk perception 82 n1 Rio+20 Earth Summit 200 Rosenberg, Marshall 123 rural ecovillages 17, 54, 71, 83, 84 Rylander, Kimchi 118–20 salary 1, 9, 11, 16, 20, 22, 72, 83–4, 88–9, 92 n6, 95–6, 98–9, 101, 105, 107–8, 113, 164, 167, 194, 198 Sarvodaya 13, 28, 31, 104, 106–7, 114, 120, 125–6, 129, 133, 149–52, 155, 165, 170, 187, 196 sauna 69, 93 science 51, 75, 135, 154–5, 162, 164–5, 185–6 Seattle 7, 30, 67, 138, 156, 191, 205–6 secularism 13, 31, 149, 150, 154, 159, 162–4, 168, 177, 185 Sekem (Egypt) 200 self-awareness 137, 170 Senadeera, Bandula 125–6 Senegal 25–6, 59, 66, 72, 167–9, 179, 198–9 Seneviratne, Mahama 151–2 sewage 27, 51, 132 sex 109, 115 Shapiro, Elan 107–8 shared-wall construction 45, 47, 69 sharing 16, 18, 22, 26, 32, 47, 54, 63–4, 69, 70, 81, 87, 92–3, 96–7, 106, 110, 114, 127, 132, 142, 146, 164–5, 172, 189, 191–4, 199, 201, 207 sheep 58, 77 Shelton, Julie 84 shramadana 104, 106, 129 Sieben Linden 24, 33–4, 36, 41, 43–4, 47, 49, 53, 56–7, 70–1, 105, 114, 127, 129, 143–6, 150, 164, 166, 171, 177–9 silence (inner) 128, 143, 157, 159, 169, 171, 178 simplicity 8, 39, 81, 171–4, 180 skills 8, 16, 32, 43, 64, 65, 78, 87, 88, 108–9, 110, 111, 114, 122, 127, 131, 134, 138, 139, 147, 189, 192, 207 SkyRoot 206–7 slavery 167, 185 Slow Cities 192 Slow Food movement 192 see also Slow Money; Slow Cities Slow Money 192 slums 115, 132, 182, 195, 196 socialism 88 sociocracy 120 soil 8, 17, 19, 24, 31, 33, 46, 53, 55, 56, 58–60, 71, 74–5, 84, 89, 103, 131, 145, 147, 156, 161, 196, 207 solar energy 9, 15, 25, 27–8, 36, 40, 48–9, 63, 81, 83, 86, 101, 108, 111, 113, 133, 147, 183, 191, 193,198, 205 solidarity 84–5, 100, 103, 109–10, 133, 169, 192, 200, 205, 207 song(s) 7, 28, 34, 73, 138, 143, 145, 147, 152, 179 see also music sorcerer’s apprentices 160–1 Spain 90, 168 spell 124, 160–1 see also magic spirituality 24, 30–1, 149, 150, 155–7, 162–5, 166, 170, 171–3, 180–5 Sri Aurobindo 180–2 Sri Lanka 13, 28, 106–7, 125–6, 142, 151, 155, 165, 170 steady-state economy 197 story of separation 4, 11, 165, 179, 195–6 straw-bale construction 18, 43–4, 47–8, 171 structural insulated panels (SIPS) 36 subsidiarity 189, 193, 198, 201 subsidies governmental 3, 15, 82–3, 197–8 within ecovillages 83, 96, 197 suburb 21, 41, 69, 97, 127, 193–4 survivalism 112 sustainable development 28, 88, 133 Sustainable Tompkins County 107 Svanholm 22–3, 31, 49, 55–6, 64, 92, 94–7, 114, 127, 134–5, 163–4 Swimme, Brian 154 symbiosis 4–5, 54, 103, 108–9, 120, 147 biological 53, 103, 148 intergenerational 108, 110 social 4, 54, 103, 108–9, 147–8 synchronic lines 158 systemic thinking 51, 188–90, 193, 208 see also holistic approach Tamerice, Macaco 100–2, 122, 158–9 Tamera 115, 122 Tamil Nadu 19, 27, 45, 88, 140, 181 tar sands 62 taxes 83, 93–6, 101, 189, 197 Technakarto (at Damanhur) 122, 125 technological solutions 36–8, 63, 133, 201–2 teenagers 15, 69, 136 Temples of Humankind 25, 157, 160, 183 Tompkins County (New York) 194 toilet 7, 15, 20, 33–4, 41, 51, 53, 61, 106, 131, 133, 147, 179, 207 toilet assumption 53 Tolle, Eckhart 157 tool library 191 tractor 125 traditional villages 10, 46, 105, 125, 196 transformation 28, 41, 70, 129–30, 145, 150, 155, 165, 168, 179, 183, 185, 192, 205 material 31, 140, 183 of consciousness 177–9, 183–5, 189, 192 personal 28, 145, 169, 173, 179, 192, 205 social 129–30, 168, 179, 185, 192 spiritual 150, 155, 183–4 Transition Town 130, 192, 195, 200–1 transparency 22, 24, 96, 164 transportation 8, 34, 39, 58, 60, 62–8, 75, 92, 189, 193, 194, 205 trees 17, 24, 27, 29, 33, 48, 58, 59, 71–3, 90, 97, 119, 140, 155 triple bottom line 199 trust 14, 17, 22, 64, 85, 96–97, 100, 102, 109, 112, 116, 119–23, 130, 146–7, 154, 164, 167, 174–5, 189, 191–2, 200–1, 207 tsunami 28, 88, 133, 170, 170 two-class society 79, 94, 108 UfaFabrik 23, 64–5, 84, 86, 88, 99, 124, 138–9, 150 unconventional hydrocarbons 62, 197 United Nations 21, 107, 132–3, 195 United States of America (US) 5, 8, 12, 15, 20–1, 29, 35, 48–50, 52, 57–8, 60, 62–3, 73, 82–3, 92–3, 105, 122, 126, 140–1, 177, 191, 197–8 universe story 154, 172 urban ecovillages 16, 23, 34, 64, 84 urban farming 54, 97, 205 urban planning 162, 189, 191 urine 53 utopia 18, 193 Van Dam, René 163 veganism 24, 56–7, 171 vehicle sharing 63–4, 92, 146 village model 78–9, 84, 117, 196 visitors (to ecovillages) 21, 23, 65, 68, 71, 87, 100, 117, 132, 140, 144 Wackernagel, Mathis 35 Walker, Liz 152–3, 194 war 5, 6, 17, 23, 80, 123, 133, 138, 151 wastewater 18, 46, 51, 52, 78, 194 see also sewage water conservation 51–3, 74 Way of Monks (Damanhur) 171, wealth 4, 8, 13, 16, 83, 97, 100, 103–4, 107–9, 112, 192, 197, 201 wellbeing 28, 36, 40, 46, 47, 78, 80, 85, 89, 105–6, 197 wells 17, 20, 51, 106, 117–18 West Africa 31, 59, 67, 167 wetland 52, 194 Whidbey Island 205–7 Wiartalla, Werner 86, 99 wildlife 26, 33–4, 38, 63, 70–4, 182, 194, 206 wind energy 27, 48–9, 51, 63, 73, 133 windows 36, 40–4, 43, 81, 127, 137, 143, 174 double-paned 36, 41, 43, 81 triple-paned 30 windows into sustainability 30, 188 Wolf, Stefan 179 women 26, 31, 39, 59, 72, 88, 90, 106, 107, 125–9, 139, 151, 158, 168, 185 empowerment of 26, 31, 88, 106 literacy 96 oppression of 151, 185 Women Empowerment through Local Livelihood (WELL) 88 World Café 192 worldview 10, 31, 149–50, 155, 159, 160, 164, 172, 178 Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) 11, 83 yurt 39, 206, 207 ZEGG 23–4, 41, 49, 63, 115–6, 121–2, 132–3, 137–8, 150, 177 Zeher, Ozzie 63, 190 ZipCar 64, 70, 199

Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition by Michael J. Mauboussin

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, butter production in bangladesh, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, disruptive innovation, Edward Thorp, experimental economics, financial engineering, financial innovation, framing effect, fundamental attribution error, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, hindsight bias, hiring and firing, information asymmetry, libertarian paternalism, Long Term Capital Management, loose coupling, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, money market fund, Murray Gell-Mann, Netflix Prize, pattern recognition, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Philip Mirowski, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, power law, prediction markets, presumed consent, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, statistical model, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, ultimatum game, vertical integration

Second, these agents interact with one another, and their interactions create structure—scientists often call this emergence. Finally, the structure that emerges behaves like a higher-level system and has properties and characteristics that are distinct from those of the underlying agents themselves. FIGURE 5-1 Simple description of a complex adaptive system Think of Deborah Gordon’s comments. Even though the individual ants are inept, the colony as a whole is smart. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The inability to understand the system based on its components prompted Philip Anderson, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner, to draft the essay, “More Is Different.”

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See also Richard Bookstaber, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007); and Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), 93–109. 23. John D. Sterman, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World (Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2000). 24. John D. Sterman, “Teaching Takes Off: Flight Simulations for Management Education,” http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html. 25. Jay W. Forrester, “Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Urban Growth of the Committee on Banking and Currency, U.S.

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Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2008. Steinwald, A. Bruce. “Primary Care Professionals: Recent Supply Trends, Projections, and Valuation of Services.” Testimony Before the Committee on Health Education, Labor, and Pensions, U.S. Senate, February 12, 2008. Sterman, John D. Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2000. Sterman, John D., and Linda Booth Sweeney. “Managing Complex Dynamic Systems: Challenge and Opportunity for Naturalistic Decision-Making Theory.” In How Professionals Make Decisions, edited by Henry Montgomery, Raanan Lipshitz, and Berndt Brehmer, 57–90.

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History by Thomas Rid

1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alistair Cooke, Alvin Toffler, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Claude Shannon: information theory, conceptual framework, connected car, domain-specific language, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, Extropian, full employment, game design, global village, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, Howard Rheingold, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kubernetes, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Morris worm, Mother of all demos, Neal Stephenson, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, pattern recognition, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Snow Crash, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telepresence, The Hackers Conference, Timothy McVeigh, Vernor Vinge, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, Zimmermann PGP

But he wasn’t entirely happy with the philosophy that he found and presented so forcefully in the Whole Earth Catalog. Three years of scanning innumerable new books as the catalog’s editor did not turn up what he was looking for. “What I found missing was any clear conceptual bonding of cybernetic whole-systems thinking with religious whole-systems thinking,” he recalled. Brand was searching for the meaning of consciousness, for the right for life, for what’s sacred. “Tall order,” he admitted in Harper’s magazine. But then something remarkable happened. As Brand put it, “In the summer of ’72, a book began to fill it in for me: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, by Gregory Bateson.”43 Bateson was a British-born anthropologist and social scientist.

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Brand had just stopped editing the Whole Earth Catalog and had shifted his attention to similar publications with a different format. Brand was still looking for the book that would explain it all, the whole system. After reading Steps, Brand was intrigued. The book, he recalled, provided “the conceptual bonding of cybernetic whole-systems thinking with religious whole-systems thinking.”58 He decided to meet the author who commanded such spiritual persuasion. Brand arranged for an extended interview with Gregory Bateson himself. Brand spent several days at the anthropologist’s home in Big Sur, overlooking the Pacific shimmering in blue and green and gray and reflecting the unique, bright, yet mild light of northern California.

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Grey, 52, 61, 161 War and Anti-war (Toffler and Toffler), 308–9 war/warfare; See also specific wars automation of, 73–82, 96 computer simulation of, 71–72 control and communication during World War II, 8–42 cybernetic myths, 346–47 cyberwar, 294–339 cyborg research, 128–40 Eligible Receiver exercise, 311–14 Moonlight Maze, 316–39 Solar Sunrise, 314–15 Watergate, 254 Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney), 241 Weaver, Sigourney, 136 Weaver, Warren, 25–26, 29–36 web browsers, 244, 264 Weldon, Curt, 329 WELL (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link), 191–94, 239–40, 245, 345 Western Electric, 22 whistle-blowers, 284 white-hat hackers, 309 Whitehead, Ennis, 79–80 Whole Earth Catalog, 168–72 and cybernetic myths, 345 Terence McKenna and, 186–87 and the WELL, 190–91 Whole Earth Review crypto anarchy article, 264 and cybernetic myths, 346 and cyberspace, 220 on Cyberthon, 242 end of, 243 Jaron Lanier article, 216–17 and the WELL, 191 whole-systems thinking, 180 “wholism,” 161 Wiener, Norbert on Ashby’s homeostat, 61–62 on automated warfare, 71–72, 75, 96 Gregory Bateson and, 176 on brain–computer similarities, 114 Arthur C. Clarke and, 120, 122 Manfred Clynes and, 124 conceptual framework of cybernetics, 47–53 on cyberculture as term, 103–4 and cybernetic myth, 344 Cybernetics, xii, 3, 36, 51 Cybernetics (2nd edition), 119–20 and “cyber” prefix, 304 and dangers of cybernetics, 46 death of, 104 John Diebold and, 97 and enchantment of the machine, 351 and The Evolving Society, 106 and feedback, 48–49 first encounter with computer, 30 on future of intelligent machines, 70–71 God and Golem, Inc., 89–92 and guided missile development, 44–45 L.

Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight by David A. Mindell

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 1960s counterculture, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo Guidance Computer, Charles Lindbergh, computer age, deskilling, Dr. Strangelove, Fairchild Semiconductor, fault tolerance, Gene Kranz, interchangeable parts, Lewis Mumford, Mars Rover, more computing power than Apollo, Neil Armstrong, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Silicon Valley, sparse data, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telerobotics, The Soul of a New Machine

The systems experts, the organizations they came from, and the ideas they developed played a major role in Apollo, though their dominance did not go unchallenged. World War II coalesced systems thinking in several arenas. In response to technical problems like radar and automatic gunfire control, engineers began to see that all components of a system needed to be understood together, rather than as a hodge-podge of components. Engineers learned to conceptualize their machines as integrated systems with feedbacks and dynamics, where the behavior of each part helped determine the behavior of the whole. By 1950, these ideas and techniques began the self-conscious era of systems thinking. The Oxford English Dictionary shows that uses of the term system exploded after 1950, including systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, general systems theory, and a host of others.48 Each field had its own innovators, its own emphasis, and its own home institutions and professions, but they shared common concerns with feedback, dynamics, flows, block diagrams, human-machine interaction, signals, simulation, and the exciting new possibilities of computers.49 Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics (1948) exemplified the trend, arguing that feedback control and statistics evoked analogies between computers and organisms, social systems, even the mind itself.50 The idea of the cyborg, part human, part machine, emerged as Wiener-inspired NACA researchers considered the future mix of mechanical and organic necessary for spaceflight.51 Chauffeurs and Airmen in the Age of Systems 37 The management aspects of systems engineering formalized in the mid-1950s when the air force stretched its resources to quickly build an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

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The IL would also report to Houston, and serve as designer and systems integrator, but without cognizance over the contractors or authority over production hardware. ‘‘Weak systems thinking’’ The Block II redefinition had great import for the Apollo guidance computer (AGC) and hence for the human role in the missions. First to go was the idea that the astronauts might repair the system in flight. Shea found North American’s principle of inflight maintenance ‘‘another example of weak systems thinking.’’45 All during this management shakeup, engineers at North American and the IL still struggled with the problems of in-flight repair as its implications became more and more cumbersome.

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Clynes and Kline, ‘‘Cyborgs and Space.’’ 52. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus, 99; Hughes, and Hughes, Systems, Experts, and Computers. 53. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development; Pinney, ‘‘Projects, Management, and Protean Times’’; Walker and Powell, Atlas: The Ultimate Weapon. 54. For a history of systems thinking in the Atlas project, see Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus, chapter 3. Simon Ramo is quoted on p. 67. Ramo, ‘‘ICBM: Giant Step into Space,’’ 83. 55. Armstrong, ‘‘Where Do We Go from Here?’’ 56. Blackburn, ‘‘Flight Testing in the Space Age,’’ 10–11. 57. Ibid., 10. 58. Ibid. 59. Quesada, ‘‘A Pilot’s Philosophy for the Space Age.’’

Lessons-Learned-in-Software-Testing-A-Context-Driven-Approach by Anson-QA

anti-pattern, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, finite state, framing effect, full employment, independent contractor, information retrieval, job automation, knowledge worker, lateral thinking, Ralph Nader, Richard Feynman, side project, Silicon Valley, statistical model, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, web application

Learning a new way to model a product is like learning a new way to see it. Study modeling. You will test better as you become more skillful in the art of modeling. Textbooks and classes about requirements analysis and software architecture can help. A wonderful way to gain skill in all kinds of modeling is to study systems thinking. See An Introduction to General Systems Thinking: Silver Anniversary Edition. (Weinberg 2001). Lesson 26: Intuition is a fine beginning, but a lousy conclusion You may be tempted to use particular test data or to judge a particular output based on your intuition—that's the "gut feel" you have that you know, even if you can't articulate reasons to justify your knowledge.

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Exploratory Data Analysis. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley. -WWebster, Bruce. 1995. Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development. M&T Books. Weick, Karl E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Weinberg, Gerald M. 1992. Quality Software Management, Volume 1: Systems Thinking. New York: Dorset House Publishing. Weinberg, Gerald M. 1997a. Quality Software Management, Volume 2: First- Order Measurement. New York: Dorset House Publishing. Weinberg, Gerald M. 1997b. Quality Software Management, Volume 3: Congruent Action. New York: Dorset House Publishing. Weinberg, Gerald M. 1997c.

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Weinberg, Gerald M. 1997c. Quality Software Management, Volume 4: Anticipating Change. New York: Dorset House Publishing. Weinberg, Gerald M. 1998. The Psychology of Computer Programming, Silver Anniversary Edition. New York: Dorset House Publishing. Weinberg, Gerald M. 2001. An Introduction to General Systems Thinking: Silver Anniversary Edition. New York: Dorset House Publishing. Whittaker, James and Alan Jorgensen. 1999. Why Software Fails. ACM Software Engineering Notes, July. Available at http://se.fit.edu/papers/SwFails.pdf. 245 Whittaker, James and Alan Jorgensen. 2000. How to Break Software. Proceedings of the Software Testing Analysis & Review Conference, May.

Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them by Mushtak Al-Atabi

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, business climate, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, corporate social responsibility, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, follow your passion, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, invention of the wheel, iterative process, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, mirror neurons, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, remote working, shareholder value, six sigma, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking

Another feature of critical thinking is that it is systemic and holistic in the sense that while examining a proposed solution, it examines its impact and consequences on other parts of the system thus ensuring that a solution at one level of the system does not create challenges and difficulties somewhere else. In this era of Grand Challenges, critical and system thinking as well as thinking holistically are prerequisites to addressing these challenges. Imagine the challenge of climate change, for example, before introducing any treatment in the system or proposing any solutions, we need to be able to comprehend the complexity and connectedness of different parts of the system and how an alteration in a part of the system may have an unexpected impact on another part of the system.

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Likewise, these residents may opt to lobby the authorities against issuing the permit to the bank to operate the new branch. It is clear that the project team needs to consider matters and relationships beyond the obvious of kitting the building and staffing the branch. Project management and stakeholders’ management require a systems thinking approach that integrates the various aspects of the project to ensure that the project will be a sustainable success. 8. What is the level of complexity of the project? 9. What are the risks associated with this project? 10. What are the policies and procedures that can affect the project?

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A Gantt chart represents the schedule of different project tasks and deliverables as a function of time. If kept updated, it can give an overall knowledge of the progress of the project. Gantt Chart Work Breakdown Structure This is a structural task and deliverable way of describing a project. It is a useful project management and systems thinking tool. It helps decompose a system or projects based on the flow of materials and products, data, and information, or services. An example of WBS is given below. Electric 3-Wheeler Project Planning & Proposal Research Component Design Construction Define Project Scope Chassis & Suspension Chassis Mock Chassis Work Breakdown Manoeuvrability Suspension Geometry Electrical Systems Design Proposal Materials Electrical Systems & Batteries An Example of a Work Breakdown Structure To develop useful and easy-to-use WBS, the following design features need to be observed: 1.

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff

A Pattern Language, air freight, Anthropocene, Apple II, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Beryl Markham, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Biosphere 2, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, Danny Hillis, decarbonisation, demographic transition, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, feminist movement, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Filter Bubble, game design, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, intentional community, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, Loma Prieta earthquake, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, microdosing, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, North Sea oil, off grid, off-the-grid, paypal mafia, Peter Calthorpe, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Hackers Conference, Thorstein Veblen, traveling salesman, Turing test, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, young professional

Now the ideas of Buckminster Fuller—pro-technology, with a deep faith that the coming of computerization and automation would result in an infinite abundance that would arrive shortly—were increasingly appealing to him. Fuller was an iconoclastic inventor and futurist who had popularized the geodesic dome and whole-systems thinking, and Brand fell under his spell while attending a series of lectures he gave in San Jose in early 1966. He would become a devoted adherent to Fuller’s whole-systems thinking approach; it would become a framing principle for the Whole Earth Catalog. In his letter to his father he pointed to the power of cooperation: “Synergy—the unique behavior of whole systems, unpredicted by their respective sub-systems’ events,” he explained.

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Later in the Catalog was an endorsement of We Built Our Own Computers, a British book, accompanied by a photo of the “Electric Logical Computer Exeter.” And a page before the 9100A was a two-page spread on Human Biocomputer, which “offers the opportunity to learn and explore computers without requiring money or administrative approval.” The signs were there from the beginning. Fuller’s systems thinking perspective and a cybernetic approach to information spilled out of the Catalog. Fuller and Norbert Wiener were highlighted up front (the first two pages of listings—the first thing a reader would encounter after the introductory material—concerned material written by Fuller), and deeper within were discussions (with ordering instructions) of Fuller’s Education Automation and Weiner’s Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.

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., 4 Whole Earth Catalog, 1, 67, 71, 129, 132, 142, 146, 148, 160, 170, 175, 181, 182, 187, 199, 207, 235, 264, 283–84, 287 access to tools as essence of, 138, 154 back-to-the-land movement and, 139, 169, 176–77, 225 books and magazines in, 167–68 CD-ROM version of, 292–93 Demise Party for, 194–98, 202, 343 Earth-from-space covers of, 6, 166 as financial success, 192, 202, 240, 343 function and purpose of, 165–66 germination of, 99, 105–6, 145, 147, 150, 155, 162 launch of, 161, 162, 163, 164–69, 171–73 no-politics policy of, 122, 165, 184, 187 personal computing embraced by, 168–69 SB’s epiphany about, 154–55 as silent on Vietnam War, 122 in sixties counterculture, 173–74 tenth-anniversary celebration of, 236–37 toll on SB of, 174, 183–84, 185, 189, 192–93 transformative impact on readers of, 173, 189, 198, 253–54 “We are as gods” hypothesis of, 2, 39, 165, 232, 294, 347–48, 358, 360, 361–62, 364 Whole Earth Catalog supplements, 169–70, 177, 180, 182, 191, 218–19, 244 Whole Earth Discipline (Brand), 246, 346–55, 357, 360, 361–62 Whole Earth Epilog, 3, 126, 190, 218, 219, 233 Whole Earth Review, 261, 266, 271, 276, 300, 303 Whole Earth Software Catalog, 253, 256, 257, 259, 260–61, 294 Whole Earth Software Review, 253, 255, 259–60, 261 Whole Earth Truck Store, 148, 156–59, 170, 174, 176, 178, 181, 182–83, 192, 203 whole-systems thinking, 132 Who R U? (happening), 94 Wiener, Norbert, 160, 169, 222, 226, 273 Wiesner, Jerome, 272 Wilkinson, Lawrence, 295, 301, 302 Williams, Cecil, 137 Willis, Garry, 200 Wolfe, Tom, 5, 88, 111, 121, 125, 170, 212, 304–5 Wolpman, Jim, 157 Women Building the Earth for the Children’s Sake, 41 Woodstock, 128, 181, 188 woolly mammoth, 359, 360 World Future Society, 231 World’s Fair (1964; New York), 96, 113 “World War IV,” 149, 211 World Wide Web, 151, 172, 230, 279, 292, 314, 330 World Without Mind (Foer), 5–6 Wozniak, Steve, 25, 252, 268–69, 325 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 305, 307, 319 X Xerces blue butterfly, 359, 361 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, see PARC Y Year with Swollen Appendices, A (Eno), 306 Yucca Mountain, 335–36 Z Zen Buddhism, 33, 77, 98, 194, 225–26 SB and, 207–8, 210, 218, 225 see also San Francisco Zen Center Zihuatanejo, Mexico, Leary/Alpert project in, 89 Zoloft, 338 Zomeworks, 203 Zuni Indians, 100 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z About the Author John Markoff was one of a team of New York Times reporters who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

Those who innovate to make productivity, purpose, culture and community the governing principles of the workplace and not the time, place or presenteeism of old will gain trust, authority, and people will flock to them. The future of work won’t be one with no office – far from it – but it will be one with new identities and new systems thinking underpinning performance. How far ahead can we look with any accuracy? Not far at all. Too much is shifting, and timeframes are collapsing (the Optimism Years and the Mezzanine Years both lasted around thirty years, but the Co-Working Years just thirteen). So let’s look no further than the near nowhere of 2025.

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The desk is all but over as a built-in feature of office life. Sofas, small theatres, spaces to convene and converse in will be ‘in’. Corporate property developers and landlords, architects and designers will start to work more closely with behavioural psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists to build around systems thinking, holistically. The siloed thinking in which an office space is rented or purchased without any thought to what happens inside it is, thankfully, over. In terms of design itself, modelling office spaces as a cross between an airline lounge and a private members’ club is a good place to start: acknowledge that people are in transit, encourage movement, make them comfortable and relaxed while they are there.

The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Buckminster Fuller, clean water, Climatic Research Unit, conceptual framework, dematerialisation, demographic transition, digital divide, financial independence, game design, Garrett Hardin, geopolitical risk, Herman Kahn, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Lewis Mumford, longitudinal study, means of production, new economy, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, systems thinking, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Review

Decide in advance what to do if problems appear (if possible, forecast them before they appear) and have in place the institutional and technical arrangements necessary to act effectively. Educate for flexibility and creativity, for critical thinking and the ability to redesign both physical and social systems. Computer modeling can help with this step, but equally important would be general education in systems thinking. • Minimize the use of nonrenewable resources. Fossil fuels, fossil groundwaters, and minerals should be used only with the greatest possible efficiency, recycled when possible (fuels can't be recycled, but minerals and water can), and consumed only as part of a deliberate transition to renewable resources

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It takes courage and clarity to challenge an established system. But it can be done. In our own search for ways to encourage the peaceful restructuring of a system that naturally resists its own transformation, we have tried many tools. The obvious ones are displayed through this book-rational analysis, data gathering, systems thinking, computer modeling, and the clearest words we can find. Those are tools that anyone trained in science and economics would automatically grasp. Like recycling, they are useful, necessary, and they are not enough. We don't know what will be enough. But we would like to conclude by mentioning five other tools we have found helpful.

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"Making Sustainable Commitments: An Environmental Strategy for the World Bank" (discussion draft) (Washington, DC: World Bank, April 17, 2001), xii. 7. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 8. Chapter 2. The Driving Force: Exponential Growth 1. This exercise is described by Linda Booth-Sweeney and Dennis Meadows, The Systems Thinking Playbook, vol. 3 (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, 2001), 36-48. 2. We are indebted to Robert Lattes for telling us this riddle. 3. This approximation gives useful values for doubling times only when there is frequent compounding of the interest. For example, a growth rate of 100 percent per day would give a doubling time of about 0.72 day-17 hours if the growing quantity were incremented by 4.17 percent per hour.

Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension by Samuel Arbesman

algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Apple II, Benoit Mandelbrot, Boeing 747, Chekhov's gun, citation needed, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Danny Hillis, data science, David Brooks, digital map, discovery of the americas, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Flash crash, friendly AI, game design, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, Hans Moravec, HyperCard, Ian Bogost, Inbox Zero, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Kevin Kelly, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, mandelbrot fractal, Minecraft, Neal Stephenson, Netflix Prize, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Parkinson's law, power law, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, SimCity, software studies, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, superintelligent machines, synthetic biology, systems thinking, the long tail, Therac-25, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K

good computer science and engineering practices: While the main focus of this book is how to navigate through an age of incomprehensibility that is already upon us, there are ways to design and construct more-manageable engineered systems, such as using “systems thinking.” For example, see Nancy G. Leveson, Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011). methods that can reduce the number of bugs: McConnell, Code Complete, 521. CHAPTER 3: LOSING THE BUBBLE In 1985, a patient entered a clinic: Story and analysis from Nancy G. Leveson and Clark S.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, Bill Atkinson, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, book value, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Californian Ideology, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, distributed generation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Dynabook, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Gilder, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, new economy, Norbert Wiener, peer-to-peer, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Richard Stallman, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Yom Kippur War

They also sent individual participants back to their home disciplines with a deep systems orientation toward their work and a habit of deploying the informational and systems metaphors. In this way the Macy meetings helped transform cybernetics into one of the dominant intellectual paradigms of the postwar era.52 As important as they were, though, these conferences were only one force driving the spread of systems thinking. At the same time that the Macy meetings were introducing cybernetics into new intellectual circles, the military research projects of the cold war were turning its systems orientation into everyday practice. Like the Macy Conferences, these projects brought together specialists from a variety of disciplines, and for the specialists involved, systems theory became a way of life.

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Through it, Brand encountered the works of Norbert Wiener, Marshall McLuhan, and Buckminster Fuller—all of whom would become key influences on the Whole Earth community—and began to imagine a new synthesis of cybernetic theory and countercultural politics. USCO was founded on a fusion of Eastern mysticism and ecological, systems thinking. Its members chose the name USCO in accordance with the teachings of Ananda K. Coomeraswamy, an early-twentieth-century scholar of Indian art then popular among Manhattan bohemians. Coomeraswamy had asserted that artists in traditional societies were as anonymous as tradesmen. The members of USCO saw themselves returning to a more traditional mode of tribal living and collective craftsmanship.

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As Levy explains, MIT and DEC had “an easy arrangement,” since “the Right Thing to do was make sure that any good program got the fullest exposure possible because information was free and the world would only be improved by its accelerated flow.”62 Tak i n g t h e W h o l e E a r t h D i g i t a l [ 135 ] This ethic also accorded well with the values espoused in the Whole Earth Catalog. Like the Catalog, the hacker ethic suggested that access to tools could change the world, first by changing the individual’s “life for the better” and, second, by creating art and beauty. In keeping with the Catalog’s habit of systems thinking, the hacker ethic characterized the tools themselves as prototypes: the computer was a rule-bound system that could serve as a model of the world; to study computers was to learn something about the world at large. Like the Catalog, the hacker ethic suggested that work should be organized in a decentralized manner and that individual ability, rather than credentials obtained from institutions, should determine the nature of one’s work and one’s authority.

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy) by Benjamin Peters

Albert Einstein, American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Anthropocene, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commons-based peer production, computer age, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Davies, double helix, Drosophila, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gabriella Coleman, hive mind, index card, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, power law, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, scientific mainstream, scientific management, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the strength of weak ties, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, transaction costs, Turing machine, work culture , Yochai Benkler

In this chapter, I develop these observations through a series of examples that outline the basic operations of the command economy in theory and in practice, the various schools of thought concerning economic reform (especially around the transition from Nikita Khrushchev to Leonid Brezhnev in 1963), and the political tensions that economic cybernetics tried to square itself with in an attempt to reform (often with long-distance networks) the structural contradictions underlying the practices of the command economy. These contradictions slowed efforts at technocratic economic reform and also ensured the enduring appeal of nonlinear cybernetic systems thinking. The term command economy originated from the German Befehlswirtschaft, which was used to describe the Nazis’ centralized economy and socialist economy. A command economy is one in which the coordination of economy activity is carried out not by market mechanisms but by administrative means through commands, directives, targets, quotas, regulations, and the like.2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said almost nothing about economic planning, except that it would be necessary, and Engels left the decisions to the workers.3 They also asserted that socialism would be impossible to build in impoverished societies, which Leon Trotsky associated with tsarist Russia before fleeing to Mexico.

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For more on Aleksandr Bogdanov, see his Tektologia: Vsyeobshcheiye Organizatsionnaya Nauka (Tectology: Universal Organizational Science) (Moscow: Akademia Nauk, 1913–1922). See also Nikolai Krementsov, A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), and J. Biggart, P. Dudley, and F. King, eds., Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), and McKenzie Wark, Molecular Red: A Theory for the Anthropocene (New York: Verso, 2015). 40. On Stefan Odobleja, see Mihai Draganescu, Odobleja: Between Ampère and Wiener (Bucharest: Academia Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1981); Nicolae Jurcau, “Two Specialists in Cybernetics: Stefan Odobleja and Norbert Wiener, Common and Different Features,” Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy (1998), accessed October 11, 2011, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp/CompJurc.htm. 41.

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“Un plan général d’automatisation des industries,” Les Lettres françaises (April 15, 1948): 7–8. Berland, Jody. “Cat and Mouse: Iconographics of Nature and Desire.” Cultural Studies 22 (3–4) (2008): 431–454. Berlin, Isaiah. Russian Thinkers. New York: Penguin Group, 1978. Biggart, J., P. Dudley, and F. King, eds. Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998. Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. New York: Vintage, 1966. Birman, A. “Neotvratimost” [“Inevitability”]. Zvezda 5 (1978). Blau, Peter. Bureaucracy in Modern Society. New York: Random House, 1956.

The new village green: living light, living local, living large by Stephen Morris

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, back-to-the-land, Buckminster Fuller, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, Community Supported Agriculture, company town, computer age, cuban missile crisis, David Sedaris, deindustrialization, discovery of penicillin, distributed generation, Easter island, energy security, energy transition, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, Firefox, Hacker Conference 1984, index card, Indoor air pollution, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Elkington, Kevin Kelly, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McMansion, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Negawatt, off grid, off-the-grid, peak oil, precautionary principle, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review

We have never since been able to think of our relationship to Earth in quite the same way.” — David C. Korten Author, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community The NEW VILLAGE GREEN 23 “ One of the most important ideas to shape the relationship between humans and the environment is the notion of interdependence and interconnections. This ‘systems thinking’ approach describing our connections to the natural world has been expressed in landmark works, events and developments including: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the first Earth Day in the US (1970), the World Commission on Environment and Development’s Brundtland Report (1987), the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987), the Earth Summits in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg (1992, 2002) and the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2005)

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The publication of The Limits to Growth drew more fire than the Tet Offensive. Not only was the information coming from a machine, but the messengers were snotty-nosed kids wearing pocket protectors.The intellectual debate quickly became ugly. Three things made this book revolutionary: 1. It was the first popular application of systems thinking.The models that the young scientists had developed were non-linear, and more closely replicated the interconnectedness that characterizes real life.The synaptic jump that James Lovelock had experienced when first seeing the earth from space had not been duplicated, but at least it was approximated in binary code. 2.

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Starting with the observation that there are levers, or places within a complex system (such as a firm, a city, an economy, a living being, an ecosystem, an ecoregion) where a “small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything,” she suggested that we should study these shifts, where they are and how to make them. She believed that most people instinctively know where these points are, but, due to perverse feedback mechanisms, tend to adjust them in the wrong direction. 54 chapter 3 : The Limits to Growth “ The concept of ‘systems thinking’ is the most important idea that is/will redefine the way we think about the relationship between humans and the environment. It forces us to think differently, in a less fragmented way. It helps ensure that our thinking is ‘whole’ and wholistic. While I’m not sure that I would attribute the idea to anyone person, Peter Senge has done more than just about any one else to popularize the idea

Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps by Gabe Zichermann, Christopher Cunningham

airport security, business logic, future of work, game design, gamification, Ian Bogost, lateral thinking, minimum viable product, pattern recognition, power law, Ruby on Rails, SimCity, social graph, social web, systems thinking, urban planning, web application

Be their Sherpa. Give them the status, access, power, and tools to get them where they need to go. Do it right and they’ll be yours forever. Chapter 3. Game Mechanics: Designing for Engagement (Part I) Game design is a relatively new, unaccredited discipline with roots in both psychology and systems-thinking. When creating a gamified experience, we leverage many aspects of game design, while focusing on the core elements that will produce the greatest impact for our players. For example, we generally ignore narrative structure in gamification because we are building “nonfiction” experiences. That is, the arc of your gamified system is based on your player’s and your brand’s stories—as they already exist.

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Our view of game design is narrow, but it is highly optimized for gamification. MDA Framework One of the most frequently leveraged frameworks of game design is referred to as MDA—which stands for: Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics The MDA framework is a postmortem analysis of the elements of a game. It helps us use systems-thinking to describe the interplay of those game elements and apply them outside of games. Mechanics make up the functioning components of the game. At their core, they allow a designer ultimate control over the levers of the game, giving her the ability to guide player actions. Dynamics, meanwhile, are the player’s interactions with those mechanics.

ECOVILLAGE: 1001 ways to heal the planet by Ecovillage 1001 Ways to Heal the Planet-Triarchy Press Ltd (2015)

Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Community Supported Agriculture, do what you love, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, intentional community, land tenure, low interest rates, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, Ronald Reagan, systems thinking, young professional

by John Rogers Cultural Theory and Clumsy Solutions Organising and Disorganising by Michael Thompson Complexity Demystified by Patrick Beautement, Christine Broenner Shaping the Future Humanising Healthcare by (Dr.) Margaret Hannah Dancing at the Edge by Maureen O'Hara and Graham Leicester Thrivability by Jean Russell Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope by Bill Sharpe Systems Thinking We have a wealth of books on systems thinking by various authors including Russ Ackoff. Please visit our website and look in the subject area tab. Mythogeography and Counter Tourism by Crabman…Phil Smith Society, Somatics, Movement Embodied Lives: Reflections on the Influence of Suprapto Suryodarmo and Amerta Movement Attending to Movement: Somatic Perspectives on Living in this World www.triarchypress.net About the authors Kosha Anja Joubert is an international facilitator, trainer, manager and consultant.

Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City by Richard Sennett

Anthropocene, Big Tech, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, company town, complexity theory, creative destruction, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Gehry, gentrification, ghettoisation, housing crisis, illegal immigration, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Masdar, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, megaproject, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, open borders, place-making, plutocrats, post-truth, Richard Florida, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, urban planning, urban renewal, Victor Gruen, Yochai Benkler

A uniform environment easily sickens, as it has in perimeter housing estates from Moscow to Vienna to London.20 The tragedy of Cerdà’s visionary work is that he meant none of this to happen; his project aimed at equalizing the cité through equalizing the ville. The remedy seems clear: the alternative to monoculture in the built environment is a collaging of different building types, people and activities, which may appear visually and socially a mess, but in the long run will prove more resilient than a single-species environment. Open-systems thinking counsels exactly this kind of mixing; the whole then becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Put another way, the fabric does not tear so easily. How then to build this stronger urban fabric? The third giant in urbanism’s first generation thought Nature suggested an answer. * * * Landscape When Alexis de Tocqueville first came to America, in 1831, the usual way for a foreigner to journey to New York was to sail into the harbour from the south, a route which afforded the voyager a sudden view of the crowd of masts along the packed wharves, behind which were offices, homes, churches and schools.

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Durkheim thought the soldiers’ bewilderment applied more generally: a rupture disorients consciousness of self and others. For a contrary school of thought, ruptures are a call to action. Radical labour organizers have taken the strike, for instance, as a moment of political awakening rather than just a bargaining-chip technique; the breakdown clarifies what’s wrong with the system.18 Open-systems thinking looks at a rupture as changing an entire system – waking the system up, as it were, by creating tipping points. A small change triggers bigger ones, as with the proverbial butterfly and the storm. In a closed system, small events accumulate and accrete, but do not tip; rather, they add up step by step in a smoothly linear fashion.

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Kennedy International Airport life in Living Breakwaters local community loft spaces Lower East Side Manhattan La Marqueta New York Times tower 96th Street North End Avenue pollution index population Port Authority Queens Rector Place risk of flooding Seagram Building Sixth Avenue Spanish Harlem Staten Island, Tottenville stoops Sunnyside Times Square Tocqueville in traffic travel in Tribeca Union Square Upper East Side Upper West Side walking in Wall Street Washington Square water-edge projects waterways West Side Highway West Village White Horse Tavern, Greenwich Village Woolworth Building Zoo Newton, Isaac Nicolson, Marjorie Hope Nietzsche, Friedrich Nimwegen, Christof van Nolli, Giovanni Battista, map of Rome Obama, Barack octopus city Okakura, Kakuzo The Book of Tea Oles, Thomas Olmsted, Frederick Law Olsen, Donald open and closed systems open-systems thinking open forms incomplete multiple porous punctuated synchronous orientation verbal Ortega y Gasset, José orthogonal form Osborn, Frederic the Other, as alien or fraternal Buber and definitions of exclusion of fleeing Googleplex and isolation from and Neighbour shunning stereotypes of Oudolf, Piet Ovink, Henk Paccoud, Antoine Palestine Liberation Organization Palestinians Palladio, Andrea Paris, Bachelard in Balzac’s Bibliothèque Nationale Boulevard St-Germain Café de la Paix Champs-Élysées and Charter of Athens Commune courtyards department stores Eiffel Tower Haussmann’s boulevards Herzen in Hotel de Ville Hôtel Salé Jane Jacobs and Louvre La Madeleine church Marais quarter modernity of Montmartre at night Palais-Royal Périphèrique Place Louis XV (Place de la Concorde) Plan Voisin Proust’s public health in quays 7th arrondissement Stendhal’s traffic working class see also Le Corbusier, Plan Voisin Park, Robert E.

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Pete Dyson, Rory Sutherland

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 747, BRICs, butterfly effect, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, demand response, Diane Coyle, digital map, driverless car, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, fake news, functional fixedness, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, high-speed rail, hive mind, Hyperloop, Induced demand, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low cost airline, Lyft, megaproject, meta-analysis, Network effects, nudge unit, Ocado, overview effect, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Rory Sutherland, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, selection bias, Skype, smart transportation, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Veblen good, When a measure becomes a target, yield management, zero-sum game

It remains to be seen whether Suffolk’s sandy soil is different to Somerset’s limestone rock base.21 The Bible offers a reference-class parable that questions the foundations of this assumption.22 Future British transport planners who wish to inspire confidence in their adjustments will turn to HM Treasury’s Magenta Book, which contains guidance on what to consider when designing an evaluation. They can use it to apply systems thinking, Stacy matrices, Bayesian belief networks, Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, qualitative comparative analysis and agent-based models.23 These methods are only as good as the available data and the skill and experience of the economists making the estimates, so attracting and developing the brightest talent are essential for innovation.

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For example, it’s not unusual to jump to an answer and then commission research to justify it. Improving one stage of the process may have zero impact if the limitation on decision making lies elsewhere. Creativity’s impact is lost or diluted without a framework or handbook to test or apply it at a later stage. Systems thinking, theories of constraints and idea-­generation frameworks like Mindspace can ensure that process innovation occurs alongside transport technology innovation.29 The next step is settling on an agreed set of tools to be used regularly to ensure they are socialized, applied and evaluated. Digital decision making Before the arrival of Covid-19, approximately 8% of all US employees worked from home at least one day a week and just 2.5% worked from home full time.30 The projection for business services employees is that 45% will work from home.

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund

"World Economic Forum" Davos, animal electricity, clean water, colonial rule, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, fake news, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, global pandemic, Hans Rosling, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), jimmy wales, linked data, lone genius, microcredit, purchasing power parity, revenue passenger mile, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Walter Mischel

Only one of the ten fastest-growing economies scores well on democracy. Chapter Nine: The Blame Instinct Neglected diseases. For the list of diseases that are not profitable to the pharmaceutical industry, since the victims are almost entirely people living on Level 1, see WHO[15]. Until recently, Ebola was on this list. Systems thinking. Peter Senge developed the idea of systems thinking within corporate organizations as a way of stopping people from blaming one another and helping them to understand the mechanisms that are causing problems. But his ideas apply to all kinds of human organizations where blaming individuals blocks understanding. See Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (1990).

The Ages of Globalization by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Admiral Zheng, AlphaGo, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, circular economy, classic study, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, Commentariolus, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, domestication of the camel, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, European colonialism, general purpose technology, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, income per capita, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, mass immigration, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, out of africa, packet switching, Pax Mongolica, precision agriculture, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, rewilding, South China Sea, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, systems thinking, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Turing machine, Turing test, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, wikimedia commons, zoonotic diseases

He meant that specific plans will not be followed in practice because unexpected circumstances will surely arise, yet planning—the logical process of looking ahead in a systematic manner—is crucial for success. Part of successful planning will be multidimensional systems thinking. We have to integrate our understanding of agriculture, healthcare, land use, carbon management, energy systems, and biodiversity conservation. For example, we will have to reconsider land use in order to accomplish several simultaneous objectives: food security, biodiversity conservation, the biological storage of carbon to fight climate change, and economic wellbeing of rural communities. This will require multidimensional systems thinking. To plan successfully, the world will need an active interchange of ideas, global cooperation in research and development, and the rapid dissemination of best practices across countries.

The Connected Company by Dave Gray, Thomas Vander Wal

A Pattern Language, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, Berlin Wall, business cycle, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, complexity theory, creative destruction, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, disruptive innovation, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, folksonomy, Googley, index card, industrial cluster, interchangeable parts, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, loose coupling, low cost airline, market design, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, power law, profit maximization, Richard Florida, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, two-pizza team, Vanguard fund, web application, WikiLeaks, work culture , Zipcar

The more tradeoff decisions you make, the more complex the whole structure becomes, until you get to a point where you can’t make any more changes without causing damage somewhere else in the organization. Over time, the structure gets more rigid and inflexible. Notes for Chapter Six THE PERFORMANCE OF A SYSTEM “Systems Thinking” talk by Russell Ackoff, at The Learning and Legacy of Dr. W. Edwards Deming (event), 1994. Chapter 7. Complexity changes the game Everything that we are making, we are making more and more complex. — Kevin Kelly Wired Magazine The complexity of the new networked, interdependent economy creates an ambiguous, uncertain, competitive landscape.

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Operating the System Even the best-performing machines require periodic maintenance. Likewise, no management system runs itself. Management in a connected company must think about the company as a complex adaptive system and manage it accordingly. Critical Values in Complex Adaptive Systems Think of your company as a system, where individuals and groups are organized in order to do work. Work requires energy, and depending on the way the system is organized, it can constrain or release the inherent energy in the people that make up the system. In any system, motion generates energy.

The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt, Dave Thomas

A Pattern Language, Broken windows theory, business logic, business process, buy low sell high, c2.com, combinatorial explosion, continuous integration, database schema, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, Donald Knuth, Ford Model T, Free Software Foundation, general-purpose programming language, George Santayana, Grace Hopper, higher-order functions, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, index card, Kaizen: continuous improvement, lateral thinking, loose coupling, Menlo Park, MVC pattern, off-by-one error, premature optimization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, revision control, Schrödinger's Cat, slashdot, sorting algorithm, speech recognition, systems thinking, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, traveling salesman, urban decay, Y2K

Which one—3.1, 95, 98, NT, CE, or 2000? How hard will it be to support other versions? If you keep decisions soft and pliable, it won't be hard at all. If you have poor encapsulation, high coupling, and hard-coded logic or parameters in the code, it might be impossible. Not sure how marketing wants to deploy the system? Think about it up front and you can support a stand-alone, client-server, or n-tier model just by changing a configuration file. We've written programs that do just that. Normally, you can simply hide a third-party product behind a well-defined, abstract interface. In fact, we've always been able to do so on any project we've worked on.

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But the framework stays intact, and you know the system will continue to behave the way it did when your first tracer code was completed. The distinction is important enough to warrant repeating. Prototyping generates disposable code. Tracer code is lean but complete, and forms part of the skeleton of the final system. Think of prototyping as the reconnaissance and intelligence gathering that takes place before a single tracer bullet is fired. Related sections include: Good-Enough Software, page 9 Prototypes and Post-it Notes, page 53 The Specification Trap, page 217 Great Expectations, page 255 11.

EcoVillage at Ithaca Pioneering a Sustainable Culture (2005) by Liz Walker

car-free, Community Supported Agriculture, intentional community, microcredit, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, place-making, planetary scale, ride hailing / ride sharing, systems thinking, the built environment, transit-oriented development, World Values Survey

What they may miss entirely, however, unless it is made explicit, is the profound way that education permeates the project. E VI started out as an educational project in 1991. It is designed to be a living example of a more sustainable way of life — one that demonstrates both social and ecological alternatives to the status quo. We are particularly interested in whole-systems thinking that focuses on the intersection between human and natural systems. Our educational style can best be described as experiential, project-based learning. As residents we are engaged in a fascinating social experiment. We have endless opportunities to test out methods of strategic planning, consensus decision making, conflict resolution, and creative parenting.

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The world needs people who are whole in mind, body, and spirit and who are capable of being both thinkers and doers. Students of all ages thrive in an educational environment that includes a sound theoretical framework, cooperative learning strategies, hands-on practical application, and a deep examination of values and principles. With an emphasis on whole-systems thinking, we examine both the world’s problems and their potential solutions. This type of multidisciplinary, experiential education can be a remarkable, energizing force in society. EVI was founded under the auspices of the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy (CRESP) at Cornell University, which has a longterm affiliation agreement with the university.

Practical C Programming, 3rd Edition by Steve Oualline

Alignment Problem, Dennis Ritchie, Free Software Foundation, functional programming, Grace Hopper, index card, Ken Thompson, linear programming, off-by-one error, systems thinking

The following is an example that uses malloc to get storage and free to dispose of it: const int DATA_SIZE = (16 * 1024); /* Number of bytes in the buffer */ void copy(void) { char *data_ptr; /* Pointer to large data buffer */ data_ptr = malloc(DATA_SIZE); /* Get the buffer */ /* * Use the data buffer to copy a file */ free(data_ptr); data_ptr = NULL; } But what happens if we forget to free our pointer? The buffer becomes dead. That is, the memory management system thinks that the buffer is being used, but no one is using it. If the free statement was removed from the function copy, then each successive call would eat up another 16K of memory. Do this often enough and your program will run out of memory. The other problem that can occur is using memory that has been freed.

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It checks to see only if the files have changed, not the rules. If you have compiled all of your program with CFLAGS=-g for debugging and need to produce the production version (CFLAGS=-O), make will not recompile. The command touch changes the modification date of a file. (It doesn’t change the file, it just makes the operating system think that it did.) If you touch a source file such as hello.c and then run make, the program will be re-created. This feature is useful if you have changed the compile-time flags and want to force a recompilation. make provides you with a rich set of commands for creating programs. Only a few have been discussed here.[20] * * * [20] If you are going to create programs that require more than 10 or 20 source files, read the Nutshell Handbook Managing Projects with make, by Andy Oram and Steve Talbott.

Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Cass Sunstein, centre right, Climategate, collapse of Lehman Brothers, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, illegal immigration, immigration reform, microaggression, Nate Silver, no-fly zone, obamacare, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, source of truth, systems thinking

If you discover the screw that failed or the maintenance shift that was missed, you might think you’ve found the broken part. But if you miss the way the stock market was rewarding the company for cutting costs on maintenance, you’ve missed the cause of the crisis, and failed to prevent its recurrence. Systems thinking, he writes, “is about understanding how accidents can happen when no parts are broken, or no parts are seen as broken.”6 That may not sound like American politics to you. It is, at this point, cliché to call it broken. But that is our mistake. The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face.

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., 98–99, 101–2 conservative majority in, 197–98 evolving polarization of, 205–8 Garland nomination to, 198–200, 203–5, 207, 260 partisan factions in, 99–100, 200–208 on political spending, 191 politicization of, 98–100 proposed equal representation on, 260 Republican control of, 240, 258 voting patterns in, 205 swing voters, 172–73 System, The (Johnson and Broder), 82 system failure, diagnosis of, xvii–xviii system thinking, xv–xx Taft-Hartley provision, 21 Tajfel, Henri, 49–55, 60, 73, 78 Talesara, Ishaana, 242 Talking to Strangers (Allen), 119 talk radio, right-wing, 198 taxes, taxation, xxi, 13, 14, 69, 230 Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, xxin Tea Party, 223, 227, 243–44 Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, The (Skocpol and Williamson), 243–44 television, 140–43, 145, 150–51 Tesler, Michael, 109, 112–13, 120–21, 130, 165–66 Texas v.

Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Our World by Greg Milner

Apollo 11, Ayatollah Khomeini, Boeing 747, British Empire, creative destruction, data acquisition, data science, Dava Sobel, different worldview, digital map, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, experimental subject, Eyjafjallajökull, Flash crash, friendly fire, GPS: selective availability, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Ian Bogost, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, John Harrison: Longitude, Kevin Kelly, Kwajalein Atoll, land tenure, lone genius, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mercator projection, place-making, polynesian navigation, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skinner box, skunkworks, smart grid, systems thinking, the map is not the territory, vertical integration

“When I was at the Pentagon, every year it was my job to defend the GPS budget to the Air Force,” says Ronald Yates, a retired Air Force general. “And every year, the operational command zeroed it. Every year the issue was the same—I got sick of hearing, ‘We don’t need another navigation system.’ And they were right. They didn’t need another navigation system. But my point was, it isn’t a navigation system. Think of it as a guidance system.” That is a subtle yet very important distinction. Until GPS became fully entrenched, its biggest supporters envisioned it not so much as a navigation or wayfinding tool; they saw it as a way to drop bombs and launch missiles. “The Air Force was conflicted back in those days,” says Jules McNeff, the chief officer responsible for defending the budget for the GPS program in the late 1980s.

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As with the Hornet, they started their signal at a whisper, slowly raising it until it overwhelmed the real GPS signal. They entered coordinates that positioned the ship three degrees off course, making it turn slightly to the right. Then they let the ship’s crew unwittingly compound the problem. Faulty data from the spoofer made the ship’s navigation system think it was drifting left, so the crew initiated a maneuver to move it to the right to bring it back on course. Soon the ship was hundreds of meters off course. “It’s pretty breathtaking, really,” Humphreys said when the results were made public, emphasizing that the data showed the experiment could work without the spoofer being on board.

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell

Airbus A320, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Black Swan, Boeing 747, butterfly effect, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Chelsea Manning, clockwork universe, crew resource management, crowdsourcing, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Flash crash, Frederick Winslow Taylor, global supply chain, Henri Poincaré, high batting average, Ida Tarbell, information security, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, job automation, job satisfaction, John Nash: game theory, knowledge economy, Mark Zuckerberg, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Pierre-Simon Laplace, pneumatic tube, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, urban sprawl, US Airways Flight 1549, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

It got to a point where we could identify a problem in the morning and by the close of business we could solve it, get the money allocated, get the decisions made, and get things working.” What Mueller instituted was known as “systems engineering” or “systems management,” an approach built on the foundation of “systems thinking.” This approach, contrary to reductionism, believes that one cannot understand a part of a system without having at least a rudimentary understanding of the whole. It was the organizational manifestation of this insight that imbued NASA with the adaptive, emergent intelligence it needed to put a man on the moon.

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One famous interface failure occurred when a communication gap between two working groups resulted in the loss of the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter: one system was built for metric measurements, one for imperial measurements. As McCurdy notes, FBC was the antithesis of systems engineering. Systems engineering was “formal, elaborate and expensive.” It was inefficient. But it worked. SETS AND SYSTEMS Systems thinking has been used to understand everything from the functioning of a city to the internal dynamics of a skin cell, and plays a key role in deciphering interdependence. Consider a doctor and her education. Doctors come in many varieties—pediatricians, ENTs, radiologists, etc.—yet while in medical school, all undergo the same rigorous overview of the way the human body works.

Kanban in Action by Marcus Hammarberg, Joakim Sunden

Buckminster Fuller, business logic, call centre, continuous integration, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, index card, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Lean Startup, performance metric, place-making, systems thinking, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, Two Sigma

One study[2] showed that as much as 10% of your working time per project is lost to context switching. This means if you’re running two things at once, you have only 40% of your available working time per project to spend. With five tasks going at the same time, you have only 5% per project left. 2 Gerald Weinberg’s book Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking (Dorset House, 1991, http://amzn.com/0932633226) is often referenced as the source of these numbers, although we haven’t been able to find them there. But Weinberg has confirmed that he’s the source in private correspondence with us. Interestingly, another study also showed that context switching represented a 10-point drop in IQ.

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Quality is a tricky concept, and a thorough treatment is beyond the scope of this book. It can be interpreted in many different ways. We don’t want to dwell on that big subject here. We’ll adopt Gerald Weinberg’s definition: “Quality is value to some person.”[3] 3 From Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking (Dorset House, 1991, http://amzn.com/0932633226). This definition is, of course, vague and open to interpretation, but so is quality. A friend of ours was very disappointed to find a lot of spelling and grammatical errors in a book he had written. But it was voted the #1 agile book that year, with more than 20 five-star reviews on Amazon.

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Anne Wojcicki, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, blockchain, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, data science, delayed gratification, DevOps, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, endowment effect, fake it until you make it, hiring and firing, Inbox Zero, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, private spaceflight, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, subscription business, sugar pill, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the medium is the message, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional

He wanted to hold out for projects that could really redefine a category rather than keep him in a competitive space. Five or so years later, after publishing his next bestseller The Four Hour Body, Tim decided that he needed to become a better manager of his time and, as he explains it, “shifted to what Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, calls Systems Thinking: choosing your projects based on the skills and relationships you will develop.” Tim goes on to explain, “This is important because the skills and relationships you develop persist beyond the failure of any single isolated project, so they are cumulative. The snowball of assets in the form of relationships and skills accumulates and presents you with multiple opportunities to take advantage of these skill sets and people with whom you have developed relationships.

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., 199–202 perseverance, persistence, 62, 79, 85 perspective, 40–42, 66, 74, 326 quitting and, 62–64 Photoshop, 10, 144, 159, 162, 185, 206–7, 238–39, 270, 347 Pine Street, 125 Pinterest, 10, 64, 86–87, 94, 112, 158–59, 165, 174, 204, 233, 248, 319 Pixar, 141 placebo, 59–61 planning, 93, 280–81 polarizing people, 114–15 PolitiFact, 303 positive feedback, and hard truths, 28–31 Post-it notes, 325 pragmatists, 295, 296 Prefer, 28, 298, 299 preparedness, 16 presenting ideas, vs. promoting, 164–65 press, 265–66, 336 Pretty Young Professionals (PYP), 72–73 Principles (Dalio), 306, 307 problem solving, 209 big vs. small problems, 180–82, 322 explicitness and, 173–74 process, 153–57 Proctor & Gamble, 143 product(s), 8, 29 brand fit and, 256, 257 complexity in, 209–10, 217 explicitness in, 174–75, 271 founder fit and, 256 life cycle of, 209–10, 217 market fit and, 256 minimum viable (MVP), 86, 186, 195, 252 paradox of success of, 216 power users of, 217 products used to create, 143–45 simplicity in, 209, 210–11, 216–18, 271 product, optimizing, 17, 209–75 anchoring to your customers, 247–75 being first, 264–66 disproportionate impact and, 267–68 empathy and humility before passion, 248–50 engaging the right customers at the right time, 251–54 and measuring each feature by its own measure, 269–70 mystery and engagement in, 271–73 narrative in, 255–57 and playing to the middle, 274–75 and role of leaders in communities, 258–61 sales and, 262–63 simplifying and iterating, 213–46 and believing in the product, 223–25 creativity and familiarity in, 226–27 and design as invisible, 230–31 doing, showing, and explaining, 238–39 “first mile” and, 232–34 identifying what you’re willing to be bad at, 214–15 inbred innovations and, 245–46 incrementalism and assumptions in, 242–44 killing your darlings, 219–22 for laziness, vanity, and selfishness, 235–37 making one subtraction for every addition, 216–18 novelty and utility in, 240–41 scrutiny and flaws in, 228–29 productivity, 179, 180–82, 187, 322, 324, 325 measures of, 78–79 performance and, 214 promoting ideas, vs. presenting, 164–65 promotions, 130 progress, 24–25, 31, 40, 47, 64, 75, 83, 85, 160, 179, 181, 349 conflict avoidance and, 185–86 process and, 154 progress bars, 181 prototypes and mock-ups, 161–63 Psychological Bulletin, 272 psychological safety, 122 Psychological Science, 272–73 psychology, 316, 317 Quartz, 37–38, 108, 301 questions, 69–71, 183–84, 321 Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 220 Quinn, Megan, 303–4 quitting, perspective and, 62–64 Quora, 138, 167 Rad, Sean, 259 Radcliffe, Jack, 197 Rams, Dieter, 230 reactionary workflow, 327, 328 Ready, The, 179 reality-distortion field, 41 Reboot, 327 Reddit, 261, 300, 302 rejection, 58 relatability, 57 relationships: commitments and, 283–84 and how others perceive you, 316–17 negotiation and, 286–87 REMIX, 165 resets, 63–64, 72–75 resistance, fighting, 35–36 resourcefulness, and resources, 100–102 reward system, short-circuiting, 24–27 Rhode Island School of Design, 186, 354 rhythm of making, 16 Ries, Eric, 194 risk, 122, 316, 337 ritual, 328 rock gardens, 67–68 routines, 323 ruckus, making, 337–38 Saatchi Online, 89 Sabbath Manifesto, 327–28 safety, psychological, 122 Sakurada, Isuzu, 361–62 salaries, 141–42 sales, salespeople, 262–63 Salesforce, 159, 204 Sandberg, Sheryl, 39 Santa Fe, USS, 167 satisficers, 229, 284–85 scalability, 242 Schouwenburg, Kegan, 50–51 Schwartz, Barry, 284–85 science vs. art of business, 310–13 Seinfeld, Jerry, 250 self, optimizing, 8, 17, 277–338 crafting business instincts, 293–313 auditing measures instead of blindly optimizing, 297–99 data vs. intuition in, 300–304 mining contradictory advice and developing intuition, 294–96 naivety and openness in, 308–9 science vs. art of business, 310–13 stress-testing opinions with truthfulness, 305–7 planning and making decisions, 279–92 focus and choice, 282–85 making a plan vs. sticking to it, 280–81 negotiation in, 286–87 sunk costs and, 291–92 timing and, 288–90 sharpening your edge, 315–28 building a network and increasing signal, 320–21 commitments and, 318–19 disconnecting, 326–28 and how you appear to others, 316–17 leaving margins for the unexpected, 324–25 values and time use, 322–23 staying permeable and relatable, 329–38 attention and, 335–36 credit-seeking and, 330–32 and making a ruckus, 337–38 removing yourself to allow for others’ ideas, 333–34 self-awareness, 54–56, 305–7 selfishness, laziness, and vanity, 235–37 setbacks, 41 70/20/10 model for leadership development, 125 Shapeways, 50 Shiva, 374 shortcuts, 85 signal and noise, 320–21 Silberman, Ben, 86–87, 94, 112, 165, 319 Silicon Valley, 86 Simon, Herbert, 229, 284 SimpleGeo, 267 Sinclair, Jake, 334 skills, and choosing commitments, 283–84 Skybox, 101 sky decks, 117 Slack, 139, 210, 241 Slashdot, 295 Smarter Faster Better (Duhigg), 180 Smith, Brad, 373 Snapchat, 70, 189, 210, 227, 249 Snowden, Eric, 48, 162 Social Capital, 107 social media, 70, 139, 195, 210, 235–36, 243 solar eclipse, 300–302 SOLS, 50–51 Song Exploder, 333 Sonnad, Nikhil, 301–2 Sonos, 275 Southwest Airlines, 214–15 Soyer, Emre, 32–33 SpaceX, 168 Spark, 303 speed, 194–98 Spiegel, Evan, 249 Spot, 256, 257 Square, 303–4 Squarespace, 312 Stafford, Tom, 291 stand-ins, 297–98 start, 1, 6–8, 13, 209, 331 Statue of Liberty, 200 Stein, Dave, 280 Steinberg, Jon, 44–45, 313 Stitch Fix, 79 story, see narrative and storytelling Stratechery, 135 strategy, patience and, 80–85 strengths, 29, 54, 95, 214 stretch assignments, 130 structure, rules for, 150–52 StumbleUpon, 112, 256 Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert), 196 suffering, 35–36, 131 Summers, Larry, 108 sunk costs, 64, 71, 185, 291–92 Super Bowl, 273 superiority, sense of, 331–32 suspension of disbelief, 60–61 Suster, Mark, 204–5 Swarthmore College, 229 sweetgreen, 10, 151, 217, 221, 233, 245–46, 310 Systemized Intelligence Lab, 306 Systems Thinking, 283 Systrom, Kevin, 36 Taflinger, Richard, 38 talent, 119–25, 127, 187 Talk of the Nation, 196 TaskRabbit, 259 team, 39, 331, 332 energy and, 43–45 perspective and, 40–42 team, optimizing, 8, 17, 97–207, 211 building, hiring, and firing, 99–131 discussions and, 112–13 diversity in, 106–9 firing people to keep good people, 126–28 grafting and recruiting talent, 119–25 hiring people who have endured adversity, 110–11 immune system in, 116–18 initiative and experience in, 103–5 keeping people moving, 129–31 polarizing people and, 114–15 resourcefulness and resources in, 100–102 clearing the path to solutions, 177–207 big and small problems, 180–82 bureaucracy, 183–84 competitive energy, 187–91 conflict avoidance, 185–86 conviction vs. consensus, 203–5 creative block, 192–93 forgiveness vs. permission, 199–202 organization debt, 178–79 and resistance to change, 206–7 speed in, 194–98 culture, tools, and space, 133–48 attribution of credit, 146–48 free radicals and, 137–39 frugality and, 140–42 stories and, 134–36 tools, 143–45 structure and communication, 149–76 communication, 170–76 delegation, 166–69 merchandising, internal, 158–60 mock-ups for sharing vision, 161–63 presenting vs. promoting ideas, 164–65 process in, 153–57 rules in, 150–52 technology, 328, 371 TED, 62, 116, 305 teleportation, 70, 264 Temps, 201 10 Principles of Good Design (Rams), 230 Teran, Dan, 221 Tesla, 273 think blend, 33 Thomas, Frank, 222 Thompson, Ben, 135 Threadless, 267 time, use of, 210, 283, 299 leaving margins, 324–25 money and, 370–72 values and, 322–23 time-outs, 74 timing, 288–90, 332 decision making and, 289–90 investment and, 290 leader and, 288–89 Tinder, 259–60 Tiny, 294 Todd, Charlie, 113 Todoist, 229 tools, 143–45 Topick, 249 transparency, 259–60, 287 triggers, 55 Trump, Donald, 273, 302–3 truth(s), 71, 174, 193, 331, 338 creative block and, 192–93 hard, 28–31 stress-testing opinions with, 305–7 about time use, 323 Turn the Ship Around!

The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise by Nathan L. Ensmenger

barriers to entry, business process, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, deskilling, Donald Knuth, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, functional programming, future of work, Grace Hopper, informal economy, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, job satisfaction, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, loose coupling, machine readable, new economy, no silver bullet, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, post-industrial society, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, Robert Gordon, scientific management, Shoshana Zuboff, sorting algorithm, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K

Anthony Oettinger, “President’s Reply to Louis Fein,” Communications of the ACM 10, no. 1 (1967): 1, 61. 45. William F. Atchison and John W. Hamblen, “Status of Computer Sciences Curricula in Colleges and Universities,” Communications of the ACM 7, no. 4 (1964): 225–227. 46. Frank Harary, cited in Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (New York: Wiley, 1975). 47. Peter Wegner, “Undergraduate Programs in Computer Science,” in SIGCPR ‘66: Proceedings of the Fourth SIGCPR Conference on Computer Personnel Research (New York: ACM Press, 1966), 121–129. 48. Ibid. 49. Herbert A. Simon, Allen Newell, and Alan Perlis, “Computer Science” (letter to editor), Science 157, no. 3795 (1967): 1373–1374; Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial. 50.

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“Three Computer Cultures: Computer Technology, Computer Mathematics, and Computer Science.” Advances in Computers 10 (1970): 7–78. Wegner, Peter. “Undergraduate Programs in Computer Science.” In SIGCPR ’66: Proceedings of the Fourth SIGCPR Conference on Computer Personnel Research, 121–129. New York: ACM Press, 1966. Weinberg, Gerald M. An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. New York: Wiley, 1975. Weinberg, Gerald M. The Psychology of Computer Programming. New York: Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1971. Weinwurm, George F., ed. On the Management of Computer Programmers. New York: Auerbach Publishers, 1970. Weiss, Eric. “Publications in Computing: An Informal Review.”

Innovation and Its Enemies by Calestous Juma

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, big-box store, biodiversity loss, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, electricity market, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, financial innovation, global value chain, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, means of production, Menlo Park, mobile money, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, pensions crisis, phenotype, precautionary principle, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, smart grid, smart meter, stem cell, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Travis Kalanick

Though not effective on a large scale, the riots slowed down the mechanization of the textile industry and built solidarity among workers, laying the foundation for labor unions in Britain.63 This case illustrates that tensions over new technologies often originate from fear of system-wide impacts and the associated uncertainties in complex economic systems.64 The dynamics of the debate during the Industrial Revolution are echoed in today’s discourses in fields such as nuclear power, information technology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence.65 The common view that resistance to new technology is futile is a misreading of history. Only a small proportion of new technologies reach the market. There are many factors that influence the process of technology adoption. Schumpeter pioneered the application of complex systems thinking to economic development. He was interested in change over time, which is why he adopted an evolutionary approach that recognized the importance of history. Schumpeter applied complexity thinking and put change in an evolutionary context. In contrast, his critics used economic models that relied on static equilibrium notions even though in practice they sought to depart from them.

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See AquAdvantage salmon Salt, use in ice cooling, 177 Sandoz company, 232–233 Schools, computers in, 41 Schultz, Theodore William, 95, 116 Schumpeter, Joseph on consumers’ tastes, changes in, 45 creative destruction, concept of, 16–17, 19, 39, 42, 47, 121, 129, 139, 280, 309 economic development, application of complex systems thinking to, 27 on economic gains from innovation, 203 on equilibrium, 27 on entrepreneurs, 258 innovation, taxonomy of, 175 on leadership, 282 railroads, characterization of impact of, 122 on resistance to innovation, 1, 96 social transformation and, 16–23 on technological innovation, 225, 293–294 Schuylkill River, ice from, 181 Science advisory bodies, 286–287 science-based approval processes, need for, 277–278 science-based regulation, 236–244, 277 scientific and technical knowledge, developing world’s access to, 13 scientific information, democratization of, 313 scientific research, dynamics of success in, 327n115 scientific uncertainty, about new technologies, 120, 239–240 scientists, communication by, 312–313 Science advice importance of, 174–175 scientific advisory bodies, importance of, 7 scientific and technical advice, structures for, 287–288, 306 Scott, Leon, 207 Scribes, 71, 77 Seatbelts, social norms on, 33 Seattle, frozen pack laboratory in, 195 SEC (Securities Exchange Commission), 274–275 Second-generation biotechnology, 253–254 Secularization, of the Ottoman Empire, 91 Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), 274–275 Security, as grand challenge, 12 Sedgwick, William, 187 Seed sector, 30, 243 Selective breeding, fish farming and, 262–263 Self-driving cars, impact of, 13 Self-organizing systems, 6, 28 Selim I, Sultan, 68 Selim II, Sultan, 51 Selim III, Sultan, 93 Senate, US, 196, 215 Senefelder, Alois, 92 Shams (Syrian businessman), 51 Ships, 195, 295–296 Silent Spring (Carson), 14, 224–225, 231 Singers, prominence of, vs. bands, 219 Single path dependence, as limitation on innovation, 250 Single studies, false balance of, vs. evidence, 249–250 Singularity.

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World by Jeffrey Tucker

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, altcoin, anti-fragile, bank run, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, driverless car, Fractional reserve banking, George Gilder, Google Hangouts, informal economy, invisible hand, Kickstarter, litecoin, Lyft, Money creation, obamacare, Occupy movement, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, public intellectual, QR code, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, the payments system, uber lyft

If you had no confidence in the capacity of humans to manage their own lives, and likewise for order to emerge out of that, you would never allow such a thing to exist in the first place. In fact, given the ethos in government today, there is virtually no chance that government would ever have permitted such a system. Think of it: a huge flat space with painted lines and metal 60 contraptions operated by individuals hurling back and forth at top speeds. It’s insane. But it works. It works because human society works. On a hangout the other day, bitcoin scholar Andreas Antonopoulos told me about a case from London in the 1860s about which I knew nothing.

Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby

3D printing, Adam Curtis, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, capitalist realism, Cass Sunstein, computer age, corporate governance, David Attenborough, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, game design, General Motors Futurama, global village, Google X / Alphabet X, haute couture, Herman Kahn, intentional community, life extension, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, mouse model, New Urbanism, Peter Eisenman, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social software, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Wall-E

Each animal relates to ones we are familiar with, but because of an absence of humans, evolve in slightly different ways. A flightless bat whose wings have evolved into legs still uses echolocation to find its prey but now, because an increase in size and power, it stuns its victims. The book is a wonderful example of imaginative speculation grounded in systemic thinking using little more than pen-and-ink illustrations. It could so easily have been a facile fantasy thrilling us with the weirdness of each individual creature, but by tempering his speculations, Dixon guides us toward the system itself and the interconnectedness of climate, plant, and animal. Dougal Dixon, "Flooer" and "Night Stalker," from After Man: A Zoology of the Future (London: Eddison Sadd Editions, 1998).

Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration by Buzz Aldrin, Leonard David

Apollo 11, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, Elon Musk, gravity well, high net worth, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mars Society, Neil Armstrong, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, private spaceflight, Ronald Reagan, Scaled Composites, Strategic Defense Initiative, systems thinking, telepresence, telerobotics, transcontinental railway, Tunguska event, Virgin Galactic, X Prize

Implementing the cycler system enables transport of people, cargo, and other materials to and from Earth over inner solar system distances—and at a great fuel savings. A sequential buildup of a Full Cycling Network would be a counterpart to the ever increasing escalation of actions at the moon and Mars. Earth, the moon, and Mars become busy places as people, cargo, and commerce navigate through the inner solar system. Think of it as a space version of the early transcontinental railroads here on Earth. They were the transportation backbone that moved people and cargo into vast stretches of wilderness, enabling exploration and eventual settlement of regions. Space road map: Aldrin cycling system (Illustration Credit 2.2) In the present day, you don’t have to look too far to see a number of terrestrial parallels to cycling transportation.

The Transhumanist Reader by Max More, Natasha Vita-More

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Bill Joy: nanobots, bioinformatics, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, cellular automata, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Conway's Game of Life, cosmological principle, data acquisition, discovery of DNA, Douglas Engelbart, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, experimental subject, Extropian, fault tolerance, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, friendly AI, Future Shock, game design, germ theory of disease, Hans Moravec, hypertext link, impulse control, index fund, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, Louis Pasteur, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, phenotype, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, presumed consent, Project Xanadu, public intellectual, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, reversible computing, RFID, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, silicon-based life, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, stem cell, stochastic process, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, the built environment, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, Upton Sinclair, Vernor Vinge, Von Neumann architecture, VTOL, Whole Earth Review, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Despite the world being in flux, greatly expanded, and somewhat chaotic there are patterns that help describe and navigate this constantly evolving existence paradigm. The Science of Complexity Science has also noted the change in the way that the world is being experienced and described. Complexity Science, or Systems Science, is concerned with the study of networks and systems. Systems thinking offers a different strategic way of problem-solving to the Cartesian, object-based perspective that mechanical technologies have to offer. Complexity considers the physical world to exist as the result of an interconnected set of complex and simple systems rather than as a series of objects that are hierarchically connected.

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These common organizational principles allow the characterization of poorly understood complex systems, such as those that govern biological and cellular functions, from principles that are already well characterized in large and well-mapped non-biological systems such as the Internet. Synthetic Biology – Complex Embodied Technology Living systems are complex and operate according to the world of systems thinking as opposed to Cartesian reality. They possess fundamental properties that mechanical technologies cannot offer, being flexible, robust, adaptable, and able to respond to continual changes in their environment. They are also able to deal with unpredictability, the converse of this being that living technologies may also behave in unpredictable ways.

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Wise decisions will not emerge if options are limited to the obvious or politically popular. Consider all reasonable alternative actions, including no action. Estimate the opportunities lost by abandoning a technology, and take into account the costs and risks of substituting other ­credible options. When making these estimates, use systems thinking to carefully consider not only concentrated and immediate effects, but also widely distributed and follow-on effects, as well as the interaction of the factor under consideration with other factors. The greater the uncertainty and the less stable the situation, the less justification there is for major policy changes.

Barefoot Into Cyberspace: Adventures in Search of Techno-Utopia by Becky Hogge, Damien Morris, Christopher Scally

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Buckminster Fuller, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, disintermediation, DIY culture, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, game design, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, informal economy, information asymmetry, Jacob Appelbaum, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, mass immigration, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Mother of all demos, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer, Richard Stallman, Silicon Valley, Skype, Socratic dialogue, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks

Brand quickly set about proclaiming the good news. * * * In 1968, Brand and his wife Lois fired up their Dodge pickup and set about touring the hippy communes of America. This was the “Whole Earth Truck Store”, and the Dodge acted as an alternative lending library, spreading word about access to tools and whole systems thinking, including cybernetics. The “Whole Earth” in this and Brand’s later projects, had its roots in an acid trip two years earlier, when Brand had been sat on a rooftop, looking up to the stars, and asked himself “Why haven’t we seen a picture of the whole earth yet?” (a question that, according to Tom Wolfe, he would later reproduce on pin badges and sell for 25¢ apiece).

Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in the World by Jesse Krieger

Airbnb, always be closing, bounce rate, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, commoditize, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, do what you love, drop ship, financial independence, follow your passion, income inequality, independent contractor, iterative process, off-the-grid, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Salesforce, search engine result page, Skype, software as a service, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, warehouse automation

Actions are essentially the nuts and bolts of what your vision and mission statement sets forth. To properly understand actions in this context, you need to look at your business as a set of processes and functions that must work seamlessly together to be efficient and reward the people and stakeholders involved. You should approach building an online business with a systems-thinking mind-set. That means looking at each action and considering how it fits within the broader context, and how it can be executed more efficiently. A good goal is to systematize the actions that make your business run and then delegate them to others, so you can focus on living Creative Constructs and following your interests and passions.

AngularJS by Brad Green, Shyam Seshadri

business logic, combinatorial explosion, continuous integration, Firefox, Google Chrome, Kickstarter, MVC pattern, node package manager, single page application, systems thinking, web application, WebSocket

Previously used techniques such as polling have been found lacking, and sometimes we just want to open a socket to our client and communicate. Socket.IO is a brilliant library that allows you to do just that, and uses a dead simple, event-based API to allow you to develop real-time web apps. We are going to develop a real-time, anonymous broadcast system (think Twitter, without usernames) that allows users to broadcast a message to all Socket.IO’s users and see all the messages. Nothing will be stored, so all messages will only be alive for as long as a given user is active, but that will be sufficient to demonstrate how nicely Socket.IO can integrate into AngularJS.

Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson

Airbus A320, airport security, algorithmic trading, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cognitive dissonance, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Brooks, Donald Davies, Evgeny Morozov, Fairchild Semiconductor, future of journalism, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, Jane Jacobs, John Gruber, John Harrison: Longitude, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, mega-rich, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Occupy movement, packet switching, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, pre–internet, private spaceflight, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social graph, SpaceShipOne, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, techno-determinism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, US Airways Flight 1549, WikiLeaks, William Langewiesche, working poor, X Prize, Yochai Benkler, your tax dollars at work

The heavily centralized nature of the Legrand Star also meant that reservists reporting from the provinces to the west and south had to travel through Paris before heading off for battle; Bismarck, on the other hand, had multiple rail centers at his disposal, which enabled more direct trips to the front lines, despite the decidedly ungeometric design of the railway systems. Think of the Legrand Star as a kind of shorthand symbol for the ways that states like to organize the world. They concentrate power in a central location; they make the peripheries, the edges of the network, feeder systems for the main core; they simplify; they favor broad strokes over unpredictable swerves; they prefer master planners over local knowledge.

Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Greenspan put, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mercator projection, Mont Pelerin Society, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Philip Mirowski, power law, price mechanism, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, statistical model, Suez crisis 1956, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

To demand a preconceived idea of economic equality in pursuit of “the mirage of social justice” was to foreclose the creative capacity of competition, scramble the price signals of the market, and ultimately become “the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the f­ ree efforts of millions of individuals.”34 The sanctity of the world economy—­above statistics, mathe­matics, or even sensory perception—­must be defended against “the synoptic delusion” of demands like the NIEO.35 Hayek’s language sounded like the inverse of the discourse of the global reformists. Yet even as he disparaged the fallacy of computer-­ aided models, he drew inspiration from the same source of system theory. From the language of “pattern predictions” to his citation of Warren Weaver, Hayek did not argue against system thinking in his Nobel speech but with it. He made the case explicit when he wrote in the introduction to the third volume of his Law, Legislation and Liberty trilogy in 1979 that “it was largely the growth of cybernetics and the related subjects of information and system theory” that led him to modify his own categories.36 He explained that he had ­adopted the idea of “self-­ generating order” and “self-­generating structure” alongside spontaneous order; in place of order itself, he now often used “system”; for “knowledge” he substituted “information.”

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“At first every­one ­will seek for himself what seems to him the best path,” he wrote, “but the fact that such a path has been used once is likely to make it easier to traverse and therefore more likely to be used again; and thus gradually more and more clearly defined tracks arise and come to be used to the exclusion of other pos­si­ble ways. ­Human movements through the region come to conform to a definite pattern which, although the result of deliberate decisions of many p ­ eople, has yet not been consciously designed by anyone.” 42 An impor­tant influence on Hayek’s evolutionary system thinking was a con­temporary acquaintance, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who was born in Vienna in 1901 and developed his own branch of system theory, named first in 1937.43 Bertalanffy was careful to distinguish his “general system theory” from that of Wiener’s cybernetics, emphasizing the origins he shared with Hayek in the studies of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s.44 In the 1950s Bertalanffy founded a Society for General Systems Theory with the economist Kenneth Boulding and corresponded with Hayek about the latter’s monograph on psy­chol­ogy, The Sensory Order.45 Unlike other system theorists, Bertalanffy was not wed to the computer as the privileged tool of understanding, and he cited Hayek on the point that “explanation in princi­ple” was often all that was pos­si­ble in complex systems.46 The essence of Bertalanffy’s theory was the proposition that ­there is an isomorphism in the objects of study of the vari­ous disciplines, such as biology, economics, and psy­chol­ogy.

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries by Peter Sims

Alan Greenspan, Amazon Web Services, Black Swan, Clayton Christensen, complexity theory, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, discovery of penicillin, endowment effect, fail fast, fear of failure, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, PageRank, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, systems thinking, TED Talk, theory of mind, Toyota Production System, urban planning, Wall-E

What SAP did is set up what they call an ecosystem that allows its software users to connect online. Someone who uses SAP software as part of their job in the chemicals industry can connect online with other users in similar jobs, consultants, and SAP staff. They can ask questions, respond to others, or suggest modifications to the core software system. Think of it as a blog of blogs. Millions of users participate and thousands of bloggers comment regularly on questions. They also flag problems they experience using SAP software and recommend solutions. Von Hippel’s findings helped pave the way for a growing wave of open innovation in the corporate world.

Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression by Geoff Cox, Alex McLean

4chan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, bash_history, bitcoin, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, dematerialisation, Donald Knuth, Douglas Hofstadter, en.wikipedia.org, Everything should be made as simple as possible, finite state, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Conference 1984, Ian Bogost, Jacques de Vaucanson, language acquisition, Larry Wall, late capitalism, means of production, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, packet switching, peer-to-peer, power law, Richard Stallman, Ronald Coase, Slavoj Žižek, social software, social web, software studies, speech recognition, SQL injection, stem cell, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, The Nature of the Firm, Turing machine, Turing test, Vilfredo Pareto, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Discussions of this tend to emphasize the link to literary theory (famously explored in Barthes’s essay “The Death of the Author”)31 but also to second-order cybernetics, in terms of the way the observer is understood to produce changes to the system being observed,32 akin to what Gregory Bateson referred to as “recursive epistemology.”33 Informed by systems thinking, Bateson understood recursion to operate on all levels across natural and cultural forms, undermining hierarchical orders of knowledge. Another useful concept from Bateson, “double description,” reinforces the importance of bringing together two or more information sources in order to provide information that is different from either one of them.34 In a similar way, the combination of formal description and creative action, what might be referred to as double coding, is well established in software arts practice and where program code is made “literate.”

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle by Jamie Woodcock

4chan, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, anti-work, antiwork, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Boris Johnson, Build a better mousetrap, butterfly effect, call centre, capitalist realism, collective bargaining, Columbine, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, emotional labour, game design, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, Hacker Ethic, Howard Zinn, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, Jeremy Corbyn, John Conway, Kickstarter, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Oculus Rift, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, scientific management, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, tech worker, union organizing, unpaid internship, V2 rocket, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War

These kinds of points are important given that there was also an educational iteration of the game, called CivilizationEDU, that was designed to be used in schools. It was proposed to “provide students with the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, consider and evaluate the geographical ramifications of their economic and technological decisions, and engage in systems thinking and experiment with the causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political and socioeconomic development.”18 While Civilization can definitely provide some insights into historical geopolitics, we also need to think about how, as Marx and Engels argued, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”19 This means that radical ideas or different interpretations of events may be blocked, either because of their direct competition with the dominant ideas, or, in the case of Civilization, the game’s rules block other ways of acting or exploring history.

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Swan, British Empire, butterfly effect, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean water, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, complexity theory, computer age, conceptual framework, continuous integration, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, creative destruction, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, double helix, driverless car, Dunbar number, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, housing crisis, Index librorum prohibitorum, invention of agriculture, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, life extension, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Benioff, Marchetti’s constant, Masdar, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, Murray Gell-Mann, New Urbanism, Oklahoma City bombing, Peter Thiel, power law, profit motive, publish or perish, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, Salesforce, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Suez canal 1869, systematic bias, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, time dilation, too big to fail, transaction costs, urban planning, urban renewal, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, Von Neumann architecture, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, wikimedia commons, working poor

It was introduced in 1993 by James Moore, then at Harvard Law School, in an article he wrote titled “Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition,” which won the McKinsey award for article of the year.1 It’s a fairly standard ecological narrative, with individual businesses replacing animals in the evolutionary dynamics of natural selection. In keeping with much of the traditional literature on understanding companies, it’s entirely qualitative with no quantitative predictive power. Its great virtue is that it emphasizes the role of community structure, the importance of systemic thinking, and the inevitable processes of innovation, adaptation, and evolution. Clockwise from top, images of cities: Steel and concrete skyscrapers in São Paulo, Brazil; the “organic” city of Sana’a, Yemen; the integration of town and country, Melbourne, Australia; the profligate use of energy in Seattle.

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There are many readily accessible BMI calculators on the Web from which you can easily determine your BMI. Here’s one from the NIH: www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm. 10. See, for instance, T. Samaras, Human Body Size and the Laws of Scaling (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2007). 11. G. B. West, “The Importance of Quantitative Systemic Thinking in Medicine,” Lancet 379, no. 9825 (2012): 1551–59. 12. An absorbing overview of the development of the steamship in the nineteenth century, including Brunel’s seminal role, can be found in Stephen Fox, The Ocean Railway (New York: Harper-Collins, 2004). 13. Barry Pickthall, A History of Sailing in 100 Objects (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2016). 14.

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Automated Insights, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, Dava Sobel, digital divide, disintermediation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, future of journalism, game design, gamification, Gary Taubes, Google Glasses, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of the printing press, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, lifelogging, lolcat, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, moral panic, Narrative Science, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, pets.com, placebo effect, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, smart meter, social graph, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler

Potentially, the scheme is also perverse, especially if it gives us citizens who no longer feel the need to show concern for other drivers, the city, or the environment whenever smart meters and other forms of policing are missing. Such schemes thwart the development of what we earlier called “narrative imagination” and what some design theorists call “system thinking”—an intellectual approach that grants complexity to both the causes and effects of a problem and, instead of reducing the roots of that problem to a handful of easily identifiable and controllable factors, seeks to redescribe them in the language of relations, structures, and processes. In fact, studies show that design students primed to think in terms of systems who receive additional training in nondesign disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology, development, or ecology, tend to come up with more innovative and sustainable solutions than design students only primed to think like efficiency-maximizing engineers.

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See Stop Online Privacy Act Sørensen, Inge Ejbye Sowore, Omoyele Spencer, Herbert Spore 1.1 automated plant watering system Stanton, Katie Starr, Paul Stealth democracy Steiner, Christopher Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) Strahilevitz, Lior Strang, Veronica Street Bump Strengers, Yolande Subway system turnstile design Sullivan, Andrew Sun-centrism Sunlight Foundation Sunstein, Cass Surveillance and recycling of social networks, and predictive policing System thinking Talbott, Steven Tapscott, Don Teapot usage TechCrunch Technical solutions, consequences of, and transparency Technium Technocracy Technological amnesia Technological defeatism Technological enforcement, and morality, revision of Technological intervention and international news and political participation and public engagement Technological troublemakers.

Cartesian Linguistics by Noam Chomsky

job satisfaction, language acquisition, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, theory of mind, Turing test

But only recently has it become clear that the whole set of operations of the language faculty is virtually designed to produce specific “representations” that can communicate at both a sound and a meaning interface – technically, the “phonetic interface” and the “semantic interface.” Whatever appears at the sound/sign interface, for example, must be able to serve and “instruct” perceptual and articulatory systems. Think of it this way: if people are to use language as they sometimes do to speak or sign to others, the internal system of the language faculty must be able to satisfy whatever “interface conditions” a perceptual or an articulatory system might impose. Otherwise, no one could speak/sign and be heard/seen.

Build Awesome Command-Line Applications in Ruby: Control Your Computer, Simplify Your Life by David B. Copeland

business logic, Chris Wanstrath, Compatible Time-Sharing System, database schema, en.wikipedia.org, full stack developer, machine readable, Multics, Ruby on Rails, systems thinking, web application

The way in which command-line apps get input, are configured, and produce output is incredibly simple and, in some ways, limiting. As such, a system of many single-purpose apps is better than a system of fewer (or one) complex apps. Simple, single-purpose apps are easier to understand, are easier to learn, are easier to maintain, and lead to more flexible systems. Think of your command-line tasks as a set of layers: with the basic foundation of the standard UNIX tools, you can create more complex but still focused command-line apps. Those can be used for even more complex apps, each built on simpler tools below. The popular version control system git follows this design: many of git’s commands are “plumbing” and are not intended for regular use.

Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content by Sara Wachter-Boettcher

business logic, crowdsourcing, John Gruber, Kickstarter, linked data, machine readable, search engine result page, semantic web, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, TechCrunch disrupt

Here’s a chance to inventory and audit your content and remove what doesn’t deserve to be on mobile (which means it most likely shouldn’t be on the desktop either). Here’s a chance to edit your content to be more concise and written more clearly (that’s not “writing for mobile,” however—that’s just good writing). Here’s a chance to develop a more efficient workflow for publishing structured content and to develop a more usable content management system. Thinking about a content strategy for mobile isn’t just about publishing content to smartphones or tablets—it’s about using mobile as a catalyst within your organization to fix content and processes that just aren’t working today. We might never see a better opportunity to fix what’s broken, so let’s use mobile to our advantage.

Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code by Jeff Atwood

AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, cloud computing, endowment effect, fail fast, Firefox, fizzbuzz, Ford Model T, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Chrome, gravity well, Hacker News, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Merlin Mann, Minecraft, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, price anchoring, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, science of happiness, Skype, social software, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

We’re going to go that way, really fast. And if something gets in our way, we’ll turn. Tim O’Reilly@timoreilly “Larry Page responds”high correlation between speed and good decisions…There are good fast decisions but no good slow decisions”" 3:40 PM – 27 Sep 11 The Multi-Tasking Myth In Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking, Gerald Weinberg proposed a rule of thumb to calculate the waste caused by project switching: Even adding a single project to your workload is profoundly debilitating by Weinberg’s calculation. You lose 20 percent of your time. By the time you add a third project to the mix, nearly half your time is wasted in task switching.

How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets by Andy Kessler

Albert Einstein, Andy Kessler, animal electricity, automated trading system, bank run, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Bretton Woods, British Empire, buttonwood tree, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, Corn Laws, cotton gin, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Fairchild Semiconductor, fiat currency, fixed income, floating exchange rates, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, GPS: selective availability, Grace Hopper, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, Leonard Kleinrock, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Metcalfe's law, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Multics, packet switching, pneumatic tube, price mechanism, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, profit motive, proprietary trading, railway mania, RAND corporation, Robert Metcalfe, Silicon Valley, Small Order Execution System, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Suez canal 1869, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, systems thinking, three-martini lunch, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, tulip mania, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, UUNET, Wayback Machine, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

But he did charge a hidden fee disguised as a spread. He just bought at one price and sold at higher one. That sounds fair, but providing the liquidity still entailed risk. So specialists would trade for their own account, under the premise of providing liquidity. This is perfectly legal under the specialist system. Think about it, this institutionalized an asymmetry of information. By guaranteeing to provide a very necessary liquidity (which technology will eventually step in to provide, but we’re still a hundred plus years ahead of ourselves), a specialist knew the real price of a stock and outsiders didn’t. He got the flow and he got the trading profits.

Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction by Judith Grisel

cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, double helix, epigenetics, Haight Ashbury, impulse control, Livingstone, I presume, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, phenotype, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), seminal paper, systems thinking, trade route, traumatic brain injury

There are many neuroscientists who’ve helped me succeed by lending their support, and in some cases their laboratory benches, including Nicolas Grahame, Jeffrey Mogil, Joanne Weinberg, Peter Kalivas, and Brian McCool, as well as the many fine scholars at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. I also benefitted from the instruction of Mrs. Sisolak—a middle school biology instructor who introduced me to studying the natural world—and Gene Gollin at the University of Colorado for emphasizing systems-thinking. Finally, I’m indebted to my Living School teachers Richard, Cynthia, and Jim and fellow students, especially Brent, Ed, Elizabeth, Emma, Fran, Katrina, Lee, Richard, Roy, and Tom who have all helped me connect a head full of curiosity to a life of meaning outside of it. This book took root in the gracious ground of Volterra, Italy, due largely to the kindness of Marissa Roberto, Stefania del Bufalo, and Giuseppe Ricci.

Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want From Sex and How to Get It by Marty Klein

airport security, Albert Einstein, do-ocracy, invention of the wheel, Silicon Valley, systems thinking

(Assuming you’re not still having sex only when drunk or stoned. You may notice the music has changed since then too.) If you don’t have quite the stamina or upper-body strength you had ten years ago, that will also affect your sexual repertoire. In this regard, sex is not sacred—your cardiovascular system thinks it’s just another workout, like a stationary bike (without the Kindle or iPod, presumably). If you began your sexual career with many partners and now you’re with only one, your body may respond differently—requiring more warming up, for example. If a lot of your interest in sex has been about conquest and now you’re with one regular partner, your body may need new things (positions, games, toys) to get sufficiently excited.

Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Designing the Mind, Ryan A Bush

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cognitive bias, cognitive load, correlation does not imply causation, data science, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, drug harm reduction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fundamental attribution error, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, impulse control, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, price anchoring, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, Walter Mischel

By internalizing models and principles for specific domains of reasoning, you can replace old bias patterns with better, more accurate ones. There are many logical, statistical, and economic principles you can learn to maximize accurate beliefs and good decisions. Coming to grasp principles like probability theory, counterintuitive ideas like compound interest, and cognitive tools like systems thinking can transform the quality of your judgments. Bayesian reasoning has been called the gold standard of rationality. Although there is a formal theorem for calculating Bayes’ rule when precise numbers are available, the type of reasoning it can be most readily applied to is far less formal. The root of many biases is the failure to take prior probabilities into account when forming beliefs.

For the Love of Autism: Stories of Love, Awareness and Acceptance on the Spectrum by Tamika Lechee Morales

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, Berlin Wall, COVID-19, Elon Musk, Google Hangouts, neurotypical, stem cell, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, TikTok

Now that we have some time to get away, our dates are a light lunch or breakfast, half a day, here or there. It is not easy to find the right person to stay with our son—and we continue to adjust. Jose Maria proves to me that just because he is almost an adult does not mean he is done learning. The educational system thinks that when they get to eighteen nothing else needs to be taught. They are wrong!!! What a challenge it is to fight with a system that thinks because they are legal adults, our children should not continue to learn important skills. It is here that you need to challenge the system the most. These young adults still have so much to learn, explore, and practice.

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World: A Practitioners' Handbook by Marc Stickdorn, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, business cycle, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, data science, different worldview, Eyjafjallajökull, fail fast, glass ceiling, Internet of things, iterative process, Kanban, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, minimum viable product, mobile money, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, RFID, scientific management, side project, Silicon Valley, software as a service, stealth mode startup, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the built environment, the scientific method, urban planning, work culture

I have practical experience of introducing these methods in the corporate environment, I saw some good patterns and pitfalls while doing that. Doing is the hard bit! I’ve got about 18 years of experience in design and development. The last 8 years have been in a SD capacity. So I have plenty of insight to offer SD Doing, for sure. I’m particularly interested in techniques from (eco)system thinking. I am always looking to push SD to the next base. And to make it a bona fide part of business operations. I’m not that satisfied with current books. I also want to bring my experience with public SD in Brazil and NY! Because I’m part of a Public Innovation Team in Colombian Government.

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A system map can be used to find or predict intended or unintended benefits as well as disadvantages in the system. Affected stakeholders can be revealed and involved early in a project to increase buy-in and chances of success. “System map” is a collective term for different visualizations that are often based on systems theory and/or systems thinking. The names of these visualizations may vary depending on your background or organization. The following three types of system maps are often used in service design: 21 → Stakeholder maps A stakeholder map illustrates the various stakeholders involved in a specific experience. These maps can be used to understand who is involved, and how these people and organizations are connected

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare

classic study, delayed gratification, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, junk bonds, longitudinal study, Norman Mailer, Savings and loan crisis, sparse data, systems thinking, twin studies

In such cases, the crime is simply a natural consequence of a deviant personality structure that has always been present but that, because of good luck, social skills, cover-ups, a fearful family, or friends and associates who conveniently refused to see what was going on, had not previously resulted in a criminal act that came to the attention of the justice system. Think, for example, of John Gacy (Buried Dreams), Jeffrey Mac-Donald (Fatal Vision), Ted Bundy (The Stranger Beside Me), Diane Downs (Small Sacrifices), Kevin Coe (Son), Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi (Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers), David Brown (Love, Lies and Murder), and Kenneth Taylor (In the Name of the Child), to name but a few of the more sensational cases that have been described in books and have become well known.

The Behavioral Investor by Daniel Crosby

affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, availability heuristic, backtesting, bank run, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, book value, buy and hold, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, compound rate of return, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disinformation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, endowment effect, equity risk premium, fake news, feminist movement, Flash crash, haute cuisine, hedonic treadmill, housing crisis, IKEA effect, impact investing, impulse control, index fund, Isaac Newton, Japanese asset price bubble, job automation, longitudinal study, loss aversion, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral panic, Murray Gell-Mann, Nate Silver, neurotypical, Nick Bostrom, passive investing, pattern recognition, Pepsi Challenge, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, science of happiness, Shai Danziger, short selling, South Sea Bubble, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, TED Talk, Thales of Miletus, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, tulip mania, Vanguard fund, When a measure becomes a target

But the safety of air travel has not always been as exceptional as it now is and those improvements owe largely to a commitment to “I don’t know” and “I was wrong.” The airline industry has embraced simple but powerful best safety practices such as religious reliance on pre-flight checklists and System Think, a program that brings pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers, regulators and the airlines themselves together to discuss past errors and consider a safer future for the passengers they serve. Shockingly, this commitment is not shared by one place you’d definitely expect it to be readily adopted – hospitals.

Financial Market Meltdown: Everything You Need to Know to Understand and Survive the Global Credit Crisis by Kevin Mellyn

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business cycle, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cuban missile crisis, deal flow, disintermediation, diversification, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Santayana, global reserve currency, Greenspan put, Home mortgage interest deduction, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, long peace, low interest rates, margin call, market clearing, mass immigration, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, pattern recognition, pension reform, pets.com, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Suez canal 1869, systems thinking, tail risk, The Great Moderation, the long tail, the new new thing, the payments system, too big to fail, value at risk, very high income, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Y2K, yield curve

That is totally 1 2 FINANCIAL MARKET MELTDOWN false, even a dishonest, distinction. The real economy is the basis of the financial economy. No work, no income, no spending and borrowing equals no financial economy. However, on the other hand, the financial economy is the lifeblood of the real economy. No payment system (think checks and credit cards), no credit, no investment equals no real economy, or at least a very poor one. Rich, dynamic countries with high living standards depend a lot more on their financial economies to power their real economies than backward countries. The two economies feed each other. Handle with Care At the same time, the financial economy is as delicate as it is powerful.

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor

Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, deskilling, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Gini coefficient, global village, Herman Kahn, IKEA effect, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, life extension, McMansion, new economy, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, peak oil, pink-collar, post-industrial society, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, smart grid, systematic bias, systems thinking, The Chicago School, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

My point here is that a variety of factors have been leading the optimal scale of production to shrink. Some of them are familiar, including the impact of an open-source system, not just in software, but more generally. The economics of information leads to networks and sharing, which in turn reduces the desirable scale. For those versed in the world of high-tech systems, think of the self-providing model as just another optimized network. This is a trend that matters for the economy as a whole, and for businesses. But it is equally relevant for individuals and households, which, more and more, we should think of as little enterprises. A shift to self-provisioning makes sense for another reason.

Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture by Bernardo Kastrup

active measures, cellular automata, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, conceptual framework, dark matter, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, phenotype, placebo effect, quantum entanglement, retail therapy, scientific worldview, sugar pill, systems thinking, the scientific method

We have suffered long enough. Let me begin by summarizing the worldview discussed at length in essays 2.1 and 2.2. I maintain that all reality is in consciousness, though not in your personal consciousness alone. This way, it is your body-brain system that is in consciousness, not consciousness in your body-brain system. Think of reality as a collective dream: in a dream, it is your dream character that is in your consciousness, not your consciousness in your dream character. This becomes obvious when you wake up, but isn’t at all obvious while you are dreaming. Furthermore, I maintain that the body-brain system is an outside image of a process of localization in the stream of consciousness, like a whirlpool is the image of a process of localization in a stream of water.

Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business by David J. Anderson

airport security, anti-pattern, business intelligence, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, continuous integration, corporate governance, database schema, domain-specific language, index card, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, knowledge worker, lateral thinking, loose coupling, performance metric, six sigma, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, Toyota Production System, transaction costs

Your situation is unique and you deserve to develop a unique process definition tailored and optimized to your domain, your value stream, the risks that you manage, the skills of your team, and the demands of your customers. [1]1. Common models in use with Kanban include the Theory of Constraints, Systems Thinking, an understanding of variability through the teachings of W. Edwards Deming, and the concept of muda (waste) from the Toyota Production System. The models used with Kanban are continually evolving, and ideas from other fields, such as sociology, psychology, and risk management are appearing in some implementations

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, digital rights, discovery of DNA, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, flying shuttle, friendly AI, gender pay gap, global village, Grace Hopper, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, housing crisis, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microdosing, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, OpenAI, operation paperclip, packet switching, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Plato's cave, public intellectual, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, spinning jenny, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, TikTok, trade route, Turing test, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

Now they can manage 100 billion per second. Their speed is only limited by the physical restrictions of an electron moving through matter. Quantum computing will increase speed – but also efficiency. Parallel operations will work as our brains work – but at a speed beyond anything our bio-brains can do. For an AI system, thinking – in the sense of problem solving – is its purpose. Thinking will no longer be what makes humans unique. Humans may well be one of the problems AI must think about. Getting smarter won’t solve our human problems – any more than tech will solve our human problems. What’s faulty in us, to put it simply, because it is simple, is not about thinking at all.

Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering by Eldad Eilam

Donald Knuth, functional programming, machine readable, software as a service, systems thinking

This layered architecture also makes it relatively easy to add filter drivers, which are additional layers that monitor or modify the communications between drivers and the applications or between two drivers. Thus it is possible to create generic data processing drivers that perform some kind of processing on every file before it is sent to the file system (think of a transparent file-compression or file-encryption driver). The I/O system is interesting to us as reversers because we often monitor it to extract information regarding our target program. This is usually done by tools that insert special filtering code into the device hierarchy and start monitoring the flow of data.

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This means that a virus or any kind of Trojan wouldn’t be able to steal your information and send it somewhere else; the decryption key is safely stored inside the cryptographic engine which is inaccessible to the malicious program. Trusted computing is a two-edged sword. On one hand, it makes computer systems more secure because sensitive information is well protected. On the other hand, it gives software vendors far more control of your system. Think about file formats, for instance. Currently, it is impossible for software vendors to create a closed file format that other vendors won’t be able to use. This means that competing products can often read each other’s file format. All they have to do is reverse the file format and write code that reads such files or even creates them.

Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, active measures, activist lawyer, AI winter, AlphaGo, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, artificial general intelligence, ASML, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business continuity plan, business process, carbon footprint, chief data officer, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, DALL-E, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of journalism, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, global supply chain, GPT-3, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, hustle culture, ImageNet competition, immigration reform, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, large language model, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, new economy, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, Open Library, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, phenotype, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social software, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tech worker, techlash, telemarketer, The Brussels Effect, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, TikTok, trade route, TSMC

Caution is warranted, because even as nations race to leverage AI technology for national advantage, there are risks. AI technology is powerful but has many vulnerabilities. Machine learning systems can learn the wrong thing if the data they are trained on is biased or has been poisoned by an adversary. AI systems can be manipulated by exploiting vulnerabilities in how the system “thinks,” cognitive hacks that are analogous to cyberattacks on computer software. These features make AI technology simultaneously transformative and brittle. Systems may work brilliantly in one setting, then fail dramatically if the environment slightly changes. The “black box” nature of many AI methods means that it may be difficult to accurately predict when they will fail or even understand why they failed in retrospect.

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But human-machine cognitive teams are fundamentally different from human-human teams. Militaries are adding into their warfighting functions an information processing system that can think in ways that are quite alien from human intelligence. Militaries that best learn how to marry human and machine cognition and take advantage of the unusual attributes of how AI systems think will have tremendous advantages. AI systems will not just change the cognitive dimensions of war—the processes of synthesizing information, making decisions, and executing tasks among distributed units. AI systems will also change the psychology of war. War is a human endeavor, and it brings with it the flaws and limitations not just of human cognition but also human emotion.

More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Updated and Expanded) by Michael J. Mauboussin

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Swan, Brownian motion, butter production in bangladesh, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, complexity theory, corporate governance, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, demographic transition, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, dogs of the Dow, Drosophila, Edward Thorp, en.wikipedia.org, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fixed income, framing effect, functional fixedness, hindsight bias, hiring and firing, Howard Rheingold, index fund, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, Kenneth Arrow, Laplace demon, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Menlo Park, mental accounting, Milgram experiment, Murray Gell-Mann, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, shareholder value, statistical model, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, Stuart Kauffman, survivorship bias, systems thinking, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, traveling salesman, value at risk, wealth creators, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Feedback loops can amplify or dampen an effect.4 EXHIBIT 33.1 Complexity and Decision Making Source: Sente Corporation. Complex adaptive systems include governments, many corporations, and capital markets. Efforts to assert top-down control of these systems generally lead to failure, as happened in the former Soviet Union. Exhibit 33.1 contrasts the two types of systems. Thinking about the market as a complex adaptive system is in stark contrast to classical economic and finance theory, which depicts the world in Newtonian terms. Economists treat agents as if they are homogenous and build linear models—supply and demand, risk and reward, price and quantity. None of this, of course, much resembles the real world.5 The Stock Market as a Complex Adaptive System The stock market has all of the characteristics of a complex adaptive system.

Pro Git by Scott Chacon

Chris Wanstrath, continuous integration, creative destruction, Debian, distributed revision control, GnuPG, pull request, revision control, systems thinking

This is easy, because you have each one in a directory — you can print out the deleteall command followed by the contents of each file in the directory. Git will then record each snapshot appropriately: puts 'deleteall' Dir.glob("**/*").each do |file| next if !File.file?(file) inline_data(file) end Note: Because many systems think of their revisions as changes from one commit to another, fast-import can also take commands with each commit to specify which files have been added, removed, or modified and what the new contents are. You could calculate the differences between snapshots and provide only this data, but doing so is more complex — you may as well give Git all the data and let it figure it out.

What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live by Rachel Botsman, Roo Rogers

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Buckminster Fuller, business logic, buy and hold, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commoditize, Community Supported Agriculture, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, dematerialisation, disintermediation, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, global village, hedonic treadmill, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, information retrieval, intentional community, iterative process, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, late fees, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Menlo Park, Network effects, new economy, new new economy, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer rental, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, public intellectual, recommendation engine, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Simon Kuznets, Skype, slashdot, smart grid, South of Market, San Francisco, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, TED Talk, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thorstein Veblen, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, traveling salesman, ultimatum game, Victor Gruen, web of trust, women in the workforce, work culture , Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Cameron Tonkinwise is currently the chair of design thinking and sustainability at Parsons the New School for Design in New York, and stands at the forefront of understanding the role of design in Collaborative Consumption. Tonkinwise’s PhD in philosophy from Sydney University is, perhaps, a testament to what he describes as a move away from compartmentalized “thingification” toward design as systems thinking. To “thingify” is to create a product from scratch and to release it into the consumer space—a practice fundamental since the genesis of the design profession. It is also to ignore the complex social and biological process behind the production of goods. For the past couple of decades, the sustainability movement has pressed designers to stop focusing on “thingification” and address the ecological impact of the products they design.

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room by David Weinberger

airport security, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, book scanning, Cass Sunstein, commoditize, Computer Lib, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, David Brooks, Debian, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, future of journalism, Future Shock, Galaxy Zoo, Gregor Mendel, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, invention of the telegraph, Jeff Hawkins, jimmy wales, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, linked data, Neil Armstrong, Netflix Prize, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, P = NP, P vs NP, PalmPilot, Pluto: dwarf planet, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, RFID, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, semantic web, slashdot, social graph, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize

(Hogarth Press [London], 1987), mentioned in Nikhil Sharma, “The Origin of the ‘Data Information Knowledge Wisdom’ Hierarchy,” February 4, 2008, http://nsharma.people.si.umich.edu//dikw_origin.htm; and Harlan Cleveland, “Information as Resource,” The Futurist, December 1982, pp. 34–39, also in Sharma. 3 The history of this concept is summarized in Nikhil Sharma, “The Origin of the ‘Data Information Knowledge Wisdom’ Hierarchy,” February 4, 2008, http://nsharma.people.si.umich.edu//dikw_origin.htm. For more on Ackoff, see Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, and Anthony Mills, “Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom,” 2004, http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm. 4 “The IBM 650” (part of an online history at the IBM site), http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/650/650_intro.html. 5 Leonard Dudley, Information Revolution in the History of the West (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008), p. 266. 6 The transformation of “information into instructions” is discussed on pages 163–180 of Jennifer Rowley’s “The Wisdom Hierarchy: Representations of the DIKW Hierarchy,” Journal of Information Science 33 (February 14, 2007), DOI: 10.1177/0165551506070706.

Testing Extreme Programming by Lisa Crispin, Tip House

business logic, c2.com, continuous integration, data acquisition, database schema, Donner party, Drosophila, fail fast, hypertext link, index card, job automation, systems thinking, web application

If You Have Trouble Getting Started If you don't have a lot of experience with automating tests and the attempt to leap into coding acceptance tests leaves you with writer's block, here's an intermediate step to help you along. (This runs contrary to the XP philosophy of immediately writing test code, but there's no shame in the learning process.) Go back to the high-level tests we talked about in Chapter 9. Think about common user scenarios, sequences of interactions between a user and the system. Think about the actions, data and expected results of each test: Action. What the user does—for instance, "Login" Data. Specific inputs used in the action—for instance, "User id and password" Expected results. Minimum success criteria: screens, transitions, messages, data persists as a result of an action or step—for instance, "Invalid user ID or password" If it helps you to think through the tests at first, lay these out in a format that's easy and clear for you (see Table 16.1).

Space 2.0 by Rod Pyle

additive manufacturing, air freight, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Boeing 747, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, crewed spaceflight, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, experimental subject, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mars Society, mouse model, Neil Armstrong, overview effect, Planet Labs, private spaceflight, risk-adjusted returns, Scaled Composites, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SpaceShipOne, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jurvetson, systems thinking, telerobotics, trade route, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, X Prize, Y Combinator

Witness the success of Jeff Bezos with Amazon, versus his ongoing investment in Blue Origin. But Bezos himself is bullish on space colonization for similar reasons. His stated desire is to have millions of people living and working in space. Speaking at the Smithsonian Institution in 2016, he said: “I wish there were a trillion humans in the solar system. Think how cool that would be. You’d have a thousand Einsteins at any given moment—and more. There would be so much dynamism with all of that human intelligence. But you can’t do that with the resources on Earth or the energy on Earth. So if you really want to see that kind of dynamic civilization as we expand through the solar system, you have to figure out how to safely move around and use resources that you get in space.”141 Both these entrepreneurs are working for the eventual betterment of all.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work by Richard Baldwin

agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bread and circuses, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, commoditize, computer vision, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, future of journalism, future of work, George Gilder, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Hans Moravec, hiring and firing, hype cycle, impulse control, income inequality, industrial robot, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Metcalfe’s law, mirror neurons, new economy, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, post-work, profit motive, remote working, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, robotic process automation, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, standardized shipping container, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, universal basic income, warehouse automation

Being scientists, psychologists handed out less-than-poetic names for these two ways of thinking: System 1 (intuitive or instinctive thinking), and System 2 (analytic thinking). Social scientists have invented flashier names. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, called the two systems “thinking fast” and “thinking slow” in his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow. I prefer the terminology of New York University social psychologist Jon Haidt, who labels the slow-thinking, rational part of our brain as “the rider” and the fast-thinking, instinctive part as “the elephant.” Haidt’s labels evoke the image of a small rider (who is an analytic, conscious thinker of the System 2 type) sitting atop a giant elephant (who is an instinctive, unconscious thinker of the System 1).

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, basic income, benefit corporation, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, DevOps, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, endowment effect, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gender pay gap, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, Goodhart's law, Google X / Alphabet X, hiring and firing, hive mind, holacracy, impact investing, income inequality, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, loose coupling, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, mirror neurons, new economy, Paul Graham, Quicken Loans, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, remote working, Richard Thaler, Rochdale Principles, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, six sigma, smart contracts, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, source of truth, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The future is already here, the High Line, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, universal basic income, WeWork, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

“Don’t buy this jacket”: Patagonia, “Don’t Buy This Jacket, Black Friday and the New York Times,” The Cleanest Line (blog), The Cleanest Line, November 25, 2011, www.patagonia.com/blog/2011/11/dont-buy-this-jacket-black-friday-and-the-new-york-times. “People with targets”: Daryl Kulak and Hong Li, The Journey to Enterprise Agility: Systems Thinking and Organizational Legacy (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 172. “situations that have already changed”: Adrian Cho, The Jazz Process: Collaboration, Innovation, and Agility, Portable Documents (Boston: Pearson, 2010), 94. deployment every second: Wermer Vogels, “The Story of Apollo—Amazon’s Deployment Engine,” All Thing Distributed (blog), November 12, 2014, www.allthingsdistributed.com/2014/11/apollo-amazon-deployment-engine.html.

AIQ: How People and Machines Are Smarter Together by Nick Polson, James Scott

Abraham Wald, Air France Flight 447, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, business cycle, Cepheid variable, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, combinatorial explosion, computer age, computer vision, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Edward Charles Pickering, Elon Musk, epigenetics, fake news, Flash crash, Grace Hopper, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Higgs boson, index fund, information security, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, late fees, low earth orbit, Lyft, machine translation, Magellanic Cloud, mass incarceration, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Moravec's paradox, more computing power than Apollo, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, North Sea oil, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, p-value, pattern recognition, Pierre-Simon Laplace, ransomware, recommendation engine, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, speech recognition, statistical model, survivorship bias, systems thinking, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, young professional