#dataArchitects and #projectManagers and #systemsThinking people.... I'm checking in to see if people have tools they like for documenting their long term planning. I certainly have wikis and spreadsheets and they may really be the answer to publication and dissemination as I collect lists of every codebase in my purview and its known annual basic maintenance requirements. Anyone got thoughts about keeping track of over arching basic maintenance costs on teams (yes yes, I can ticket things, but this is the stage of the work before there are tickets). I am perfectly aware that tools don't solve these problems -- good old fashioned thought and note taking solves these problems, but I'm dithering over where and how to create some long-lived public artifacts and am curious if people like anything better than a wiki.

This is a really cool read. Not entirely sure if there are any practical implications, except that maybe we humans should stop trying to look for simplifying narratives everywhere and start appreciating and embracing diversity in everything.

Oh, I guess that's practical..

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/

I"ve started to go down a level of detail in my book on social systems for a better world.

First is a chapter on "Countries in Context", describing the border and interactions with external entities such as other countries, global corporations and the like.

Still at a high level; there is too much to say to fit into one chapter. I may just try to finish the book at about this level of detail, then provide additional details on the same site, with links but outside the linear narrative of a book

#SocialSystems #systemsThinking
#country #corporation #oligarchs

https://ericlawton.org/preface/countries/countries-system-context/

I've updated the section "Social Systems Concepts" in my book on changing #SocialSystems.

It introduces a bit of theory, before diving in to analyzing large-scale social systems. Now working on the next chapter, on Global Social Systems.

#systemsThinking

https://ericlawton.org/preface/social-systems/social-systems-concepts/

My new blog post on updates to my book on understanding and changing the world.

After five days in hospital, and another five days without power because of an ice storm, I decided it was time to return in earnest to writing.

I rewrote the Introduction and the first main section “Humans and Other Persons” and restructured the whole Table of Contents.

#writing #SocialSystems #systemsThinking

https://ericlawton.org/2025/04/08/new-first-sections-of-changing-the-world/

#SystemsThinking is a challenge for the Creepy Weirdos.

Just blogged: The Opiates of Root Cause and Counterfactual Reasoning

https://wheeler.kiwi.nz/journal/root-cause

For me the highlight of the video is continuous improvement isn't nearly as important as discontinuous improvement (requiring vision / creative thought):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhcfjE7tJDY

#SystemsThinking (found in a slideshow from @RuthMalan )

#threegoodthings #3goodthings
1) watched a really excellent video recording of a Clarendon lecture by Tima Bansal .. can’t wait to see the second! https://www.youtube.com/live/Tqs6oI9GEZ4?si=H0JVmsNIcKJLzU5F
#systemsthinking #complexity
2) had a nice teams chat with another friend-colleague with whom I had not spoken in several months
3) my family and friends, and my

Anyone use the #Zettelkasten method of note-taking and knowledge management? Stumbled across it and I'm quite curious about it. I read widely across a lot of topics. No longer in grad school but having a way to organize and cross-reference is really appealing.

https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, has a little contact form on his website mediated by goddamn Squarespace. But I still used it to write to him to ask, "Don't you think the obvious thing is for the left to unite internationally and leverage mass labor and economic power to insist on the institution of a real Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism at the IMF and World Bank now, like John Keynes originally proposed at Bretton Woods?"

Quickly, and apparently without much thought, he replied that the IMF and World Bank were dictatorial and not worth our focus in confronting the rise of fascism. BUT THE POINT IS THAT WE USE THE ONLY LEVERAGE WE HAVE AS THE POOR AND WORKING CLASS MASSES TO DEMAND A TRANSFORMATION OF THE TOP DICTATORSHIP SO THAT THERE IS NO LONGER A TOP DICTATORSHIP, AND INSTEAD, A FUNCTIONAL, TRANSPARENT, PUBLIC UNION OF EQUALS THANKS TO FAIR, EGALITARIAN SURPLUS REGULTION, WHICH HAS STILL NOT BEEN TRIED.

DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND ME?!

https://doi.org/10.54120/jost.234567

Holy crap, the shade thrown in this paper might be enough to solve global warming.

Cabrera, Cabrera, & Midgley. (2023). The Four Waves of Systems Thinking. https://doi.org/10.54120/jost.000051

This is an amazing introduction into the history of #systemsThinking, and into DSRP. Just finished reading this this read it this week, and I think I might be a convert. DSRP seems like a super useful universal framework that can abstract all (most?) other systems thinking, perhaps even all thinking.

It also seems useful as a generative framework, in a similar way to the Grammar Of Graphics for data visualisation - by breaking the field down into manageable dimensions, it allows you to recombine them in new ways to produce potentially useful new ways of thinking about a context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSRP

One time, in a moment that I still can't exactly wrap my mind around, we got to talk to David Snowden.
He was the nicest, most genuine & patient genius-of-a-person we've interacted with. By the end he'd made sense of some questions we had, and at the same time we wished he was our neighbor.
AND, he's found the topic of mapping useful in wrestling with complex topics.
If you'd like new approaches to complex issues, we'd suggest...

#design #systemsthinking #map #maps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SITXkTFHVw

New paper on the telegraph line is out! It’s a #microhistory of Strangways Springs//Pangki Warruna, exploring its evolution from a #pastoral property to a #telegraph station to a #railway stop, and how these transitions shaped innovation in #Australia

We also highlight the importance of #water in creating and sustaining these innovations (as is the case for technologies of today like #AI ).

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10761-025-00788-4