You can understand the relative importance of a system’s elements, interconnections, and purposes by imagining them changed one by one. Changing elements usually has the… Read More »Donella Meadows on systems thinking: elements, interconnections, purposes
So in computer science we’re in the business of formalising this how-to, imperative knowledge. How to do stuff. And the real issues of computer science… Read More »The Wizards (2): Harold Abelson on controlling complexity and real vs idealised systems
This extract comes from a much longer piece on Jerry Neumann’s blog, Reaction Wheel. Highly recommended. A Technological System is a set of technologies that… Read More »Technology (15): Jerry Neumann on technological systems and constellations of innovations
A complex social system… really is made up of a set of complex and interconnected forces that both affect each other and the things that… Read More »Rob Ricigliano on the murky unpredictability of complex systems
This is a great (long) article about what Stripe is up to with a lot of interesting detail about how the internet works as a… Read More »Recommendation: Bryne Hobart (The Diff) on Stripe, ecosystems and the infrastucture of the internet
The most powerful learning comes from direct experience. Indeed, we learn eating, crawling, walking and communicating through direct trial and error – through taking an… Read More »Systems thinking: Peter Senge on the limits of learning from experience
Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch… Read More »Systems thinking: Gall’s Law
Four interesting, tangentially-related things worth checking out: Wired article by Adam Rogers on how Singapore built a system that was ready to respond to Covid-19;… Read More »Building systems, questioning statistics, finding things out, decline and fall
Some examples to illustrate what it means to maximise components rather than systems – and why it’s best avoided: Sports teams with star players that… Read More »Maximising components vs maximising systems
A friend was talking about building resilient systems today, something Seth covered at length in Akimbo (S4 Ep 20)… and also in this blog post:… Read More »More from Seth Godin on slack in systems and resilience