Systems Thinking Discussion

[garethace]

At the conceptual end of the spectrum is adoption of a systems perspective or viewpoint. You are adopting a systems viewpoint when you are standing back far enough—in both space and time—to be able to see the underlying web of ongoing, reciprocal relationships which are cycling to produce the patterns of behavior that a system is exhibiting. You’re employing a systems perspective when you can see the forest (of relationships), for the trees. You are not employing a systems perspective when you get “trapped in an event.” Anyone who has gazed out at the lights

from high above a city, or gazed down upon a river valley from a mountaintop, has a good sense of what “standing back far enough” means. Details fade. Patterns of relationships emerge. And, time seems to slow. Conversely, anyone who’s been caught in the frenzy of rush hour traffic on a multilane freeway knows what being “trapped in an event” really means. The former is inherently awesome, empowering and expansive. The latter is inherently mundane, consuming and constraining. Moving rightward along the continuum, activities become more concerned with implementation of

the viewpoint. As they do, they also become progressively more disciplined and analytical. You might typically begin implementation by developing an influence diagram—a simple map of the reciprocal relationships that you believe to be principally responsible for producing the behavior

patterns that a system is exhibiting. These maps basically show what’s hooked up to what. Next, you might construct a structural diagram. This is a more disciplined map. It attempts to show what really makes a system tick. At this stage of the process, you’re laying out the mechanisms you

think the system is using to control itself. Finally, you might take the step of translating the structural diagram into a set of equations. The equations characterize the nature of the relationships that you laid out in your structural diagram. This activity also includes assigning numerical values

to define the direction and strength of these relationships. Completing this step enables you to simulate the system’s behavior on a computer. Being able to do this often is very important because it permits you to “close the loop” on your thinking. You can answer the question: Can the set of reciprocal relationships that I’ve pieced together in fact generate the behavior patterns that are being produced by the actual system?

 

 

If you log in here, you will eventually find the pdf the quote came from.

 

Article is by Barry Richmond, High Performance Systems Inc.

 

http://www.iseesystems.com/

[garethace]

Ever want to know how to build beautiful exposed steel buildings?

 

http://www.aisc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Technical_Answers&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=25153

 

quite a few tips there, to make you into a modern day Mies van der Rohe! :-)

 

Some very good ones from here...

 

http://www.aisc.org/MSCTemplate.cfm

 

Enjoy Garethace.

[garethace]

I know some of you here will get a laugh from this interview...

 

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brooks_beyond/beyond_index.html

[William Alexander]

I know some of you here will get a laugh from this interview...

 

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brooks_beyond/beyond_index.html

It's missing the same thing Einstien was chasing: God ........ or to be PC.... 'LIFE' / 'Essence of Creation'.

 

There is always 'that' formula missing in the algorithms dealing with living systems. How do you account for the beauty of the extremes, the stray erroneous errors (ex:unique individuals) that are absolute, but not within the statistical bouds of the averaged equation. The 'Theory' of evlolution is based on these erroneous errors and the theory of creation depends on them.

 

When we can define beauty in art as an algorithm we might have be close! It has nothing to do with complexity, but rather every event, person and cell being unique- that is contrary to all math and science that relys on consistancies to prove a theory.

 

With moer computational power we will approach the boundries, but how can the "created" ever equal the creation they are part of?

 

Ok back from the tangent, BTW only read the intro on the article-tired of the techno babble. Computers are wonderful tools but really no smarter or more alive than the silcone (rock/mineral) they are made of!

 

Cheers

WDA

[William Alexander]

From Post #1

 

very comprehensive explaination to systems thinking! It works on a multi-discipline level and covers the asthetics, use and structural elements of Architecture. It's a good foundation for a complete design synthesis and remarkably similar to my angle of attack. It makes good sense anyway.

 

>>question: Can the

set of reciprocal relationships that I’ve pieced together in fact generate the behavior patterns that

are being produced by the actual system?

 

If they can they are realtively simple in nature, not to say false though. I would temper that question, does it cross the threshold to achieve acceptable results. Case in point -The weather services, 65% forcast accuracy vs an old farmer with 70 years of living outdoors. A computer or statistic model just can not account for the 'weighted' and sliding variables that the Human System can. The old farmers tend to do better than 65% imho and thats just using thier sense of smell LOL.

 

Post #2

 

That's dead on- good for, the Architect, Construction managers, Trades and the end users. Good article that intgrates Architects into Building. I really like the part about adequate drawings for structural assembly-fit. Using this type of information, which should be standard fair, allows the Architect full span of control- proactively and on a scalable levels (ref post #1)

 

Cheers

WDA

[garethace]

I think I will hold my tongue about the Artificial Life/Intelligence stuff. Just survice it to say, I would hold onto anything analogue, that you own and pride now at the moment,... particularly stuff that 'doesn't help you' through the means of some chip/piece of silicon, to make a better picture or whatever it is... they will be worth something some day. Indeed there is going to be a very large market, for things which are just manual, pure, not connected via Wi-Fi to some intelligent brain somewhere else. Old analogue stuff might even prove to be very useful too. Even the early hackers, used to love routing their hacking through ancient old mechanical brass relay switchboards, because it kind of cut the trace,.... guys had to actually follow the hacker, by running around the mechanical relay switch building.

 

This leads, me onto the concluding point... building is a very analogue process, the materials are real materials and are worked in ways, which can be very sophisticated, but a some stage, it is just about bolting stuff together. I think architecture is very much an old way of doing things nowadays... about how to organise a sequence and set out of some very real and old kinds of materials. I guess we should feel quite priveleged to be working with this stuff.... a bit like listening to original records on vinyl. I don't think there will ever trully be a digital version of architecture. This was the funniest bit, of the MIT's article...

 

In other computational experiments we're looking at very simple animals and modeling their neural development. We're looking at polyclad flatworms, which have a very primitive, but very adaptable brain with a couple of thousand neurons. If you take a polyclad flatworm and cut out its brain, it doesn't carry out all of its usual behaviors but it can still survive. If you then get a brain from another one and you put it into this brainless flatworm, after a few days it can carry out all of its behaviors pretty well. If you take a brain from another one and you turn it about 180 degrees and put it in backwards, the flatworm will walk backwards a little bit for the first few days, but after a few days it will be back to normal with this brain helping it out. Or you can take a brain and flip it over 180 degrees, and it adapts, and regrows. How is that regrowth and self-organization happening in this fairly simple system? All of these different projects are looking at how this self-organization happens with computational experiments in a very artificial life-like way.

 

So you know what I mean, in time, a lot of things, which now demand skill or at least basic common sense to rectify, and operate, are going to be seriously hard to muck up. I find it myself now, most of all in Autofocus cameras.... I nearly miss the days when half of my roll of film was pure rubbish, but I had a chance of getting some really interesting shots in the other half of the roll. Now autofocus lenses all have AI microchip with Fuzzy logic algorithms,... it is no longer about the glass in the lense, but the release version of the firmware in the chip. :-( I just this is very parallel to the general discussions about rendering algorithms here at CG Architect web site... and yeah, I agree with you nowadays, that it is refreshing to get back to building, something hasn't been imbued with so much 'artificial intelligence'.

 

Brian.

[William Alexander]

Basiclly still in an ever increasing techno age, there will always be a need for "wetware".

 

 

The MIT excpert is very interesting. Does the brain have hard wiring for behavior or is there a 'programer' that keeps order to development and behavior when things get erroneous? It's more philisophical than anything else, however it's quite amazing that a few thousand neurons are apparently so goal oriented all by themselves- really basic "Wetware".

[garethace]

Yeah, that is correct, I know you have an exceptionally good handle on these ideas. I had to read a book about it, before I could even begin to understand that.

 

There is a nice book called Emergence by Stephen Johnson, in paperback... very cheap little book, but a very good all around discussion of this concept of self organisation. For anyone, you wants to know more about AI and neural networks and blah, blah, blah. It was all Dutch to me, for a long time too.

 

He has some amazing anecdotes about ants and their behaviour. Basically for years, people couldn't study these colonies very well, because why had a 'top-down' as opposed to a 'bottom-up' view of everything. Nowadays, a lot of experts are busy studying and seeing for the first time ever, the phenomenon that is 'Bottom Up' Emergent behaviours.

 

A book you might have heard about before, Jane Jacobs, Life and Death of American Cities, was one of the first texts to examine the concept of Emergent behaviour in real world circumstances, believe it or not. It probably has more value applied to geography and planning than architecture directly, but still, it is nice to know something about the things described in Stephen Johnson's book.... than just reading Jane Jacobs with a purely architectural view of things... and no knowledge whatsoever about concepts like Emergence.

 

Brian.

[garethace]

Amazing how good stuff like this, greats swallowed up so fast here on the message board....

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?p=56760#post56760

 

Cross Link and keep the connection.

 

gareth.