International Society for the Systems Sciences: Journals ISSS
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Ocean Literacy: How the Concept of What Everyone Should Know about the Ocean Changed the World
No full textOcean literacy is an understanding the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean. Building public understanding and acknowledgement of the importance of the ocean to our daily lives was a motivating factor for a geographically distributed group of US-based scientists, formal and informal educators, and policy influencers coming together in the early 2000s to address the absence of ocean science content in US science education standards and our elementary and secondary classrooms. This convening and several others that came after it became the cornerstone of the Ocean Literacy Campaign, resulting in a definition of ocean literacy and the articulation of seven essential principles and 45 fundamental concepts that an “ocean literate” person would know. The definition, essential principles and fundamental concepts became the foundational pieces of the Ocean Literacy Framework, which now also comprises a scope and sequence for grades K-12 and an alignment to Next Generation Science Standards.Despite the initial focus on K-12 education in the United States, this framework has been influential in ways never imagined by the initial leaders and participants of the campaign. In this presentation, Sarah Schoedinger will discuss a brief history of the Ocean Literacy Campaign, focusing both on how the framework was developed as well as the intended and unintended consequences that resulted as it became a model for the development of numerous other literacy frameworks (some of which will be discussed later in this conference) and has influenced both formal and informal education within the United States and abroad
A Policy Compass for Ecological Economics in the Digital Age
No full textA policy compass indicates the direction and degree of success of a policy in both very general qualitative terms and in robust statistical terms. I propose to modify the compass to reflect the underlying suppositions of ecological economics: that society is dependent on the environment, and that economic activity is dependent on society. We can think of this as three concentric circles, the economy being the smallest.Any formal institution[1] can develop a policy compass to examine the discrepancy between what the institution would like to do (its mandate) and the actual performance and situation it finds itself in, where the latter is determined through an aggregation of statistical data and facts. These are made robust and stable using meta-requirements[2] of convergence. They can be aligned with some of the fundamental conceptual and normative thinking of ecological economics with this new adaptation of the compass.In this paper, the general policy compass is explained, followed by an adaptation for ecological economics. The policy compass is original, and so is the adaptation. The compass is inspired by the work of Satish Kumar, Stanislav Schmelev, Anthony Friend, Georgescu-Roegen and Rob Hoffman. In the conclusion, I discuss the accompanying conception of sustainability.[1] An institution is any of: a convention or habit, a norm or valued social practice and a formal institution. The latter has a formal structure and distinguishes itself from the other two by including explicit rules and a mechanism for re-enforcement or correction. The legal system, universities, banks, city councils, hospitals, libraries and so on are all formal institutions.
A systems view of violence and some paradoxes in working with violent abusers
No full textThis paper commences with a theoretical underpinning of the nature of violence from a systems perspective, exploring the interactions between parts and wholes where boundaries are transgressed or vital flows are disrupted. A case study of Rangi, a perpetrator of family violence, who is a composite of people the author has worked with over the years, is then used to demonstrate how systems principles can be used to understand the nature of human violence on an individual level and to inform ways of working with clients aiming to reduce the frequency and severity of violence in their lives and the people around them. The focus then shifts to structural violence imposed on the parts of the system by the whole. First, this is examined at a societal level, then returning to the case study of Rangi, there is an exploration of structural violence within the criminal justice system revealing paradoxes to be confronted in working with violent clients
STATE POLICIES FOR THE TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPACE SYSTEM
No full textThe Technological Management (TM) is defined as: the decisions that the State adopts on the policies, plans programms, etc. relating to the creation, diffusion, use and transfer of space technology in order to achieve Technological Development (TD).In Mexico the government, educational institutions and research centers have made efforts to found organisms, programms and projects, in order to foster space DT, which arise and disappear without achieving the objective for which they were founded.The main purpose of the TM is the TD. To achieve this, integration is necessary concerning government-academia-industry in order to reduce political, economical and social conflicts.For this reason, a Systemic Model (SM) for the Technological Development of the Mexican Space System (TDMSS) is proposed, allowing the integration of scientific research in companies based on market goals, strategies and objectives.The MS has three stages: the first is the input (I), consisting of the analysis of the satellite system in the International and National context; The second, box (B), consisting of: diagnosis, proposal, planning to carry out the proposal;The third relative to the output (O), in this case is the satellite TD. O = IB, ie, I and B can be adjusted to achieve O
SYSTEM THINKING IS NOT FOR EVERYONE – FROM THE BELL CURVE 2.0 TO THE MULTI-LEVEL APPROACH TO SYSTEM THINKING EDUCATION
No full textAbstract:System Thinking IS NOT for Everyone. Heinz von Foerster told us "draw a distinct." So this short paper is trying to accomplish that.
TOURIST BEACH MANAGEMENT, A PERSPECTIVE FORM THE SYSTEMS THINKING
No full textThe development of buildings and massive tourism activities in tourist beaches have affected the natural value of these areas as well as their natural processes. In this regard, it is important to propose alternatives from the Systems Science that grant to design strategies to handle appropriately these spaces. This paper presents an option, from the systemic perspective, to strengthen the beach management process through the integration of relevant actors in order to protect it. The methodological approach was made through the Soft Systems Methodology and the Viable System Model. As a result, a diagnostic was generated that allowed to characterize the system under study and elucidate the interrelations among the actors involved in the problematic situation, for later determine an administrative structure that considers mechanisms of control, coordination and monitoring of the coast area in order to harmonize the different dimensions of the beach
Liminal Consciousness – A Systemic Framework for 'Altered States of Consciousness'
No full textAcademic psychology, both in research and theory, focuses mainly on rational consciousness. If it speaks about other forms of consciousness, these are foremost conceived of – and hence marginalized – as 'altered states of consciousness.' The term 'altered states of consciousness' consistently reproduces: 1. the positing of rational consciousness as a primal given; 2. the fixation on a (consciousness)process as a state; 3. the mistake to characterize something which is defined by constant alteration as 'altered;' 4. a dichotomization of 'normal' and 'altered', which conceals the ongoing reproduction of rational consciousness; and 5. the suggestion that non-rational consciousness is epistemically inferior, if not deviant. This paper aims to circumvent these problems by focusing on central aspects of autopoietic systems theory and, in particular, on the fundamental term liminality, which are then combined to a new theory of non-rational consciousness. In this paper, the term 'liminal consciousness' will be used to refer to forms of psychic systems that are less defined by points of reference but instead rather converge to the limit of (temporary) omission of its autopoiesis. 'Liminal consciousness' is not conceived as one side of a dichotomous category (with 'rational consciousness' as its counterpart), but rather as a continuously increasing omission of the reproduction of self-referential structures. Three basic possibilities which can evoke liminal consciousness are identified: focussing on self-referentiality, focussing on hetero-referentiality, or a short-circuit of concentration by focusing on the occurrence of thoughts. Within this framework, many forms of consciousness, e.g. those 'invited' by ecstatic or meditative practice, can be conceptualized without relying on religious, reductionist or mystical discourses. Finally, instead of 'altered states of consciousness', the term 'liminal consciousness' is suggested in order to improve the connectivity of communication within the scientific system
Process View for Active and Healthy Aging
No full text Active and Healthy Aging (AHA) is one of the growing concerns and aims of a sustainable society and thus a focus of the European Union. The adoption of a process view and the analysis of the processes to be performed has brought about numerous advantages to business organizations and industrial enterprizes. Advantages range from clarity, understandability, and teachability to increased efficiency due to assessment and measurements of quality and capability.The basic idea of the process view is to describe necessary activities on an abstract level (i.e. as activity types) and organize these abstracted activities (together with abstracted work products) in a process model. Individual processes are derived (instantiated) from the process model to be enacted.In this paper we investigate, as a continuation of (Chroust, 2017) and (Chroust and Aumayr, 2017), the challenge of applying a process view to health support for elderly persons ("AHA", Active and Healthy Aging (univ.Torino, 2016)) and identify the differences from classical applications (software engineering, office automation, business intelligence, ...).We will turn our special attention to activities which can be designed to be performed by a Senior himself/herself, by helpers from different professions, and by machines (computers) of varying capability and diversity. The variability of the capability of elderly people obviously has to be taken into account by the support system by providing alternative implementations of the same support activity task depending on the capability of an individual Senior.A discussion about the possibilities to assess the quality of AHA-processes and their support by a Model Interpreter closes the paper
THE PROVIDE-PICKUP PARADIGM: CORNERSTONE IN A GENERAL SYSTEMS FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORTING AGENCY AND GOVERNANCE IN SOCIAL SYSTEMS
No full textIn spite of significant advances in technology in today’s world, our large social systems are marked by increasing social decline. A human systems paradigm can inform and be informed by analysis and clarification of the hard facts of our soft social systems. The aim of this paper is to uncover, understand, unify and clarify the laws of social systems just as we have done with the laws of material and mechanical systems. This paper proceeds to identify flaws in practice and theory underlying our current social systems, and then correct them using a wider knowledge base gathered from general systems theory and relevant disciplines. The updated theory presented here holds that agency of organization behaviour is not in the leader, nor the worker, but in both. Each system member learns and performs according to his/her own willingness and ability, resulting in almost infinite variability. Thus, a new provide-pickup paradigm is proposed. The leader’s role is to provide input, resources and tasks; the learner/worker role is pickup of input, each at his/her own rate. In large social systems, important input is beyond the pickup range of individuals. User-designed ideal-based automated social control systems are proposed to allow organizations and system members to flourish.
TOWARDS A VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL FOR MICE TOURISM IN MEXICO
No full textMICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) Tourism in Mexico generates more than 501 thousand jobs and contributes 1.43% to the national GDP. According to the World Ranking of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) Mexico is increasingly positioned as a destination for this tourism market, becoming a key driver in the economy. This tourism activity is characterized to be a large-scale phenomenon, in which an interdependence is generated between the various agents involved creating positive and negative impacts and repercussions on the hosting destinations of the events. That is why is relevant manage this activity as a complex system identifying the relationships of its elements to generate solutions considering its economic, social, cultural, and environmental reality.In this research is presented the current situation of MICE Tourism in Mexico through the Soft Systems Methodology. In the end, all those components and external agents that make up this tourist segment in Mexico can be identified, as well as the problem situations existing in the system and its environment. This diagnosis guides to the generation of a Viable System Model that allows the system to persist over the time despite the changes that occur in the environment, this by the realization of sustainable events