blogrium

At the last DevHouse, I met somebody else that was interested in systems theory. I recommended him Ackoff’s Best, which he recently got and started writing about on his blog.

I haven’t written about any systems stuff for a while, but I think about it all the time. To me it’s really exciting because it’s one of those fields that isn’t very well-known. A few people I’ve come across have heard of some of the ideas (holistic thinking, “systemic problems”) or are familiar with some of the paradigms (chaos theory, network theory, cybernetics, complexity theory), but it’s hard to find people that are really into general systems theory as much as I am.

Will Wright has got to be one of them because systems theory, once you know what it is, shows up a lot in his talks. Especially in one of my favorites, Dynamics for Designers, which I hope to get online at some point. Unfortunately, he doesn’t delve into it as a field, which is weird because he’s definitely interested in it. SimCity was partly inspired by works of Jay Forrestor, an early systems theorist that developed System Dynamics.

The scarcity of information on systems theory and the incredibly broad implications it has makes it even more interesting to me. Because it’s most obvious use is in organization theory, it’s very popular in the management field. The Fifth Discipline is a book focusing on management (very much so) based on systems thinking principles. Even Ackoff’s Best is marketed as a book on management, even though it also talks about systems as a general concept, the greater implications of its discovery, as well as education, marketing, design, problem solving and personality types.

What led me to Ackoff was a transcript of a talk he gave that I found online by chance. It’s a good introduction to systems, so I have it online to download here. It’s a PDF of scanned pages that were typed and unfortunately, for whatever reason, it’s almost 14 megs.

Another book worth mentioning while I’m on the topic is A Whole New Mind. It’s interesting because it’s another one of those sources that either intentionally hides systems theory or just happens to come to similar conclusions. The book is about the transition from the information age into the conceptual age (which used to be part of the title, but the subtitle was changed to “Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” in the paperback release).

This conceptual age idea seems to parallel in many ways Ackoff’s transition from the machine age to the systems age, only more recent and on a smaller scale. If you look at them together, you could conclude that the conceptual age is the real tipping point into Ackoff’s systems age. A Whole New Mind makes a lot of systems age implications more clear and relevant, but unfortunately so far (I’m still reading it) it hasn’t mentioned systems.

Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind, also wrote a book called Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself, which reminds me of a book called The Future of Work by Thomas Malone. I haven’t read Free Agent Nation, but The Future of Work, which is about decentralization in business and organizations, was another landmark in my study of systems (before I knew what it was) because it talked a lot about decentralization as a general concept.

Apparently this post has turned into a book recommendation post, so I might as well mention one more, which is Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity. I’ve written about it before, but it’s also a very excellent companion to Ackoff’s Best as a book on systems. Though again, this book is a book on management, but don’t let that discourage you. The Fifth Discipline, though, is probably not something you want to read if you’re looking primarily for systems information.

I’m still not satisfied with the data available on systems theory. It takes a lot of reading between the lines and cross referencing to really see it clearly. I almost wish I had time to dedicate a whole blog to it. Maybe if I’ll find enough people interested in it, we can start one together…

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Systems Theory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.