Systems Social Seience: A Design Inquiry Approach for Stabilization and Reconstruction of Social Systems

This paper explores novel approaches under the design inquiry paradigm that promise to help organizations better understand and solve socio-technical dilemmas. Design inquiry is contrasted with scientific inquiry (Section 1). Section 2 presents a meso-scale model of models methodology for design inquiry that synthesizes systems science, agent modeling and simulation, knowledge management architectures, and domain theories and knowledge. The goal is to focus computational science on exploring underlying mechanisms (white box modeling) and to support reflective theorizing and discourse to explain social dilemmas and potential resolutions. Section 3 then describes an evolving agent modeling and simulation testbed while Section 4 offers two gameworld applications that implement this approach and that serve as an example of the new types of instruments useful for systems social science. The conclusions wrapup by reviewing lessons learned about 10 criteria that have guided this research

Innovation in Higher Education: Needed and Feasible

It is time for a major overhaul of higher education. Europe’s first university was established in Bologna in 1088. Its curriculum was rather narrow, largely devoted to the study of law. Since that time, universities have developed in an attempt to keep pace with our changing society. How have today’s knowledge institutes responded to the increasing pace of technological progress? How do they rise to new societal challenges? Why are they pursuing innovation in education – and how are they doing so

Immersive systemic knowing : rational analysis and beyond

Applied systems thinking has rapidly developed through successive waves of development, and the current reigning paradigm is the revisioned approach to critical systems thinking.This research scrutinizes systemic intervention. It employs the methods of second-order science to apply some of its principles reflexively back on to the domain to discover two gaps: one between the espoused aims of systemic intervention and the adequacy of its methods, the other about its dependence on dialogic rationality. It also delves into its philosophical underpinnings to trace the reason for this gap to the ‘ghosts’ of rationalism. This is because modern Western thinking equates consciousness with intentionality. I argue that there is another well-recognised mode of consciousness, that of non-intentionality. I name these two modes as the becoming-striving and the being-abiding orientations.To address the gap, firstly, a characterisation of the systemic ontology is attempted. Three basic features are identified: mindful interconnectedness, enactive cognition and teleonomy. I also describe plausible political, epistemic and pragmatic goals for systems thinking arising from this ontology.Four methods from adjacent disciplines are examined in detail to show that these address the systemic ontology in better fashion than existing systemic approaches. These mature global contemporary approaches access knowings corresponding to the being-abiding orientation, absent in systems thinking.A suitable ontoepistemology for systemic knowing must comprise of two ontologies and epistemologies corresponding to each of the two consciousness modes: four component elements. Suitable conceptual models from other disciplines serve the purpose of these four components. Thus, a model of immersive systemic knowing is assembled, which meets the requirements of a framework for systems thinking in terms of the goals posited.A key feature of this research is the espousal of experiential knowing: not in a phenomenological sense, but in terms of a radical empiricism. It argues for the value of practical knowings that go beyond rationalistic formulation, which are always held in the margins (in the language of boundaries). Systemists must actively seek such experiential knowing to enact truly creative improvement. The only answer to the problem of knowing the world better is to know the shadow aspects of the knowledge generating system. This requires truly radical methods and an extended epistemology, all shown to be available plentifully in other practices and cultures. Testimony is provided from two field projects that were a part of these inquiries, and from practitioner accounts

Market Engineering

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world. Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals’ and organizations’ behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today’s society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society’s goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management. With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

The Augmented Learner : The pivotal role of multimedia enhanced learning within a foresight-based learning model designed to accelerate the delivery of higher levels of learner creativity

The central theme for this dissertation lies at the intersection of multisensory technology enhanced learning, the field of foresight and transformative pedagogy and their role in helping to develop greater learner creativity. These skills will be key to meeting the needs of the projected growing role of the creative class within the emerging global workforce structure and the projected growth in R&D and the advancement of human-machine resource management. Over the past two decades, we have traversed from the Industrial Age through the Information Age into what we now call postnormal times, manifested partly in Industry 4.0. It is widely considered that the present education system in countries with developed economies is not optimised for delivering the much-needed creative skills, which are prominent amongst the critical 21st C skills required by the creative class, (also known as creatives), which will be increasingly dominant in terms of near future employability. Consequently, there will be a potential shortfall of creatives unless this issue is rapidly addressed. To ensure that the creative skills I aimed to enhance were relevant and aligned with emerging demands of the changing landscape, I deconstructed the critical dimensions, context, and concept of creativity in postnormal times as well as undertaking in-depth research on the potential future workscape and the future of education and learning, applying a comprehensive foresight approach to the latter using a 2030-2040 horizon. Based upon the outcomes of these studies I designed an experimental integrative learning system that I have applied, researched, and evolved over the past 4 years with over 150 students at PhD and master’s level. The system is aimed at generating higher levels of creative engagement and development through a focus on increased immersion and creativity-inducing approaches. The system, which I call the Living Learning System, is based upon eight integrated elements, supported by course development pillars aimed at optimizing learner future skill competencies and levels of creativity for which I apply severalevaluation techniques and metrics. Accordingly, as the central hypothesis of this dissertation, I argue that by integrating the critical elements of the Living Learning System, such as emerging multisensory technology enhanced learning coupled with optimised transformative and experiential learning approaches, framed within the field of foresight, with its futures focus and decentralised thinking approaches, students increase their ability to be creative. This increased ability is based on the student attaining a richer level of personal ambience through deeper immersion generated through higher incidence of self-direction, constructivism-based blended pedagogy, futures literacy, and a balance of decentralised and systems-based thinking, as well as cognitive and social platforms aimed at optimizing learner creative achievement. This dissertation demonstrates how the application of the combined elements of the Living Learning System, with its futures focus and its ensuing transdisciplinary curricula and courses, can provide a clear path towards significantly increased learner creativity. The findings of the quantitative, questionnaire-based research set out in detail in Chapter 9, together with the performance and creativity evaluation models applied against the selected case studies of student projects substantiate the validity of the hypothesis that the application of the Living Learning System with its futures focus leads to increased creativity in line with the needs of the postnormal era.publishedVersio

The making of postdigital experiential space: Punchdrunk Company 2011-2014

This thesis presents my original contribution to knowledge, a combination of critical media and performance theories to analyse the production and augmentation of postdigital experiential spaces in Punchdrunk Theatre Company. Distributed agency is key to Punchdrunk’s work, with makers within the company and audiences both being active participants in meaning-making, across complex and detailed interfaces. In order to investigate the making cultures on ‘both sides’ of the interface, I undertook a two-year participant study as a researching designer within the company during the build of the productions The House Where Winter Lives and The Drowned Man in 2011-2014, gathering field data in the form of extensive interviews with members of the company and audience participants, supported by diary notations and photographs. I studied the processes and methods that extend, distribute and regulate agency to both audiences and makers within the company, and identified devices and features of the interaction design of the company that produce the immanent subject-event relationships that support immersion in their work. A core aspect of this research concerns the relationship between immersion and the sublime, and how subject-event relationships (immanent vs. transcendent) contribute to engendering sublime interactive experiences. I have analysed the consequences of this for the modelling of participation in interaction design, and how it influences conditions of possibility within interactive systems across physical, digital and blended media. The conclusion of this research includes the definition of a postdigital sublime, and proposes a delinquent system aesthetic that integrates proxies for gravity through articulation of the ‘shadow side’ of interaction design