This paper will offer some reflections on my involvement in a project to re-design an IT support service, attempting to employ what I would call systemic thinking, taking into account the persons/personalities involved. The paper moves onto a revisitation of the project, based on a trusting constructivist perspective (see Romm's abstract for an outline of this perspective).

The project was undertaken in the Computer Centre at the University of Hull in relation to the re-organisation of the system. As Assistant Director in that Centre (for 12 years), I felt it important that we reconsider a way of re-organising our IT support services in the light of the ever-increasing use of IT both in terms of the number of users and the diversity of applications. The Computer Centre as a support centre for users at the University was at that time experiencing resulting pressures.
The paper will focus specifically on my involvement in ways chosen to promote participation in the project, and attempts made to work with the personalities of the various players. I will concentrate (in the paper) on my involvement in attempting to improve the quality of the service - in the light of questions of participation/non-participation and in the light of the complexities involved in working with people in different formal positions, while trying to organise cross-sectional actions. My approach implicitly involved attempting to develop a process of trust building through trying to harmonise factional interests. This was attempted by using a variation of Enid Mumford's ETHICS methodology, which highlights ways in which shared interests can become a way of reviewing the situation. However, although this approach resulted in some possibilities for action, it is also fair to say that some actors outside of the project (who indeed had formal positions of power outside the Centre) did have some control over the way that components of the system became excluded upon implementation. Nevertheless, despite this outside control, the paper reflects on the way in which participants, including myself, tried to find ways within the system to still address issues central to ourselves and users. Notwithstanding some "successes", some people feared the new positions that they might occupy within the new framework. Workshops were held with these people to seek their contribution to the design and to try to find common ground for working together across different sections. They were not all convinced about whether their interests (and fears) could be met in the new framework. This implied that implementation did not take place smoothly. Nevertheless, an elaborate structure was arguably implemented, which did cross sectional boundaries, despite the fact that certain people preferred to maintain divisional lines. An arduous process of trying to work across these lines ensued and the system operated, but not in what one would call an ideal state from a systemic point of view.
The paper will explore how the project might have progressed if a trusting constructivist approach was taken. The project is revisited from this perspective. [01- 43]

Ahari, Parviz

Product design and development is a complex activity which involves persons with different expertise and different kind of information. In addition to this complexity these persons often have to deal with a tight time and/or budget frame in order to survive in the market place. There are several ideas about how to generate ideas, design and develop products. They cover different aspects of this process, e.g., design, marketing, management, and production. Most of these ideas are presented in literature as a systematic way to deal with these issues. However, they are not systemic and they do not show more precisely how different activities are related to each other or how a product or design idea may be created. In this paper it is shown how systemic usability engineering (an integration of living systems theory and breakthrough thinking) may help designers to manage this complexity, generate ideas, design, and accomplish their projects in less time.

[01-119]

There are so many rapid changes and developments in the society past 200 years, Today every one views about Internet, computers, I.T , Human genome project, One world, One man, One organization….like that…. But what about the human Brain and Mind. Basic knowledge about the Human Body and activities. Now I can only say " Dear world Science and Technology" philosophers, Scientists, Technologists, forgotten Basic tool (fundamental) to grew up Human, Society, Language…i.e:- WORD MEANING., WORD FORMATION AND DERIVATION. LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT "WORD" FORMATION AND DERIVATION. This is main reason , root cause to all the social problems. I.e:- Social health and peace destroyed, over the centuries and destroying. When we talk about the health as a means….Mental health is fundamental to over all the health ( Human, Society ).I don't want to talk about any single mentally ill person, To day world wide 50% of the people suffering from mentally ill . I have caught the fundamental point, It could be the key to unlock the mysteries.
Small mistake creating so many social problems over the centuries in the society.
I. HUMAN = MEN AND WOMEN.
II. VITALITY TO HUMAN BODY = HEART AND LUNG.
III. HUMAN BODY ACTIVATIONS = MIND AND BRAIN.
IV. MIND = THOUGHT AND WORD….COMBINATION ONLY. THAT THE THOUGHT ALSO IT SELF NEEDED WORD AND WORDS.
THAT THE WORD ALSO IT SELF NEEDED THOUGHT AND THOUGHTS.
V. BRAIN = CENTRE OF GRAVITY AND WORD.
VI. CENTRE OF GRAVITY = The nerve cord and the spinal cord.

Above all the points depending up on by an organ of sense..1).Touch 2).Sight 3). Smell 4). Taste and 5).Hearing. "THESE ARE THE UNIVERSAL RUNNING FACTS."
This is my proof of statement for your (Intellectuals) review.

Distributed site Bulgaria

Ten years later the challenges emerged as a result of the transformations in society and economy in the East-European countries still continue to persist and to become much sharper and much more insisting!? As controversy to circularity scissors become more and more open. Further steps are made to recognize new challenges and elaborate ways and methods to overcome difficulties and retarding in the transformation and transition to democracy and free market economy, especially in the scope of globalization and rapid technological advance. Humanity and traditional values and moral norms may help particularly when accelerating the processes of admission to the European Union and attraction of foreign investments.

[01- 29]

In an attempt to define and characterise information, Börje Langefors formulated his infological equation that states that I=i(D,S,t), I being the information produced during the time t from the data D and the pre-knowledge S by the interpretation process i. Langefors finds this equation useful, though it is clearly a somewhat simplified model. He draws several conclusions from it. Since S normally depends on the total knowledge and experience gathered by a person, no two persons have the same pre-knowledge. Unless the pre-knowledge of the sender and the pre-knowledge of the receiver are sufficiently overlapping, communication cannot be successful. Not everyone will be able to receive the information intended. Depending on the pre-knowledge, people will draw different conclusions and make different associations based on the information. Langefors notes that when designing an information system, in the data design process, it is necessary to consider that the form of the data can influence the associations that are made. Since data does not convey any information by itself, without people there is no information system. Cognitive factors are critical for the design of an information system.

An early insight from infology was that it is necessary to involve those for whom the information system is intended to design data that can inform them, since we do not have access to their pre-knowledge. Langefors claims that an important aspect of the infological equation is that we have to design data that should be used to inform humans to suit their pre-knowledge.

In this work, it is argued that there is an important emotional component in this that should not be neglected and which has some consequences, as well. It seems reasonable that this emotional component should not be accounted for by pre-knowledge. Emotional factors are e.g. stress and arousal, anxiety, anger, aggression, depression, and joy. According to Eysenck and Keane, "The term 'emotion' tends to be used to refer to relatively brief but intense experiences, whereas the term 'mood' or 'state' is used to describe less intense but more prolonged experiences". Here, "emotion" is used to denote either or booth of these concepts.

Empirical evidence suggests that the emotional state of a person can affect how the data are interpreted and what conclusions are drawn. It can also affect what parts of a persons memory (pre-knowledge) that are accessed, thereby affecting what conclusions that can be drawn and what associations that can be made. Since information is often given to make someone draw certain conclusions, this can have some impact. It seems that the emotional aspect of information should be taken into account when designing an information system, and that this strengthens and expands Langefors' arguments. In this work, the grounds of the infological equation and of the reversed infological equation are considered, and the consequences are discussed. [01- 27]

An extremely important, but often unheralded, contribution in Living Systems Theory (LST) is the explication of internal coding and data transmission within a system, particularly recoding from "public" to "private" information, and vice versa. The analysis of such internal coding is somewhat neglected even within General Systems Theory (GST), and almost totally neglected by the general public, which has surprisingly little awareness of its importance, or even its existence. The importance of such coding and recoding in systems has received increased visibility recently through the development of PKI ("Public Key Infrastructure") technology to provide security on the Internet. PKI technology routinely uses the concepts of a public key and a private key (similar to the notions of private code and public code discussed by Miller [1978, p. 3] in LST). However, PKI technology, while vitally important, remains poorly understood by probably all persons except a relatively few engineers and cryptographers working in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of Miller's information-processing systems in dealing with private and public codes. Emphasis will be on the decoder (the system which translates from a public code to a private code),and the encoder (the system which translates from a private code to a public code). However, the role of the other systems in private/public coding will also be analyzed. These include the boundary, the input transducer, the internal transducer, the channel and net, the associator, the memory, the decider, and the output transducer. After these concepts are presented and discussed, the relation of Miller's concepts of private/public coding to a number of other theories will be discussed. These theories include autopoiesis, the insider/outsider distinction, the local/cosmopolitation distinction, second-order cybernetics, duality theory, and Luhmann's theory of the role of dichotomies in the construction of group identity. It will be shown that the notion of private/public codes is central to all of these approaches, and thus should prove extremely useful in future attempts to integrate these approaches.

[01-102]

ASILOMAR ABSTRACTS 2001

D through G