1^st comment from Ken Wing:

Some ideas related to the list of application chapters:

 Maybe "health care" should be broadened to "health"

 Education seems like it belongs.  "Youth" sounds broader.

"education for service" sounds narrower.

 I think a chapter is needed in the area of 

internet/information/networking/collective intelligence, etc.

 How about nonprofits/NGOs/civil society as a focus area?

 

I'm intrigued by what Michael Pollan has been saying about our food system, 

including its energy, health, and economic consequences.  Maybe Food is an 

application.

 

Response:

Here is a new set of "sector-based" application chapters:

Global

Energy

Environment

Food

Security

Health

Business

Engineering

Information

Politics

Education

Civil Society

Religion

Local Government

Whole Nations

 

This completes the shift to a reasonably well-formed set (exclusive/exhaustive) of the sectors that will have a role in the scenario exercise on sustainability.

 

Food is going to be hard to cover.  Pollan is a good start, but that's all I know, and I don't have any candidate authors.  The plan is to let the writers take whatever slice from the sector he wants.  Broad coverage is not necessary -- interesting coverage that tracks complex practice is necessary.

 

Civil society normally overlaps religion, but the way I plan to write about religion won't poach on NGO topics. 

 

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2^nd comment from Ken Wing:

 

Misguided practices              Countervailing characteristics of complex practice
Technical-rational practice        Appreciative, culture-enhancing
Focused practice                      Boundary-spanning, potential-seeking
Principled practice                    Situational, evolving
Interested practice                    Multivalent, accommodating, tolerant

 

 1) two valued thinking is most characteristic of what you are calling misguided, yet the table is two-valued. Why is a self-proclaimed exemplar of complex thinking offering up a two-valued model?

 

2) As in most two-valued thinking, the two columns are seen as contradictory and incompatible.  Witness the descriptive "countervailing."  I've tended to think of systems thinking as subsuming and transcending dominant modes rather than rejecting them.  That approach would lead to a concentric-circle image or the addition of a third dimension to a flat image or something else.  I would also avoid the cliche two-by-two box.

 

Response:

I won't call them misguided practices any more, but I don't have a catchy substitute name.  "Well-known types of practice that don't work very well in Type 4 turbulent environments" is not catchy. 

In the text I say that these practices work in their way and in their appropriate environment.  I also say that complex practice is prone to its own kinds of weakness.  Perhaps instead of saying "countervailing" I can say, "Enhancements offered by complex practice that are appropriate for turbulent environments." 

 

I invite others to weigh in, especially those signed up as authors.  (Unfortunately, not all of them are on this list yet!)