Dolça Barcelona: How Systems Thinking Saved History
Most civilizations plan on eternal life but somehow it never pans out that way. We prove it every time we uncover a Pompeii or a new Atlantis and dig through the entrails of a lost world listening for the cries of the dead. Its disappointing because, you know, it’s going to happen to us. Worse, more likely than not, our …
Extreme Review: A Tale of Nakedness, Alsatians and Fagan Inspection
Two naked babies amble across a busy freeway. Trotting after them is a guy in a suit. The guy is me. Looking back on that day it’s clear that this was an omen, for within the hour I was to encounter extreme review and understand why, that for systems engineers, public nakedness is sometimes a good thing. The Approach Flying …
New Learning and the Post Apocalyptic Fate of the University
The uptake of web enabled learning technologies is far too slow in educational institutions. This will inevitably mean extinction for some. If our universities are the dinosaurs then the coming meteor is the “category killer course”. The university course that is so good, so cheap, so universally available, so universally respected and so universally job procuring that it wipes out …
On Standards and Art
If you comply with a quality standard does this mean you’ve made a quality product? If you comply with a safety standard is your system is safe? Probably not. To produce quality you’ve got to know what people want and that can take a lifetime of experience. To guarantee safety you must have seen a lot of failures and that’s …
