REPLY Renaming System Dynamics (SD6387)

[SDMAIL Bill Harris]

Posted by  Bill Harris <bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com>

>"SDMAIL James Melhuish" <james at melhuish.org> writes:
>> (3) What I am concerned about, and why I wrote the original post, is
>> the awareness or recognition of our *field* by the general population
>> (scientific or lay).  


James,

Why?  To what end?  I'm really curious; what would we gain by increased
recognition of our field?  If the answer seems obvious to you, pretend
it isn't, at least just for a moment, and explain it to me.  I think I
can think of several possible answers; I'm not sure which people are
thinking of here.

When you're answering, I encourage you to drop down to the lowest rung
you can on the ladder of abstraction to help make it crystal clear.

I'm also curious whether the magnitude of this perceived need is
different in academic and business circles.  

  I'll admit that I'm perhaps a bit influenced by the idea behind Glenn
  Allen-Meyer's emphasis on nameless organizational change
  (http://www.emberea.com/pdf/resources/Nameless_Overview.pdf).  As you
  can see in
  http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2007/03/making-musical-sense-by-email-part-7.html,
  I carried out a useful conversation with someone else using a system
  dynamics model without ever mentioning system dynamics, and I don't
  think the conversation suffered from that (see point three).


>> (4)  Regarding John Morecroft's practical solution of separating "named 
>> approaches" and "fields".  How do we, or the majority of people who read 
>> about our work, separate or even recognize the difference between "named 
>> approaches" and "fields"?  Almost everybody knows about *economics*, very 
>> few (I wager) know about *Soft Systems Methodology*.  When meeting system 
>> dynamics in a sentence, does the average reader know that this is a field?  
>> Is system dynamics in fact a named approach?


I think I missed John's email, and I am not sure of the distinction
between an named approach and a field.

Here's a question to inject a bit of energy into the system (as if it
needed it): what would we lose, if anything, if we simply called it
feedback control theory?  What would we gain, if anything?

After all, I don't call my half inch box end wrench something different
when I apply it to a car, a bicycle, or a piece of outdoor furniture.

While I suspect there may be a bit of a reaction on the assumption I'm
suggesting that change, I'm really just asking the question.  I suspect
thinking about the answer out loud might prove interesting, whether the
change itself would be a good, bad, or awful idea.


>> (6) Google search on "system dynamics" returns 59 SD references from
>> the first 100 hits (59%).  Is that good enough for us?


I just tried Google with "system dynamics" (no quotation marks).  Of the
first ten hits, nine pertained to SD, and one pertained to the Irish
software company.  I'm not familiar with Google's algorithms, so, just
to be sure, I logged out of Google before running that test in case it
organized its results based on my history of search.

Of the second ten hits, at least five pertained to SD.  Three of the
third third seemed to pertain to SD.

- From what I've read of search engine optimization, few people go past
the third page in searching anyway, so these results seem reasonable to
me.  The phrase "system dynamics" does have other meanings, and those
should get their due, as well (unless we think that Irish company should
be banned and people talking about the movement of planets about the sun
would have to talk about solar orbital dynamics).

Search engines seem to get better, too.  I often program in J when I
have calculations to do (beats a spreadsheet! --
http://www.facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2006/02/when-easier-is-harder.html).
As you might imagine, it used to be that Googling J was a real disaster,
and so I stopped trying.  I tried today to give an example here (still
logged out of Google, just in case), and I was pleasantly surprised to
see that the first and tenth hits were right on (J Lo was number
_two_!).

I, too, like George's suggestion, and I suspect we'll each continue to
do what we want, anyway.  I don't really want to contribute to extending
this thread _except_ that I sense there may be something driving it
which would be beneficial to surface and look at: hence my first two
questions.

Thoughts?

Bill
- -- 
Bill Harris 
Facilitated Systems 
Posted by  Bill Harris <bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com>
posting date  Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:04:25 -0700