Complex Systems Co-Design

By John Motloch

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320739736_Complex_System_Co-Design_Pathway_to_becoming_an_appreciative_system

Paper - 2017

Generations of design process.

• Paper proposes complex system co-design as seminal fifth-generation decision processes
  • NB: even Motloch fuses with the machine in his acceptance of the digital in Complex Systems Co-Design
  • Emphasis is not on innovation, but on innovation-adaptation (to address feedback loops)
  • Includes people and the system
  • It is Allocentric, not Anthropocentric.
• Paper downloaded to wiki: File:CSCD.pdf
• MJ - paper short on impactful current methods, rich in theory of 5th generation design thinking.

Notes

• This paper sees complex adaptive systems (CAS) as “appreciative systems” [7] where entities actively and creatively participate in the reality they help create.
  • TLDR; You cannot appreciate something (and be responsible) if you do not participate.
• To unlock cognitive complexity, we can learn how to live within CAS metabolic flows, how to harvest rather than mine resources, and how to internalize all costs, resist disinformation and culturally induced ignorance 3 [28], and sustain positive eco-balance. [17]

Primary to tertiary support systems of the earth.

• The phases of cognitive complexification go from a reductive view to an appreciative view (view of agency or active and creative participation in reality creation). Tension is between the individual and collective. Resolution is simply to terminate the illusion of separateness.

From reductionist to appreciative cognition.

• Human Evolution - The contention is further that what it means to be human is changing rapidly from our former reductive, anthropocentric-focused definition of humanity to a more appreciative, complex, whole-system view.

3 Step Process to Complex Systems Co-Design

3 Big Picture Steps

1. Commit to appreciate
2. Shift from problem-solving to appreciative inquiry (AI)
3. Embrace agency (active participation in creation)

The first is for individuals and communities to commit to becoming appreciative. [7] The second is to shift from a problem-solving mentality to an appreciative inquiry (AI) approach that identifies and appreciates existing strengths as assets, and uses these to inform decisions and to catalyze more-appreciative decisions. The third step is to embrace complex system co- design (CSCD) 4 as an ethic, a proactive approach, and processes for learning-forward how to help CAS evolve in healthy, productive and sustainable ways. Using a CSCD approach can empower people to co-adapt as intelligent agents in complex system co-design processes, promote the co-adapted behavior of immense numbers of assets, and help redefine what it means to be human as intelligent assets in this appreciative system.

How to Attain Proactivity in Creation (Agency)

For the third step, Motloch proposes:

1. interconnect three levels of community supports --ecological systems, infrastructure, and built-environments -- to optimize potential of the EWF Nexus (EWF Nexus = Energy, Water, Food)
2. re-provision homes and communities as Intelligent Assets in healthy energy, water, and food systems
3. create healthy local networks where people and communities thrive using net-zero living and production systems.

All great generalizations. Now for the rubber to hit the road, see OSE Apprenticeship.

Community Design Process Principles

For the actual community design, Motloch offers 9 design principles (these are not design priciples, these are process principles):

1. The first SCI design principle is to optimize whole-system metabolic flows within the local network and community.
2. The second is to apply appreciative inquiry (AI) methods to identify, assess, appreciate and build upon existing community assets.
3. The third is to function as an intelligent asset that co-adapts with the CAS it helps create.
4. The fourth is to help people become appreciative systems that use the energy-water-food nexus and communities as intelligent assets to re-imagine the community as a thriving energy-water-food-people nexus.
5. The fifth principle is to leverage the community’s existing anchor institutions as catalysts for appreciative change.
6. The sixth is to re- provision the community for local making, value adding, and network building.
7. The seventh is to manage the community as a nested network of support systems --ecological, infrastructural and built-environment – so that the way the community functions also helps sustain the CAS system upon which it depends.
8. The eighth is to appreciate and leverage the diverse knowledge systems that reside within and outside the community to identify and apply appreciative strategies and solutions.
9. The ninth is to integrate the community’s intelligent assets, learning- forward strategies, and local material flows to build local ability to thrive.

Together these principles can help communities and the people within them thrive by sustaining the health and productivity of the complex adaptive system, and by optimizing the potential of people in the community as intelligent CAS assets.

These are all fabulous process principles. They are not heavy on negotiating what happens when you Get Punched in the Face.

OSE Assessment

The above requires personal, institutional, and infrastructure change. The personal is underemphasized. The institutional inertia is largely unaddressed. This relegates the process to mere infrastructure change, which is not a complex adaptive co-design process per se.

OSE is attempting the CSCD process by starting on the personal, engaging simple infrastructure change processes (builds), and generating intelligent assets towards systems redesign. Significant assets are required for civilization rebuilds, a point which OSE heeds well in its organizational design.