Download PDF Winter Issue of The Bridge on Complex Unifiable Systems December 15, 2020 Volume 50 Issue 4 The articles in this issue are a first step toward exploring the notion of unifiability, not merely as an engineering ethos but also as a broader cultural responsibility. Articles In This Issue Editors' Note: Systemic Vistas Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorGuru Madhavan, George Poste, William Rouse We live in fragmented worlds. Unbridged, tattered seams abound. The collision of four calamities—viral, racial, economic, and environmental—infected by human habits, hubris, and behavior as well as big tech, big media, and political acrimony are living examples. Calls for freedoms are ... Thinking Reflexively Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorRichard N. Foster The essence of the word reflexive is to act on one’s self. Reflexive systems act on themselves. For example, if one instinctively scratches one’s arm, this is a reflexive action. Reflexive is closely related to a similar word, reflective. Looking at one’s reflection in a mirror ... Embracing Behavioral Science Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorLeidy Klotz and John Pickering A defining feature of complex systems is that fully predicting the effects of changing them is impossible. Thankfully, engineers have never been deterred by the specter of impossibility. When it comes to designing in complex systems, however, there remains an obstacle to unleashing the full force ... Managing Failure Risks Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorElisabeth Paté-Cornell The complexity of engineered systems can be baffling, scary, and paralyzing. From fear of flying to fear of nuclear power plants, people have expressed their reluctance about technologies that are useful but, to some variable degree, risky. Failure risks generally have to be managed under ... Complexity Blind Spots Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorSusan M. Fitzpatrick Although scientists and engineers know that many of the hardest problems daunting society and in dire need of solutions are complex, the tendency in the academic research community is to pursue its work as though problems are simple. Seeing Holes—and Their Absence Complex systems ... Building a Meta-University Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorDarryl L. Farber, Douglas Melton, and Monty Alger Engineering practitioners, researchers, and educators struggle with complex systems. They keep us humble. Even as understanding improves about the complexity of both the natural and the artificial worlds and the interactions between them, and with growing knowledge about how complexity is generated ... Modeling and Envisioning Complex Systems Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorKaty Börner Most systems that matter are complex. Common to all complex systems is the fact that they are composed of many different components, whose interaction leads to emergent behavior that is hard to predict. Human evolution has favored local, short-term thinking and action. We are the children of those ... Cyberphysical Integration Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorChandrakant D. Patel In the 19th and early 20th centuries engineering was about the industrialization of physical and electromechanical systems like the steam engine and utility grid. The latter half of the 20th century was about information management, cybersystems, and the internet. The 21st century is about the ... Complex Environments Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorBrian S. Collins There’s often a tendency to simplify complex systems. One should realize the risk in doing so. Simplification of complex matters does not improve the situation of the issue at hand. To deal with a system’s complexity it is necessary to understand the scope and interdependencies of its ... Cultural Evolution and the Paradox of Diversity Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorMichael Muthukrishna Humans are a different kind of animal, dependent on not just genes but culture. We rely heavily on this socially acquired knowledge. Over generations culture has shaped the human genome. Our guts are too short and our jaws are too weak for raw food and yet we don’t have instincts for cooking ... The Complexity of Increasing Returns Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorCésar A. Hidalgo While the idea of increasing returns—the tendency for what is ahead to get further ahead—has been part of economics since the pin factory, it was long resisted by economists. The reasons were both simple and profound. For decades, economists had a strong preference for models with a ... Addressing Social Displacement Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorChristopher G. Glazner For decades this country has seen the decay of former industrial centers, the rise of opioid addiction, an increase in chronic homelessness, widening economic inequality, and the overrepresentation of minority populations in the criminal justice system. No one desires these outcomes, and there ... Complexities of Civic Life Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorPeter Levine Imagine that some college students have volunteered to serve meals at a homeless shelter. They love the experience because they are helping others. During the reflection session after the meal, one student remarks, “Serving the homeless was so great! I hope this shelter will still be open 50 ... Disproportionalities, Disparities, and Discrimination Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorCora Bagley Marrett Consider the trifecta of forces that have recently shaken the United States: the coronavirus pandemic, economic dislocations, and social justice protests. All three show that the actions and dispositions of individuals matter, as do group processes, community forces, and directions in the broader ... Policing as a Complex System Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorBrendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi Policing in the United States is decentralized. There are more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies, many with overlapping jurisdictions. They each have their own organizational culture, their own protocols for selection and training, and even their own procedures for recording and reporting data. ... Vaccines as Instruments for National Security Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorRichard J. Danzig The 2018 report A Preface to Strategy: The Foundations for American -National Security pointed out that the United States “cannot wisely respond to -twenty-first-century challenges predominantly by increasing traditional military investments” (Danzig et al. 2018, p. 14). Indeed, ... A New Model for National Emergency Medical Care Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorDenis A. Cortese and Curtiss B. Cook The current US healthcare “system” is not meeting the needs of patients or society. This is not a novel conclusion, but the need for change has been made much more salient by covid-19. What is the biggest lesson of the pandemic? The US healthcare delivery system, social systems, and ... Reducing Systemic Vulnerabilities in US Health Care Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorHamilton Moses III and George Poste Health care in the United States, unlike most developed countries, has no central system for prioritization, coordination, or financing of care and services. This void has been filled by insurers and employers, spawning a host of intermediaries that direct the flow of patients, information, and ... Public Health: Designing for Effectiveness Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorKaren DeSalvo Public health is what society does to create the conditions in which everyone can be healthy. The US public health community and its partners have been striving for years to articulate the structural and mission challenges of the country’s public health system. But the covid-19 pandemic has ... A Global Pandemic as a Complex, Unifiable System Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorHarvey V. Fineberg Global pandemics result from an emerging infection that causes notable disease in many countries in different parts of the world. At the margins—exactly how many countries and continents and with what degree of disease severity—public health authorities may dicker over the definition or ... Evolving an Ecological Perspective Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorSimon A. Levin François Jacob (1977), in his essay “Evolution and Tinkering,” brilliantly made the case that the world has self-assembled, constrained by history: Organisms have not been designed from scratch as the best solutions to the puzzles of survival and reproduction s, but are the ... Complex Maladaptive Systems Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorDavid Sloan Wilson and Guru Madhavan Here is a provocative fact: Searching Web of Science for articles with the words complex adaptive system in the title yields 1006 results as of this writing; searching for articles with the words complex maladaptive system in the title yields zero results. Why such an imbalance? Granted, complex ... The Simplicity and Complexity of Cities Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorChristopher P. Kempes and Geoffrey B. West One of the most striking phenomena that has dominated the planet over the last 2 centuries is the extraordinary rate of urbanization. Averaging to the mid-21st century, this is now equivalent to adding a metropolitan New York City every few months or a country the size of Germany every year.[1] ... Unity of Engineering Disciplines Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorZachary Pirtle To help engineers exploring how best to unify complex systems, I offer observations from the history of the philosophy of science, focusing on unity (and disunity) among engineering and scientific disciplines. Unity involves the extent to which different disciplines share common features, but this ... Complexities of Higher Education Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJohn V. Lombardi, Michael M.E. Johns, William B. Rouse, and Diane D. Craig Complexities in higher education are due to cultural legacies, differences among disciplines, and resource disparities across institutions. These differences suggest that one-size-fits-all higher education policies will be ineffective. Policies need to both be tailored to these differences and ... Leadership for a Complex Enterprise Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJeffrey Wilcox and Dinesh Verma A decade ago we participated in a small colloquium on systems thinking.[1] The people gathered were interested in defining complexity from a pragmatic perspective. The views were different, subjective, even confusing. We were tempted to conclude that complexity may be no different from beauty: it ... True Complexity and False Simplicity Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJason Crabtree Today’s digital societies are more connected and interconnected than ever before. Nevertheless, subtle and substantive long-term changes have been afoot. Current thinking about risk management across organizations and practices has not kept pace with this emerging reality, in part because the ... Epilogue: Toward an Engineering 3.0 Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorNorman R. Augustine The history of major engineering projects traces back at least 5000 years. It began in earnest with the construction of large stationary structures: pyramids, walls, roads, bridges, and aqueducts—what became known as civil engineering. The need to construct objects whose parts move relative ... An Interview with . . . Jill Tietjen Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJill Tietjen RON LATANISION (RML): We’re delighted that you’re available to talk with us about your experience as both an electrical engineer and as a writer and speaker and mentor, encouraging young women in science and engineering—all these things are so important. MS. TIETJEN: Thank you. ...
Editors' Note: Systemic Vistas Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorGuru Madhavan, George Poste, William Rouse We live in fragmented worlds. Unbridged, tattered seams abound. The collision of four calamities—viral, racial, economic, and environmental—infected by human habits, hubris, and behavior as well as big tech, big media, and political acrimony are living examples. Calls for freedoms are ...
Thinking Reflexively Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorRichard N. Foster The essence of the word reflexive is to act on one’s self. Reflexive systems act on themselves. For example, if one instinctively scratches one’s arm, this is a reflexive action. Reflexive is closely related to a similar word, reflective. Looking at one’s reflection in a mirror ...
Embracing Behavioral Science Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorLeidy Klotz and John Pickering A defining feature of complex systems is that fully predicting the effects of changing them is impossible. Thankfully, engineers have never been deterred by the specter of impossibility. When it comes to designing in complex systems, however, there remains an obstacle to unleashing the full force ...
Managing Failure Risks Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorElisabeth Paté-Cornell The complexity of engineered systems can be baffling, scary, and paralyzing. From fear of flying to fear of nuclear power plants, people have expressed their reluctance about technologies that are useful but, to some variable degree, risky. Failure risks generally have to be managed under ...
Complexity Blind Spots Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorSusan M. Fitzpatrick Although scientists and engineers know that many of the hardest problems daunting society and in dire need of solutions are complex, the tendency in the academic research community is to pursue its work as though problems are simple. Seeing Holes—and Their Absence Complex systems ...
Building a Meta-University Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorDarryl L. Farber, Douglas Melton, and Monty Alger Engineering practitioners, researchers, and educators struggle with complex systems. They keep us humble. Even as understanding improves about the complexity of both the natural and the artificial worlds and the interactions between them, and with growing knowledge about how complexity is generated ...
Modeling and Envisioning Complex Systems Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorKaty Börner Most systems that matter are complex. Common to all complex systems is the fact that they are composed of many different components, whose interaction leads to emergent behavior that is hard to predict. Human evolution has favored local, short-term thinking and action. We are the children of those ...
Cyberphysical Integration Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorChandrakant D. Patel In the 19th and early 20th centuries engineering was about the industrialization of physical and electromechanical systems like the steam engine and utility grid. The latter half of the 20th century was about information management, cybersystems, and the internet. The 21st century is about the ...
Complex Environments Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorBrian S. Collins There’s often a tendency to simplify complex systems. One should realize the risk in doing so. Simplification of complex matters does not improve the situation of the issue at hand. To deal with a system’s complexity it is necessary to understand the scope and interdependencies of its ...
Cultural Evolution and the Paradox of Diversity Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorMichael Muthukrishna Humans are a different kind of animal, dependent on not just genes but culture. We rely heavily on this socially acquired knowledge. Over generations culture has shaped the human genome. Our guts are too short and our jaws are too weak for raw food and yet we don’t have instincts for cooking ...
The Complexity of Increasing Returns Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorCésar A. Hidalgo While the idea of increasing returns—the tendency for what is ahead to get further ahead—has been part of economics since the pin factory, it was long resisted by economists. The reasons were both simple and profound. For decades, economists had a strong preference for models with a ...
Addressing Social Displacement Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorChristopher G. Glazner For decades this country has seen the decay of former industrial centers, the rise of opioid addiction, an increase in chronic homelessness, widening economic inequality, and the overrepresentation of minority populations in the criminal justice system. No one desires these outcomes, and there ...
Complexities of Civic Life Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorPeter Levine Imagine that some college students have volunteered to serve meals at a homeless shelter. They love the experience because they are helping others. During the reflection session after the meal, one student remarks, “Serving the homeless was so great! I hope this shelter will still be open 50 ...
Disproportionalities, Disparities, and Discrimination Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorCora Bagley Marrett Consider the trifecta of forces that have recently shaken the United States: the coronavirus pandemic, economic dislocations, and social justice protests. All three show that the actions and dispositions of individuals matter, as do group processes, community forces, and directions in the broader ...
Policing as a Complex System Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorBrendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi Policing in the United States is decentralized. There are more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies, many with overlapping jurisdictions. They each have their own organizational culture, their own protocols for selection and training, and even their own procedures for recording and reporting data. ...
Vaccines as Instruments for National Security Friday, December 18, 2020 AuthorRichard J. Danzig The 2018 report A Preface to Strategy: The Foundations for American -National Security pointed out that the United States “cannot wisely respond to -twenty-first-century challenges predominantly by increasing traditional military investments” (Danzig et al. 2018, p. 14). Indeed, ...
A New Model for National Emergency Medical Care Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorDenis A. Cortese and Curtiss B. Cook The current US healthcare “system” is not meeting the needs of patients or society. This is not a novel conclusion, but the need for change has been made much more salient by covid-19. What is the biggest lesson of the pandemic? The US healthcare delivery system, social systems, and ...
Reducing Systemic Vulnerabilities in US Health Care Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorHamilton Moses III and George Poste Health care in the United States, unlike most developed countries, has no central system for prioritization, coordination, or financing of care and services. This void has been filled by insurers and employers, spawning a host of intermediaries that direct the flow of patients, information, and ...
Public Health: Designing for Effectiveness Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorKaren DeSalvo Public health is what society does to create the conditions in which everyone can be healthy. The US public health community and its partners have been striving for years to articulate the structural and mission challenges of the country’s public health system. But the covid-19 pandemic has ...
A Global Pandemic as a Complex, Unifiable System Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorHarvey V. Fineberg Global pandemics result from an emerging infection that causes notable disease in many countries in different parts of the world. At the margins—exactly how many countries and continents and with what degree of disease severity—public health authorities may dicker over the definition or ...
Evolving an Ecological Perspective Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorSimon A. Levin François Jacob (1977), in his essay “Evolution and Tinkering,” brilliantly made the case that the world has self-assembled, constrained by history: Organisms have not been designed from scratch as the best solutions to the puzzles of survival and reproduction s, but are the ...
Complex Maladaptive Systems Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorDavid Sloan Wilson and Guru Madhavan Here is a provocative fact: Searching Web of Science for articles with the words complex adaptive system in the title yields 1006 results as of this writing; searching for articles with the words complex maladaptive system in the title yields zero results. Why such an imbalance? Granted, complex ...
The Simplicity and Complexity of Cities Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorChristopher P. Kempes and Geoffrey B. West One of the most striking phenomena that has dominated the planet over the last 2 centuries is the extraordinary rate of urbanization. Averaging to the mid-21st century, this is now equivalent to adding a metropolitan New York City every few months or a country the size of Germany every year.[1] ...
Unity of Engineering Disciplines Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorZachary Pirtle To help engineers exploring how best to unify complex systems, I offer observations from the history of the philosophy of science, focusing on unity (and disunity) among engineering and scientific disciplines. Unity involves the extent to which different disciplines share common features, but this ...
Complexities of Higher Education Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJohn V. Lombardi, Michael M.E. Johns, William B. Rouse, and Diane D. Craig Complexities in higher education are due to cultural legacies, differences among disciplines, and resource disparities across institutions. These differences suggest that one-size-fits-all higher education policies will be ineffective. Policies need to both be tailored to these differences and ...
Leadership for a Complex Enterprise Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJeffrey Wilcox and Dinesh Verma A decade ago we participated in a small colloquium on systems thinking.[1] The people gathered were interested in defining complexity from a pragmatic perspective. The views were different, subjective, even confusing. We were tempted to conclude that complexity may be no different from beauty: it ...
True Complexity and False Simplicity Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJason Crabtree Today’s digital societies are more connected and interconnected than ever before. Nevertheless, subtle and substantive long-term changes have been afoot. Current thinking about risk management across organizations and practices has not kept pace with this emerging reality, in part because the ...
Epilogue: Toward an Engineering 3.0 Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorNorman R. Augustine The history of major engineering projects traces back at least 5000 years. It began in earnest with the construction of large stationary structures: pyramids, walls, roads, bridges, and aqueducts—what became known as civil engineering. The need to construct objects whose parts move relative ...
An Interview with . . . Jill Tietjen Thursday, December 17, 2020 AuthorJill Tietjen RON LATANISION (RML): We’re delighted that you’re available to talk with us about your experience as both an electrical engineer and as a writer and speaker and mentor, encouraging young women in science and engineering—all these things are so important. MS. TIETJEN: Thank you. ...