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Larnaca Conferences

  • Meeting in Larnaca, Cyprus on Monday 28 May.
  • Starting at 10 am local time.

The meeting is an ‘ideas creation’ and brainstorming event between System Thinkers of different backgrounds.
 

Aims

  • To discuss how a complex approach to science is needed in order to overcome some of today’s bottlenecks
  • To explore transdisciplinary synergies between experts, and establish a common position statement
  • To look for EU funding and/or consider a Start-up
  • To set up a Think Tank and discuss how to implement our thinking in practice

Details

Information flowing in our modern complex social system (between human brains, brains to computer and computer to computer) creates new realities which have an immense impact on our society, biology and evolution as humans. A formal thematisation of systems thinking needs to be developed in order to avoid negative outcomes such as degenerative disease, conflict, lack of cooperation and bad communication.

The meeting will bring together expert system thinkers in areas such as language, communication, ageing, cognition, dialogue, complex socio-technical systems, resilience and mathematics.

An example where our thinking may be applied is neuro-resilience: “The inherent characteristics of the brain as a complex system, the long term and short-term adaptation strategies of the individuals, and finally the quality of management strategies of the collective and the embedded environment in steering individuals away from undesired brain’s health related outcomes such as depression, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases” (Shima Beigi).

The multiple, complex and overlapping network transactions in a virtual or a real environment need to be studied. Another example in this respect is PolySocial Reality (PoSR) which is a “conceptual model for the global interaction context within which people experience social interactions whether immediate or mediated by technology. PoSR defines relations across the aggregate of all the experienced ‘locations’ and ‘communications’ of and between all individual people, people/machines and machines/machines in multiple networks and/or locales at the same or different times. PoSR is based upon the core concept that dynamic relational structures emerge from the aggregate of multiplexed asynchronous or synchronous data creations of all individuals within the domain of networked, non-networked, and/or local experiences” (Fisher and Applin).

Contemporary socio-technical challenges cannot be resolved without harnessing the collective intelligence and wisdom of stakeholders. This calls for systemic systems of communication, dialogue, and decision making in ways that guarantee that the outcome is not only consensual but also humane, optimal, and wise. To address these challenges we will need to re-invent the design and operation of key complex systems such as systems of education and systems of governance (Yiannis Laouris).

How can systems theory and research create significant differences in real systems and everybody's daily life? How can a transdisciplinary systemic discourse become of value to people, politics, economy, ecology, global solutions and integrate direct feedback from real systems and people into the discussion? Questions like these culminate in the ongoing task of a systemic language and should lead to building an exchange platform for researchers to evolve with their research and the systems they analyze, and for laymen and normal people to be systemically integrated into the discussion thus being enabled to use research and systemic concepts to keep up with the complexity of globalization and to participate actively in scientific progress.

“Systemic thinking can change the world, but how? Through people who learn how to think systemically, who learn how to interact with each other systemically and through those people who learn to act as a system in the environment of other systems.”
Gitta and Ralf Peyn, FORMWELT developer

The discussion and exchange of ideas will continue over the course of the day. It is hoped that this meeting will become a trend-setting, yearly event.