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Systems Thinking Response

  • Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

The system that Easterbrook identified that aligned most with is “A system of ecosystems and contaminants that weaken them”. I think that the effect GMOs have on so many other ecosystems besides crops and farming. There are so ecosystems that touch farming, which includes human survival, that GMOs can cause too much harm to. Spreading GMOs has already proven to negatively effect neighboring ecosystems, so to attempt it again, the scientists conducting the experiment would need to prove what steps are being done to prevent similar mistakes. A stake of this stakeholder is creating balance between interacting ecosystems, which means promoting scientific research that does not effect neighboring ecosystems and can be recalled if needed.

  • Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives, and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating? For instance, if the subject is “Safari Parks”, 3 stakeholders could be (1) Animal Rights activists, (2) the region’s Board of Tourism, and (3) the local land itself. The first operates in a system of ethics around the treatment of animals; the second in a networked system of economic benefits for the community (hotels, food, and attractions), and the third, in an ecosystem that the safari park may put at risk, by introducing pollutants from animal waste and fertilizer, and ecological competitors such as escaped non-indigenous plant products used in the landscaping of the Safari Park.

For my topic, “bark”, some stakeholders include:

  1. Trees that are protected by bark

    With bark, trees are operating in a system of survival. It protects them from the outside world, transports nutrients throughout its system, and maintains moisture in dry temperatures.

  2. Animals who eat bark for nutrition

    Certain animals are known to strip tree bark for food, which includes beavers, black bears, mice, and squirrels, also operate in a system of survival.

  3. Humans who can create medicine with bark

    Some of the earliest medicine created were made from bark. They have active ingredients, such as alkaloids, essential oils, carbohydrates, vitamins, and antibiotics that can be used in ointments, rubs, hair fluids, and other mixtures. Therefore, humans operate in a system of health and economic benefits for the human race.

Systems Map DMZ

Things I learned:

I learned that the more I thought through the various outcomes DMZs cause/create the more complicated the web would become. It was very disorganized at first, so creating subgrouping and combining certain outcomes helped me clarify the topic and see areas of opportunity to explore.

I also liked the spiraling nature of the causal loop. Wars lead to DMZs which in turn lead to fewer wars then fewer DMZs etc. Very cool and simple visual to have!

Group Reading Borders

Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All Tomorrow’s Clouds

I feel like my key takeaways from this one is that adding borders to a seemingly borderless space may actually make it safer for the average person on the internet. I never really thought about the internet as a borderless space, but with concepts like the “cloud” and even something as simple as WiFi, it does make sense to frame it that way. I found it interesting that this borderlessness is also precisely what makes the internet so vulnerable to exploitation. The idea that subdividing and localizing the physical servers that comprise the internet to protect individuals that reside in distinct jurisdictions is super interesting. I feel like the use cases cited of China and Russia show the potential downsides of government control and restricted internet access while the potential for governments to regulate how corporations gather and analyze data on the internet is more hopeful. It seems like an interesting double edged sword. I wonder if it will lead to digital demilitarized zones where countries need to allow for a grey area between local servers!

Borderlands/La Frontera

This piece was far more emotional for me, and I loved the way it touches on the invisible nature of borders themselves. While some border may appear physical like lines on a map or a fence, they are often hazy, blurred, and outright invisible. The changing nature of borders highlighted in the first chapter with the expansion of the US border and the diminishing of the Mexican border, shows how arbitrary many borders are. People might wake up one day to find that the place they call home is now something else entirely, and they are now labelled as the “other” when they had been living there for generations. It’s honestly heartbreaking. For the second chapter, the highlighting of the way we separate “others” using social and cultural borders was fascinating. Even the simple act of labeling someone or something as “other” creates a kind of border around that person/place/thing that not only bind the “others” to each other by giving them a sense of community and commonality but also ostracizes them from communities that seek to reject them. It’s a really interesting dynamic that shows the ways in which the concept of a “border” extends beyond the division between two physical places.

Systems Thinking (Easterbrook) Response

Question responses:

1. I will be honest and say that I don’t know much about GMOs, but most of my understanding aligns with the stakeholders in group 7. The idea of “frankenfoods” is definitely something I have heard of, and, for the most part, people that I talk to and have been exposed to worry about the risks GMO foods pose to their health. They (and I) see organic and locally sourced foods as better for their (my) health and the environment overall. I worry about GMOs in general mostly because I don’t know much about the science that goes into them. Not knowing what my food is made of and what kinds of processes went into creating it makes me nervous. I think the majority of their stakes for these stakeholders deals with human health. It’s unclear if GMOs can have serious impacts on health. The reading cites allergies as an area of concern which definitely lines up with some parents I have talked to who worry about their kids being affected by GMOs.

2. Three stakeholders for DMZs:
1. The countries at war. They operate in a system of conflict with each other. Each believes they have a claim to the territory. Usually one side is the aggressor, trying to assert it’s claim to more territory, while the other is the retaliator, seeking to defend it’s land from outside forces.
2. Neighboring countries. They operate in several systems. One is systems of commerce and trade. Often neighboring countries are engaged in trade agreements which can be impacted by war or even the formation of the DMZ itself which may disrupt trade routes.
3. Wildlife. DMZs offer opportunities for wildlife to return to areas which otherwise would have had a greater human presence. This allows for the reclamation of lost territory, and even allows for certain species that may have been on the verge of extinction to flourish. One of the surprising results of several DMZs is the formation of wildlife preserves.

Systems Thinking (Easterbrook) Response

  • Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

When I hear the acronym “GMO,” my mind immediately goes to the environmental/health arguments laid out in system 7. I am not well versed in the topic, and I believe this association is mainly due to media coverage and the increased advertising of the term “non-GMO.” The main stakes are for immune-compromised people, who may be more susceptible to allergic reactions, those who have reported health effects that are not taken seriously due to the lack of science behind the topic, the GMO/food production companies who want to not only keep consumers safe, but also ensure they are staying up to code, and the public; people like me who may not be as educated on the topic, but have preconceived notions due to the PR around GMO, organic, and natural foods.

  • Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating? For instance, if the subject is “Safari Parks”, 3 stakeholders could be (1) Animal Rights activists, (2) the region’s Board of Tourism, and (3) the local land itself. The first operates in a system of ethics around the treatment of animals; the second in a networked system of economic benefits for the community (hotels, food, and attractions), and the third, in an ecosystem that the safari park may put at risk, by introducing pollutants from animal waste and fertilizer, and ecological competitors such as escaped non-indigenous plant products used in the landscaping of the Safari Park.

My topic is Canals within the larger topic of borders. The 3 stakeholders I can identify using this ready as context are:

Governments – the people in power to determine Transportation committees and assess economic impact. They uphold border agreements and the governance around how and who uses these waterways.

Environmental Groups – Canals are man-made structures/waterways and have an impact on the wildlife and pollution in the area.

Traders/Business Logistics – Canals transport goods, and businesses depend economically on their successful operation. I am immediately reminded of when the Panama Canal was not operational for some time over the summer of 2021 and how that impacted the global supply chain for months.

 

Space: Satellites

I learned a lot from the concept map and also discovered some new aspects such as space law and the ethics of satellites. Although the smart use of space can enhance life on earth. Satellites are reducing emissions in the aviation industry by optimising flight paths and help container ships boost efficiency and profitability. Elsewhere, space technology helps us measure global carbon emissions more accurately, allows farmers to boost yields and feed the world’s growing population more sustainably. Satellites will be essential if we are to connect people who have yet to use the internet. Whole industries, from mining to retail, simply would not be able to operate without satellite communications. When I explored deeper than last week, I found that 1. the rise in the number of satellites being launched into space is unsustainable. 2. Satellites mega-constellations pose a risk to climate and the environment. 3. Tighter global regulation is needed to ensure space sustainability.

Colonial Organisms: Systems Maps

I was finding it difficult to create a concept map of colonial organisms, because I think that my understanding of the definition of a colonial organism is still quite tenuous. I decided to start out with a boundary map to see if I could solidify my understanding a bit more.

As I continued working, I realized that though coming up with a definition of a colonial organism seems like it should be straight forward, but it wasn’t. Perhaps the complexity I was running into is because human understanding of all organisms exist within the implied context biology taxonomy. I have learned that colonial organisms are animals, but I kept wondering “what is an animal?”. The individual zooids that make up colonial organisms seems like pretty simplistic animals, so how are they different from moss, or bacteria?

I started to build out a biology taxonomy digram, but quickly learned that once you get to the phylum classifications, the tree expands a lot. I’m not sure that documenting all of the known phylum classifications will help me understand colonial organisms any better, so I stopped at the kingdom level, and discovered that animals are in fact separate from bacteria. This was a helpful discovery because one thing I wondered in my early research was why humans weren’t classified as colonial organisms, since we have bacteria in our body, could they be zooids? Apparently the answer is no, bacteria in our bodies are not classified as zooids, and therefore we are not colonial organisms.

 

Links to miro boards:

  • boundary map: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPVNaV40=/
  • biology taxonomy: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPVSZHYs=/
  • concept map: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPWOgdo0=/

Reading response – space

The three pieces of reading inspired me of thinking space differently. In Yoko Akama’s article, I like the part when she discussed the idea of kokoro, and talked about how Japanese traditions, spiritual and religious thinking are incorporated in the design. It reminds me of the yoga topic, in which the notion of space is more about spiritual, non-material power. We often think about the physical space in the outside world, but when we go deeper into our heart, into our kokoro, as mentioned in the article, there are endless space for us to explore. The physical space might be limited by material, but the space in our mind, in our heart, in our imagination is not restrained by anything. And I think that’s the larger space for us to explore compared to the physical world.

That leads to the article of The Poetics of Space. In this article, the author mainly talked about the space of a room. By adding significance and meanings to the limited space in a room, the non-material space of the room is widely expanded. Connecting back to my own topic, plantation, for now I’m merely focusing on all the physical aspects that relate to space. For example, the land used to establish plantation; how plantations occupy of other living things spaces, in other words, their habitat; or from the world market view of how plantations influence the connections within the world. I haven’t think much about how people’s perspectives would connect the idea of plantation and space. I might be able to find more lead in this aspect.

System mapping kinship&quilting

What am I discover:

By making these two system maps, I gained more organized thought about quilting. Especially when I made the iceberg map, I keep asking myself “why” question so that I could think deeper about the reason that women who are in poor family do quilting. The system map could also help me to think about something that I overlooked and help me to explore more details of my guide project. For example, except considering why women doing quilting, men also have their reasons of doing quilting in some cases. I need to do more research on that one. 

Salt: Systems Map

 

I revised the map several times. In the beginning, I thought I could only draw a simple “tree”. But during the process, when an item is listed and adjusted. I find there are many possible angles to see the same items. Take the alternative view on the map as an example, if we consider things from the government’s side, the government imposes salt taxes (or duties) and starts wars. And if we compare the “duty” and “tax”, the duty causes wars while the tax causes revolutions. They are external and internal perspectives respectively. This also reflects “system thinkings”. Besides, The salt tax also supports some wars in history. Which makes things more interesting.

 

Another map: