#stems

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce. ↗

— Tom Peters

#behind #blue-collar #change #computer #driving

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves. ↗

— Herbert Simon

#behaving #behavior #beings #complexity #environment

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years. ↗

— Bill Gates

#asian #classes #concepts #few #lot

Hierarchy and discipline gave shape to the world;that was what he had always believed.Life was made easy by adherence toa rigid structure.But maybe that only really worked when you were at the top of the ladder,when you were doing well.The further down the rungs you went,the more of a victim of circumstances you became and the less it mattered whether or not you were in control. ↗

— James Lovegrove

#discipline #life #systems #age

This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter what the specific human story may be, told to remain emotionally disinvested as far as possible so as to avoid preferential treatment of one person over another - and needing to follow that advice to avoid being swamped by empathy for fellow human beings in distress. The functionary becomes a mixture of Zimbardo's prison guards and the experimenter himself, under siege from without while at the same time following an inflexible rubric set down by those higher up the hierarchical chain, people whose job description makes them responsible, but who in turn see themselves as serving the general public as a non-specific entity and believe or have been told that only strict adherence to a system can produce impartial fairness. Fairness is supposed to be vested in the code: no human can or should make the system fairer by exercising judgement. In other words, the whole thing creates a collective responsibility culminating in a blameless loop. Everyone assumes that it's not their place to take direct personal responsibility for what happens; that level of vested individual power is part of the previous almost feudal version of responsibility. The deindividuation is actually to a certain extent the desired outcome, though its negative consequences are not. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#bureaucracy #government #individual #life #power

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems. ↗

— Miguel de Unamuno

#beliefs #elude #human #like #natural

We preserve the status quo, preserve existing systems. ↗

— Julie Bishop

#preserve #quo #status #status quo #systems

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big. ↗

— Richard Powers

#big #books #components #dialogues #fascination

The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies. ↗

— Huston Smith

#deeper #economies #finds #hinge #itself

I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself. ↗

— Edward Steichen

#bark #branches #coming #course #foliage