INFO1111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Emergence, Unintended Consequences, Complex System
11 Jun 2018
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INFO – Week
• Definition of System Thinking
• Importance
• Applications within IT
Systems Thinking
What is Systems Thinking
• Broad level
o Connection between solutions, systems that implement them and the society
they operate in
• Focused
o Components of a system, their interactions can be analyzed to see how they
influence the rest of the system
• Way to view interactions as cogs in a machine
Differences to other forms of thinking
• Opposed to traditional systems where problems are broken into their respective parts
and studied individually
• Systems are complex and dynamic
o Feedback loops
▪ Balancing or reinforcing
o Causality
▪ No obvious placebos
o Emergent behavior
▪ Safety
o Behavior over time
• Acknowledgement of the unpredictability of systems
Importance
• Unintended consequences
• Complex systems fail
• A solution for one fault may cause unexpected results for other parts of the system
• Failure is almost never obvious until you’re looking in the rearview mirror
Application in IT
• Napster
o Growth of Napster changed consumer perspectives on how they want to buy
their music, changing the way record companies sold their product
• AI
• Security
o Property of a system
o Need to consider how security impacts rest of system
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