In the mold of someone excited who is acting like they’ve just discovered something everyone else knows about (eg teenagers and sex) I have one question: what’s great software that augments our ability to document and think in systems, stocks, flows, feedback?
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Software like this feels like it’s in the Bret Victor vein: stuff that’s realtime manipulator, allows you to expand/collapse/explore abstractions/level of detail and *see* relationships and stocks.
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I’ve already gotten so much from drawing my own stock/flow diagrams to help me understand and deal with the big systems I work with in the day job (ie pin down & prioritize which flows to work on first for outcome x)
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Also also: the stock/flow/feedback loop diagramming system feels like it could be a ripe puzzle mechanic for a video game, like Pipemania (and others) on steroids. Or a bit like Spacechem. I mean yes, video games are systems in and of themselves.
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Anyway, I genuinely and strongly believe in my gut that software like this is needed for us to understand our present day world. We don’t have good enough tools to understand & see the systems around us, never mind exploring how we might tweak them.
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People have suggested mind-mapping and concept mapping software and I see why but they’re a hack for what I’m describing: ideally systems diagramming software is dynamically manipulable.
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In my experience mind and concept maps are static. You want to be able to run time on an interactive, directly manipulable systems diagram, see stocks filling/emptying at their calculated rate & change flows & see the result.
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They could be embeddable/hypertext - at one level of abstraction an inflow coming from a cloud but you can tap the cloud to expose the (modeled) system underneath.
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Combine with a github style Community System Library so you can pull parts off the shelf, as well as building in hooks for external data sources...
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Okay, that’s it for the breakfast program. Over now to Kareem with this morning’s back to back meetings and I’ll see you next at drivetime.
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If you have Matlab, Simulink can also handle stock-flow diagrams
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