After five years of blank stares about the O word and five years of watching
people struggle to devise taxonomies and ISO AP233 translators I finally got
traction. (01)
The International Council on Systems Engineering has started a Working Group on
System Science which really means figuring out what means System and what means
System Praxis and how the scientific method can preclude the myriad dumb errors
that exist in practically every large system endeavor since the 1980's and
whether human capabilities other than rational man can contribute to the whole
thing. (02)
The impetus comes from observations that societal demands for intervention
systems are accelerating in extent, variety and ambiguity. Meanwhile, the
academic output in number and competency of graduates is less than adequate and
this is compounded by the impending retirement of baby boomers. faster than we
are graduating or otherwise increasing the SE. That means we cannot sustain
even the (estimated) 1.5 million people who do systems engineering today
(although most of them don't call it that). (03)
My estimate is that we must discover a strategy for whole systems
modeling/designing at 10-fold better productivity and innovation than today.
One objective is to increase the level of language [Halstead] of SE
practitioners by 10X. Current thrusts such as UML, SysML, etc. are woefully
unresponsive. Ontologies may help. (04)
First effort is to gain interoperability among SE practitioners at the language
level. The strategy is not to seek one standard but to use computer power to
enable the resolution of 'nyms' for respective tribes (for instance, we may
become clear about the degree of semantic equivalence between design and model). (05)
We are starting with domain-oriented participants and concept mapping. Not
surprisingly, gaining clarity about system is about as fuzzy and defining love. (06)
Intending to follow up with local language ontologies and a set of transformers
that mediate the local languages. (07)
I suspect that when we get a primitive example this Fall the potential effect
of real ontologies on systems engineering people will reveal the prospects for
real SE. This should serve to trigger several funds flows for real ontology
designers. (08)
Any advice or "we've already done that' would be greatly appreciated. (09)
Onward,
Jack Ring (010)
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