I’m sad to report that Jay Forrester, pioneer in servo control, digital computing, System Dynamics, global modeling, and education has passed away at the age of 98.
I’ve only begun to think about the ways Jay influenced my life, but digging through the archives here I ran across a nice short video clip on Jay’s hope for the future. Jay sounds as prescient as ever, given recent events:
“The coming century, I think, will be dominated by major social, political turmoil. And it will result primarily because people are doing what they think they should do, but do not realize that what they’re doing are causing these problems. So, I think the hope for this coming century is to develop a sufficiently large percentage of the population that have true insight into the nature of the complex systems within which they live.”
I delve into the roots of this thought in Election Reflection (2010).
Here’s a sampling of other Forrester ideas from these pages:
Models
Tom – sad news about the loss of this amazing man. Remember the day in Boston when I had a chat over a coffee with him during a workshop (where he led a 90 min session, mobile phone in waist pocket, sparkling eyes, and a positive energy unimaginable at age 89 back then).
His words were so encouraging to me that they had a lasting effect ever since on my life, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540166/alumni-letters/
May his vision to create a better world through understanding the complexity of social systems grow faster than we have seen so far.
Nice words, Ralf.
Jay’s NY Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/technology/jay-forrester-dead.html