IRC Seminar, presented by Dr Stephen Gulliver: "Understanding Ourselves by Understanding Systems"

Abstract

The term ‘system’ is widely used yet is loosely defined as a group of ‘things’ (entities) that work together towards a specific goal or output. Accordingly, a system can be as large as a planet, as complex as a person, as formalised as a computer, or as small as an atom. We are surrounded by systems – financial systems, political systems, technology systems. You (as a human), where you work (the university), the even the computer in front of you (MacBook Pro) can all be defined as complex system-of-systems. Interestingly, when you decompose and align all systems, there are many characteristics that all systems have in common. In this session, Dr Stephen Gulliver will consider in more detail this decomposed system model in order to highlight system similarities (input/perception/worldview/reasoning/behaviour/output). By providing a structure for consistently comparing different systems (i.e. allowing us to identify where system conflict exists), we have a tool that allows us to better understanding failure, our history, and maybe even ourselves.

Short Bio on Presenter: Since 2005, Stephen R. Gulliver's teaching and research (in the UK and abroad) is linked to the area of pervasive informatics. Stephen received a BEng (Hons) degree in Microelectronics, an MSc degree (Distributed Information Systems) and a PhD (Computer Science) in 1999, 2001, and 2004 respectively. Stephen worked within the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre before getting a job as a lecturer at Brunel university (2005-2008). He then joined Henley Business School (University of Reading) in 2008 as a lecturer and in 2014 was promoted to the role of Associate Professor. Stephen is a certified Management and Business Educator and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In BISA, he holds the role of Post Graduate Director (Informatics) and has accrued considerable experience in supporting PhD researcher completion. Stephen has published extensively across a range of topics, including: multimedia and information assimilation, high education and learning solutions, human factors, systems acceptance, and enterprise systems.