system dynamics as a tool for revolutionary thought

8/9/2019 System Dynamics as a Tool for Revolutionary Thought

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System Dynamics as a Tool for Revolutionary Thought:

A New Version of the Untold StoryBy Michael McCurley

It has taken me years to get up the nerve and 30 years of personal exile to tell this story. Well,

almost

..When I was asked at Customs whether I was carrying any material likely to bring down the government of the United States..Forresters immediate response was, You should have

said, I certainly hope so David C. Lane The Power of the Bond Between Cause and Effect: JayWright Forrester and the Field of System Dynamics

I have always quietly thought that Jay W. Forrester was a revolutionary. In your favorite

video game or flight simulator, in your portable electronic game, or the console of your car lurks

the spirit of Jay Forrester. Yet you may not know who he is or what he has actually done. He isone of our countrys best-kept secrets, and now that the Cold War is over, the real story of what

he did can now be told. No one, in fact, will ever admit that theres anything like a secret orcovert life for Dr. Forrester. And therein lies the beauty of it. He is recognized as a genius,

Professor Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, inventor and developer of one ofthe worlds first main-frame computers, and founder of the field of system dynamics. Youve

never heard of him? That, in itself, should be suspicious. But there is more revolutionary in this

man than meets the eye.

Too smart to be the pawn of a foreign power, Jay Forrester set about the task of

transforming this planet on his own worldwide crusade. He would tap into the power of immensecalculating machines to use as his instruments for revolution. This was a daunting task since the

technology of computer science was still in its infancy. And somehow, he had to convince the

prevailing powers at the time that his efforts were genuine and would help make the countrysafer. Global war in the 1940s was not a fear at that timeit was a reality. World War IIpredominated in the minds of everyone, especially since Americas recent development and use

of the atomic bomb. Well, nearly everyone. As his field work was done on the USS Lexington

during combat, Forrester was already thinking and planning ahead for something else.

Once the Second World War ended, Jay Forrester was one of the first to join the race to

develop immense thinking machines during the 1950s. A mental computer himself, he wantedto use the power of a machine to aid thinking and carry out complex calculations, which is what

computers do best. To do all of this he had to become an inventor. When troubled by memory

limitations, he helped invent a new form of magnetic memory, which today is called RAM. He

was director of the Whirlwind Project computer at the time, one of only a handful of buildingsized computers in the world. The computers we now use incorporate important innovations

from this granddaddy of todays microprocessors.

Moving on into the 1960s, Dr. Forrester decided to leave the development of computers

to other people and proceeded to create a new field of System Dynamics, which would use

computer simulation models to examine important social problems and systems. To do this, ofcourse, he would need the increasingly sophisticated power of computers. He adapted a wartime


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fire control program for a weapons system into a new and versatile form of computer simulation

software. And then he did something Bill Gates would never even dream of doing. He insisted

that versions of the program be made freely available for public use! This anti-capitalist form ofthinking ensured that his program would never die, but would be replicated over and over in

different insidious forms and versions, as long as personal computers continue to exist. News of

this perfidy had to be suppressed, and to a certain extent it was. It would neverbe advertised onMadison Avenue. That, for some people, was the same as being dead.

In time, however, the CEOs of many gigantic corporations, and perhaps even thegovernment itself, became secretly alarmed that Forresters ideas would raise public

consciousness to new and dangerous levels. Beyond dinnertime conversation of the worlds

events, the people in charge did not want the rank and file to question their decisions or

intellectual authorityeven when it was wrong.

This is not to say that a certain number of important decisions made by the government

and the military in the 50s and 60s came even close to making rational sense, but nearly

everyone had to agree on policies that would only be seen today as insane. We were absolutelyconvinced at the time that if it came to a showdown, the United States and the Soviet Union

would mutually destroy one another with nuclear weapons. There was nothing particularlycomforting in this thought except for the fact that if you were destroyed, youd be sure to take

your enemy with you. Somehow, Forrester was too distracted by his own thoughts to take what

the rest of society was thinking very seriously. But his ideas wouldhave serious consequences

for the rest of the world.

In the 1970s, Dr. Forrester literally went global. He created a complex model of the

world and ran computer simulations that projected outcomes of population growth andmankinds use of resources. Then he published a book called World Dynamics. Together with

Dennis and Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and other scientists from the Club of Rome, that

organization published anotherbook called The Limits to Growth. This was too much! Thebooks forewarned that uncontrolled use of the worlds resources could have disastrous effects.

Although this might seem like common sense today, such statements at that time were

considered subversive and dangerous since they affected the interests of multinationalcorporations all over the world. To many, it was tantamount to Chicken Little talking about

global warming or saying, the sky is falling! Though nothing like this was actually said, the truth

made no difference. Challenging free market concepts of unlimited growth was a form of heresy

in those days, and though people were no longer burned at the stake, there were other ways tokeep free ranging minds under control.

The best way to keep the most intelligent of your enemies under control is to hire him.

Keep your friends close, your enemy closer.

One of the countrys best-kept secrets was maintained quietly under wraps at MIT for thenext 50 years. Yes, this is the institution that indirectly provides the most advanced weapons

innovations used by the military defense industry. If only people had known about a secret

weapon that would have led to the success of any revolution. It was already in the hands of the

United States! What we might regret is that we never used it.


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Dr. Forresters mind was too valuable to be sacrificed.

Business and industrial applications of system dynamics followed in the 80s and the90s, and engineers snapped up applications of system dynamics as if they were their own.

Grants from MIT and other private corporations made system dynamics seem decent, respected,

and even almost accepted. But there were still critics who remembered what the youngerdynamicists had done when they had tried to topple the world order and create a new

consciousness for humanity.

Today there are educational applications of system dynamics that are as innocent as the

coffee cooling model, the homework model (not very well liked) or the snowball modelno

kidding! These have been properly sanitized and rehabilitated for education. Dr. Forrester, now

in his nineties, is almost ten years older than Fidel Castro, but he is still the smarter of the two.This is a far cry from the heady days of a fire control system that was once used to wage a war in

the Pacific.

And now we come to the final element of this secret. Would you like to have asuperhuman thinking ability that is better than most anyone else? Would you like to have a

competitive insight that cannot be outmatched for your business or your personal life? Wouldyou like to use the power of your computer to augment the power of your mind? System

dynamics and computer simulation can actually do this for you. This is not a joke. Humor was

only intended to eliminate the people who would stop reading before they reach this point. Step

aside Harry Potter! System Dynamics is real. Computer simulation software is available for freeon the Internet and works with any computer. Free courseware and tutorials are also available for

open learning without cost. Todays personal computers are as powerful as the first gigantic

computer used to develop the field. And you can formally study system dynamics if you wish, aswell. This quiet movement has been gradually growing throughout the world. Such a revolution

follows no creed or ideology, and it transcends personal beliefs. Before and after all, it promotes

a global transformation in human thinking.Join us. Make a real difference. Discover a new consciousness.

TODAY!

Thank you for accessing this secret page. No one in the United States would have dared to hostthis, so Ive moved to Costa Rica, which offers safer jurisdiction, just in case. I live well off the

beaten track, and Ive been here for so long that no one bothers much with me anymore.

Further ReadingForrester, Jay W. D-4197-3 From Ranch to System Dynamics: An Autobiography Sloan

School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1992Forrester, Jay W. D-4895 Learning through System Dynamics as Preparation for the 21st

Century Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology RevisedJanuary 29, 2009

Lane, David C. The Power of the Bond Between Cause and Effect: Jay Wright Forresterand the Field of System Dynamics System Dynamics Review 23(2-3) 2007, 2008

About the authorMichael McCurley is an alumnus of the Guided Study Program in System

Dynamics that was offered by MIT. He lives in Costa Rica.

system dynamics as a tool for revolutionary thought

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