Learning Systems Thinking

Preface

It became apparent that communications and computing served each other so intimately that they might actually become the same thing.

Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (Little, Brown and Company)

From Nowhere to Everywhere

Sixteen years ago, I owned an independent bookstore, Mooncougar Books, near the University of Montana in Missoula. The building once housed Freddy’s Feed and Read, where you could nibble tofu shepherd’s pie while browsing books by local authors. Eight years after Freddy’s closed, I bought the business from the penultimate owner in a long line of struggling booksellers.

On July 20, 2007, twelve kids were nestled in the second-floor reading nook, wearing pajamas and reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At midnight, the book was officially released, and they left to continue reading it at home. Downstairs on the purple counter, there were Read Banned Books buttons in a basket next to the bookmarks. The next morning, the enticing smell of Bears Brew coffee seeped in through the door shared with the coffee shop.

The bookstore, and Missoula itself, was surrounded by 1.6 million acres of national forest land. During time off, I’d shrug on my backpack and disappear into that forest, hiking alongside fresh moose tracks. I rode my motorcycle (BMW F650, for the gearheads) across hundreds of miles of logging roads, sleeping in a tent overlooking the valley while the occasional bear sniffed at my stuff.

Everywhere, indoors and out, I was reading. ...