Doug:
I have been involved in simulation and modeling for 18 years. Most has
been predictive, since that is what most of the world believes all
simulations are designed to do. For the past 14 months, and for about a
year 10 years ago, I have been involved in SD simulation - instructive
simulation - as part of our core business of organizational
transformation. We are a learning organization, hence attempt to apply the
disciplines internally, and teach others to do the same. We think in SD.
For a long time it has been my desire to combine discrete event and
continuous simulation in a single framework. This would effectively
combine the predictive and instructive varieties of simulation. I believe
this would get the communities to the generative stage you described. I
have done some experimentation in this realm in the past, effectively
combining multiple levels of resolution within a single, very large
simulation. Using a rule based structure to navigate between resolution
levels, and using both stochastic and deterministic strategies, this
simulation was used primarily as an analytical/predictive tool; the users
did not recognize the fact that an analytical tool is, at its heart, an
instructive tool. I'm convinced that the juncture of the two type
simulations will produce the generative simulation environment you
describe.
Also recognize that the current generation of simulators, such as airline
flight simulators and combat simulators, in which the user sits in a
physical environment that mimics reality and interacts with a virtual
reality, are generative simulations. What we should seek to do is capture
the essence of what is happening in that environment for desktop use.
Anyway, these are some early morning random thoughts. I look forward to
continued discussion.
fred affeldt
GDSS, Inc.
faffeldt@gdss.com
--faffeldt@gdss.com (Affeldt, Fred)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>