
Stock and Flow (2010) - smollett
http://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890
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ctogden
Another classic Snarkmarket post is Bless the Toolmakers:
[http://snarkmarket.com/2011/7320](http://snarkmarket.com/2011/7320)

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jbranchaud
Analogous terminology for Stock and Flow are the Garden and Stream metaphors
explored in Mike Caulfield's _The Garden and The Stream: A Technopastoral_.
[https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-
te...](https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-
technopastoral/)

~~~
082349872349872
recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337759)

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jbranchaud
I became aware of both of these articles through Tom Critchlow's writing on
Digital Gardens.

In this piece, he references the Garden and Stream concepts, while also adding
in his own, Campfires. [https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/10/of-gardens-and-
wikis/](https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/10/of-gardens-and-wikis/)

Then in this follow on piece, he touches on Stock and Flow referencing the
original article. [https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/17/building-digital-
garden/](https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/17/building-digital-garden/)

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082349872349872
The "campfires" remind me of HN: more eddies than a stream, but still on the
involuntarily short term side, like visiting a garden with a tour group.

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alexpetralia
Relevant essay when thinking about stocks & flows in a system:
[http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-
to...](http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-
in-a-system/)

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foobar_
That was a beautiful read. After a few link hops from Donella Meadows ... it
seems there was a programming language to visualize flows -

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNAMO_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNAMO_\(programming_language\))

I came across stocks and flows a couple of years back and it certainly changed
my thinking. Interestingly this is something we sorta commonly use in backend
dashboards to understand the behavior of the system, especially with regards
to data. I always thought there ought to be some similar ways to envision
economy with this and I find infographics trying to bridge the gap albeit
still static though.

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Jtsummers
You may be interested in reading more about system dynamics. There are a
number of good books out there:

\- _Thinking in Systems_ , also by Meadows

\- _Business Dynamics_ , by Sterman (slowly working through this)

\- _Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics_ , by Morecroft

\- _General Systems Thinking_ , by Weinberg (on Leanpub you can get the PDFs,
it's 4 books there, as I recall the first two were published as one book when
it was published as a paper book)

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foobar_
Awesome. Pretty much the only book I partially read on systems thinking was
introduction to cybernetics by Ross Ashby.

[http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf)

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jacques_chester
Ashby's book is pretty decent, considering that Cybernetics as a field can
feel unapproachable to lay folk. In terms of DNA, cybernetics and systems
dynamics both draw deeply from the well of early control 20th-century theory
and so there are some conceptual overlaps. In relative terms I think
cybernetics does a better job of surfacing the contributions of information
theory and system dynamics does a better job of surfacing the impact of stocks
and flows on overall dynamics (as its name would suggest).

