A Computer Scientist Reminisces about Giovanni
by Pat Loy
I first met Giovanni at a Political Economy of the World-System (PEWS) conference at the University of Maryland in the spring of 1999. At the time, I was teaching computer science at The Johns Hopkins University, while also running a consulting firm. Giovanni had recently joined the JHU sociology faculty.
So, how did a computer scientist get to a PEWS conference? My initial interest in world-systems analysis stemmed from its similarity to my own field within computer science, which is analyzing and designing large, complex systems. In other words, I'm a "big picture" guy. Consequently I am especially attentive to the efforts of those social scientists who also strive for the big picture by looking at the world from both a systemic and historical perspective. Accordingly, in 1998 I came across several writings by some world-systems scholars (including Giovanni) that excited me, for they viewed the world in a comprehensive way in terms both spatial (the entire world as the unit of analysis) and temporal (the long historical view). Discovering such writings eventually led me to the PEWS conference.
After meeting Giovanni it soon became apparent that he had a sharp aptitude for visualizing different views of a system or sub-system. Modeling a complex system, whether it be social or computer-based, involves, among other things, partitioning the system into meaningful components - a process that may go on for several levels. For example, one commonly used way to begin visualizing the world system is to partition it into capitalist core, peripheral and semi-peripheral regions. And, of course, each of these could be partitioned to lower level components. Giovanni and I were once discussing the kinds of graphical techniques that are used for this kind of task in my field, and I was rather amazed at how quickly he could see how these modeling heuristics might be applied to analyzing the world system. It was clear that one of Giovanni's strong points, especially attractive to me, was his ability to visualize the system from different angles, along with how the components were connected at various levels.
After the 1999 PEWS conference (where I also met Beverly Silver and Christopher Chase-Dunn) I was invited to regularly participate in the JHU sociology department's graduate seminars, as well as the Institute for Global Studies (IGS) seminars. I always looked forward to these events, largely because I knew there was a good chance Giovanni would raise some issues that would stimulate my thinking and broaden my outlook. Indeed, these venues laid the foundation for our ten-year friendship. We occasionally would meet later (usually at the campus coffee shop) to talk about issues on which we did not see eye-to-eye, or to discuss other ideas that had come up. I especially remember extensive discussions about the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Kondratiev cycles, hegemonic transitions, and, most recently, China. I look back on these seminars and conversations with the fondest of memories. It just won't be the same without Giovanni.
I felt honored when Giovanni asked me to take part in a graduate seminar course he was teaching during the spring semester of 2006. It turned out to be a rich learning experience for me, due both to Giovanni and the high quality of graduate students he attracted. I was even more grateful when he and Beverly invited me to be part of a graduate course they were co-teaching this past spring, as it gave me much more time to spend with Giovanni during his last semester than I had expected.
Giovanni's body of written work is, and will continue to be, of transcendent value to those of us who are striving to improve our understanding of the complex dynamics of the world we live in. More importantly, it represents a significant contribution to the effort to make the world a better place. In my last email to him (the day before he died) I closed by saying, "Finally, I want to thank you for being that rarest of breed, an honest truth-seeker, which, in my opinion, is the highest compliment I could offer to anyone."
Persons like Giovanni do not come along often, and he indeed will be missed. Fortunately, his ideas live on.