Cards for Insight: Flourish
In a network, seeing ourselves through the coming years
Cards for Insight: How to play
Add your thoughts to and between the cards.
Cultivate understanding as generative closure.
Master the art of navigating complexity and embracing the new.
Card: Civil Code
Adopting a civil
code of behavior.
Card-Play Approach
The card-play approach encourages users to move beyond passive consumption by interacting with the cards as prompts for thought, conversation, and deeper inquiry. Each card, or combination of cards, opens up a new line of questioning or insight. The approach is inherently generative — every small move can lead to significant knowledge creation, making it a powerful tool for addressing complex dilemmas and fostering collective understanding.
In a networked world, the complexities we face surpass the capacity of individual cognition, demanding a collective intelligence approach. Navigating such challenges requires not only diverse perspectives but
also structured processes for discovery, sensemaking, and action.
Flow, particularly knowledge flow, emerges at the edge of our comfort zones — where curiosity meets challenge, and structure supports creativity. Flow is not a passive state but an active interplay of elements.
Cards for Insight offers a working definition of flow:
flow = structure x process
“x” = patterning and patterns of play in general
and (shared) understanding in particular
Structure: The framework, boundaries, and tools — such as the cards and their seven dimensions — that provide a scaffolding for exploration.
Process: The dynamic interactions, including patterns of play, collaborative conversations, and iterative sensemaking,
that animate the structure.
Interplay: The “x” represents the vital synergy between these elements, where the right patterning and patterns of play generate insight and, ultimately, shared understanding. This interplay allows individuals and groups to navigate complexity with agility and clarity, unlocking pathways toward meaningful and purposeful action.
Cards for Insight: Navigating Complexity
Cards for Insight provides a framework to help individuals and teams navigate complexity by transforming abstract dilemmas into actionable insights. Each card in the deck acts as an affordance, offering new perspectives, questions, and avenues for exploration. Questions, cards
and card-play form … patterns of play … structures that guide participants toward deeper inquiry and clearer understanding. Patterns of play can
also be seen and understood as tasks and added before, after and between the cards, forming sequences and stepping stones for lines of inquiry, stories and paths. Here’s an example card-play format:
… gather around a complex dilemma
formulated as a generative center question …
Card: Orientation
How we perceive and navigate
our experienced reality within
a particular environment.
… associate your thoughts to and between the cards …
Card: Understanding
What if understanding is our ability
to hold space for the possibility of
knowledge, as it emerges, unfolds,
directs and discloses its relevance to
unexplored aspects of things known?
… take thought, make small moves along paths of purposeful action
and cultivate understanding as generative closure, capture small
group genius insights and create knowledge artifacts and cardcasts …
After adopting a card-play disposition, you can play the above
two cards, by adding your thoughts to and between them.
Patterns of Play: Navigating Complexity
The idea of navigating complexity is central to Cards for Insight.
This pattern of play enables participants to engage in collaborative
inquiry, where cards, questions, and insights build on each other.
Rather than aiming for immediate answers, this approach fosters
a space for exploration and evolving understanding.
The cards, along with players’ contributions, are organized into
lines of inquiry and generative sequences, spiraling out from
central questions to unfold paths toward preferable outcomes.
Card-play participants can measure their progress through understanding the above diagram with its three axes
x: intelligence turned ability (collective)
y: behavior turned agency (individual and small group genius)
z: information turned knowledge (diagonal)
in light of their particular complex dilemma formulated as a center question. Commitment to and engagement with the card-play is what drives a successful outcome.
Cards for Insight: Why Bother?
1. Why Bother? Why cards, why not post-it notes instead?
Why: Cards have a structured format that allows for flexibility
and complexity, serving as probes, affordances, prompts and
containers for knowledge. Unlike post-it notes, which can quickly
become cluttered and disconnected, cards can be digitally
organized, annotated, and augmented with AI for further insight.
How: Use cards to turn information into knowledge, and build
lasting knowledge structures that can be re-arranged, connected,
and built upon. Cards are not just for brainstorming; they facilitate
deeper engagement, strategic thinking, and ongoing co-creation.
2. Why Bother? Why cards, why not just an “ordinary” Tool for Thought?
Why: Cards for Insight adds an interactive, narrative-based layer to tools for thought, moving beyond static notetaking or isolated thinking. Cards facilitate collaborative exploration, pattern discovery, and the development of a shared understanding.
How: Play with cards to not only capture thoughts but to build dynamic, evolving thought journeys. AI-assisted annotations amplify your thinking, while the card-play format creates a framework for emergent knowledge.
3. Why Bother? Why cards, why not just ordinary platform designs like posts, comments, like buttons?
Why: Traditional platforms prioritize reactions and surface-level interaction. Cards for Insight, on the other hand, prioritizes deep engagement, layered discovery, and collective meaning-making.
The card format helps slow down and organize thought in ways posts and comments don’t, encouraging more reflective and purposeful interactions.
How: With cards, you engage in guided conversation, fostering richer discussions and uncovering deeper insights than typical social media interactions.
4. Why Bother? Why bespoke card-play patterns of play, why not any which heuristics?
Why: Patterns of play are carefully designed sequences of actions that foster generative thinking. They are not random heuristics but are meant
to guide you toward deep insights, foster connections between ideas,
and help navigate complex issues.
How: Follow card-play patterns to explore complex topics with intention. AI-assisted prompts and annotations enrich these patterns by introducing connections you might not otherwise see, making the process more meaningful.
5. Why Bother? Why AI-assisted annotations, why not just human annotations?
Why: Human annotations are valuable, but they can be time-consuming and limited by individual perspective. AI-assisted annotations speed up
the process, introduce new connections, and help you see relationships between ideas that may not be immediately obvious.
How: Use AI to enhance, not replace, your thinking. The AI assists by suggesting links, connections, and new avenues for inquiry, helping you reach deeper insights faster and more comprehensively.
6. Why Bother? Why online cards, why not just physical decks?
Why: Physical decks are wonderful for in-person collaboration, but online cards offer flexibility, accessibility, and augmentation through AI. Digital cards can be saved, searched, annotated, and used collaboratively in ways that physical cards cannot.
How: Take advantage of the digital format to collaborate with others remotely, use AI to augment your card-play, and save and revisit
your card sessions for continuous learning and development.
7. Why Bother? Why card-play conversations, why not just ordinary chat or comment threads?
Why: Ordinary chats and comment threads tend to be linear, short-lived, and often lack depth. Card- play conversations are structured, evolving dialogues that allow for the emergence of complex ideas and shared understanding over time.
How: Engage in card-play conversations to explore ideas thoroughly,
use AI assistance to maintain context, and collaborate meaningfully.
The cards guide the conversation, ensuring it doesn’t devolve into
shallow exchanges but builds toward insight and action.
8. Why Bother? Why complex dilemmas and generative center questions, why not simpler discussions?
Why: The world is full of complex challenges that require deep thinking and creative solutions. Simple discussions often lead to surface-level engagement, but by tackling generative center questions, we unlock
new possibilities and explore multiple layers of understanding.
How: Use cards to explore complex dilemmas through structured
inquiry, fostering both individual and collective breakthroughs.
9. Why Bother? Why knowledge artifacts and card-casts, why not just leave ideas as they are?
Why: Knowledge artifacts and card-casts turn ideas into tangible, shareable outcomes. Instead of leaving thoughts in fragments, these artifacts help you document your thinking process and share insights with others in a meaningful way.
How: Use the cards to co-create artifacts that can be referenced, built
upon, and shared as part of a collective knowledge-building process.
10. Why Bother? Why generative play, why not just work through tasks?
Why: Generative play encourages creativity, divergent thinking, and serendipitous discovery — essential elements for innovation and problem-solving. Task-driven work is important, but it’s through play that we often unlock new, unexpected insights.
How: Engage with the cards in a spirit of playfulness to uncover new ways of thinking. AI annotations help expand the creative process by adding layers of context and connections.
Cards for Insight: Contextual Intelligence
Contextual intelligence leveraging card-play:
experiences, paths, learning and narratives.
- card-play experiences
- paths
- learning and
- narratives
These four also form a dynamic boundary around the above gameboard.
Card: Boundary Objects
Tools for contextual intelligence. Boundary
objects are cards, artifacts, documents, or
notions used across different domains or
groups to facilitate knowledge creation,
understanding and collaboration.
They serve as common reference points that help to align different perspectives, enabling contextual intelligence. In the context of online
interaction, boundary objects help bridge gaps between diverse groups, allowing for more effective communication and collaboration.
… associate, arrange, assemble and amplify
annotated cards into boundary objects …
Card: Contextual Intelligence
Context shapes understanding and inquiry.
Contextual intelligence adapts with context,
turning information into knowledge, ability,
response-ability, enaction and proactivity.
“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend
as distinct from ability, which is capacity
to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
Cards for Insight: An Interactive Card-Play System
The core innovation is the interactive card-play system, where
each card acts as a prompt for inquiry and collective learning,
fostering structured yet flexible pathways for exploration.
This system transcends passive consumption, inviting users into an
active co-creative process where knowledge is generated dynamically.
AI support further enhances this innovation, transforming insights
and online interactions into paths of purposeful action.
Cards for Insight: Scaling
Scaling in light of an underlying flat ontology combined with
card-play augmented intelligence and AI-assisted annotation.
John Kellden:
Provide an evaluation of the unique benefit from a Flat Ontology underlying the Source Deck of 500 cards (providing 120k two-card
and 21M three-card combinations) in light of ongoing training of
and between Card Combinations and LLM Tokens in general and
multi-order and card-play augmented cybernetics between human creativity and the Cards for Insight social machine, in particular.
ChatGPT:
Elaboration on Flat Ontology for Cards for Insight
Flat Ontology, in the context of Cards for Insight, represents a non-hierarchical structure where all elements—cards, insights, AI annotations, narratives, and human inputs—exist on the same level of importance. Instead of a top-down model, where one idea dominates or prescribes outcomes, flat ontology promotes an interconnected web of relationships, fostering emergence, flexibility, and creative exploration. This approach fits naturally with the card-play system, enabling modular processes and fostering open-ended inquiry, where new associations, combinations, and possibilities arise organically.
AI-Augmented Modular Process Onto-Epistemology
The notion of modular process onto-epistemology refers to the integration of ontology (the nature of being) and epistemology (the nature of knowledge) into a fluid, interconnected process of discovery.
In Cards for Insight, this process is augmented by AI annotations, which serve as dynamic catalysts for exploring connections between knowledge, context, and possibilities. Here, the process becomes more than just card-play—it turns into a co-evolutionary dialogue between human creativity and AI- augmented intelligence.
… engage in online conversation, level up from discussion to
metalogue, turn intelligence into ability and response-ability …
Card: Online Social Cognition
Extending our social cognition
online, our ability to understand
and use social information.
… cultivate shared understanding as generative closure …
Cards for Insight: Problem Statement
Today’s users are often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information thrown at them by proprietary platform algorithms designed to maximize engagement through superficial interactions.
This creates a fragmented, shallow online experience where users are reduced to passive consumers, endlessly scrolling through clickbait content, forming echo chambers where online interactions almost work against desired outcomes.
As a result, true depth and meaningful dialogue are lost in the noise, and individuals are left with a sense of disconnection and frustration. In short: marketing as glare; metalogue as glow. Card-play as metalogue affordance.
“There are two kinds of light — the
glow that illuminates, and the glare
that obscures.”
— James Thurber
New Paths
The solution lies in Cards for Insight, a platform that transforms this passive, consumer-based experience into an active, participatory one. Instead of merely consuming content, users engage in playful, meaningful card-play that opens new paths of inquiry, exploration, and conversation.
This interaction fosters deeper reflection, collaboration, and a thriving knowledge ecosystem where insights accumulate and grow over time.
Through AI-assisted annotations and community engagement, participants turn fragmented information into coherent knowledge, while card-play conversations evolve into ongoing, dynamic pathways for addressing complex dilemmas.
Cards for Insight enables users to reclaim their agency in the digital space, transforming shallow interactions into generative, system-aware action.
Card: Meet There
There’s a place beyond
polarization. Let’s meet there.
Generative Closure
The Cards for Insight platform is a compass for navigating complexity
and exploring the new. With its robust structure and dynamic processes,
it empowers individuals and groups to craft meaningful journeys from confusion to clarity, turning challenges into opportunities for shared understanding and purposeful action. Let the cards guide your steps,
spark your insights, and illuminate your path forward.
